Polygon The Game Website Gets Spammed By Shady Crypto Nonsense

Polygon is an American video game website that publishes blogs, news, reviews, and such. Polygon, according to its website, is “a protocol and a framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.” Despite similar logos and Tweets from the blockchain network plaguing those of the video game website as of late, the two companies are completely unrelated.

If you look at tweets from the video game Polygon posted this week, there’s a good chance you’ll get introduced to the cryptocurrency Polygon in the process. It doesn’t matter what the tweets are about. Take this one tweet about the new Blade Runner anime trailer. If you scroll down past the normal comments from the good, fine people of the internet and click on the “might be offensive” response option, you’re treated to a bunch of weird responses from people tagging @POLYGON_BONUS and @MATICGIFT, neither of which I am going to link because they are invasive and obnoxious.

The strange tweet responses are referring to a scammy-seeming promotion from the cryptocurrency company Polygon called the MATIC Airdrop. In order to promote the adaptation of their specific cryptocurrency, MATIC, Polygon is “giving away” 10 million units. All a person has to do to qualify is pay some of their own MATIC, and more MATIC will magically flow into their cryptocurrency coffers. For some reason, multiple Twitter accounts that barely follow anyone and have no followers themselves are spamming “It works!” tweets in response to tweets from the proper video game Polygon.

According to Newsweek, non-gaming Polygon was founded in 2017 as the Matic Network, an India cryptocurrency startup. In February of this year the company rebranded as Polygon, adopting a logo that looks nothing like the video game website’s logo save the positioning of its graphic element and a nearly identical font. If you’re confused, just look for the capital P. That’s the right Polygon or, according to the image above, the left Polygon.

We’ve reached out to the wrong (right) Polygon to ask what’s up with all the weird Twitter spamming, and will update this post should they respond. We’ve also reached out to the website Polygon, former employer of Kotaku’s earliest and most recent editors-in-chief, and hope to hear from them soon.

If you ask me, this is likely the act of some guerilla marketing team that just won’t let Polygons be Polygons.