Walmart-Backed Gaming Site Restart Lays Off Its Entire Editorial Team

Restart, a gaming news and reviews site that launched in late 2024 with Walmart's backing, has laid off its "entire editorial team," according to a Friday post from Brandy Berthelson, the site's former editor-in-chief, as reported by The Verge.

Other former staffers have also posted about being laid off. Berthelson said she's "not able" to discuss details of the layoffs. One laid-off employee told The Verge they signed a severance agreement with Moonrock, the content marketing agency that operates the site.

Restart's own editorial mission page described the arrangement as Walmart-"powered" but said the site operated as an "independent site." It said Walmart "doesn't influence our editorial direction," and that when the site mentioned a game, it would provide purchase links sending readers to Walmart through a partner tracking code. That link, per the page, provided Restart with 0% of any resulting sale — but it did help Walmart see exactly how customers arrived at the product.

That's a fairly unusual setup for a media outlet. Most gaming sites lean on affiliate commissions or display advertising. Restart's model, as described on its own page, was built around helping Walmart track how customers reached its product pages rather than generating direct revenue for the site itself, run through a marketing agency rather than a traditional publisher.

The Game Informer Parallel

Restart launched a few months after GameStop shut down Game Informer, a gaming publication GameStop used to own. Game Informer has since been revived under new ownership. Per The Verge, Restart was essentially Walmart's version of the kind of retailer-backed gaming media brand GameStop once had with Game Informer.

What's Actually Known, and What Isn't

As of this writing, Restart remains online. It's unclear whether Walmart and Moonrock will continue operating the site following the layoffs, and if so, what that would look like. Walmart and Moonrock did not immediately reply to The Verge's requests for comment.

Readers and former staff are working off inference: an entire editorial team gone, but a live website with no announced future.

It's also worth being precise about what "editorial independence" meant here in practice. The site's own mission page disclosed openly that Walmart got 0% of any sale through Restart's links but did get tracking data on how customers arrived at Walmart's product pages. Whether that arrangement was ever going to be sustainable as a stand-alone editorial operation is a separate question, and the layoffs suggest an answer.

The Structural Problem, Stated Plainly

Corporate-sponsored editorial operations built inside marketing agencies face a specific vulnerability: they don't answer to subscriber revenue or a traditional ad market, they answer to whatever budget line the sponsoring brand decides to keep funding. If Restart's site continues to exist online without staff producing new content, it risks becoming a Walmart marketing asset in form only, not a media outlet in function.

The unresolved question is simple and specific: does Restart keep publishing at all going forward, with different staffing or a different structure, or does it become a dormant site that Walmart and Moonrock quietly stop updating? Neither company has said, and until one of them does, former staffers and readers are left guessing.