The Onion, “America’s Finest News Source,” has been on a bit of a hot streak since escaping the shackles of its former corporate owner, G/O Media, in 2024. Since its purchase by Global Tetrahedron, a company established by former Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, the satirical newspaper has taken a few massive swings to establish this new chapter as the paper’s comeback era.
The first of these salvos was its relaunch of a print edition in August 2024 in addition to its free digital content. The paper’s executive editor, Jordan LaFLure, suggested to The New York Times that the market would be receptive to its analog offering “for the same reason that 18-year-old kids are buying Taylor Swift on vinyl.” However, the paper’s most audacious, headline-grabbing, and hilarious play has undoubtedly been its acquisition and hostile takeover of Alex Jones’ conspiracy-peddling site InfoWars after Jones lost his Sandy Hook Elementary defamation case to the tune of $1.4 billion in damages.
After years of legal disputes, the site finally relaunched this summer as Real InfoWars, a slate of fever-dream vertical-video skits covering fictional rage-baiting podcasts and fake prepper product ads, with comedian Tim Heidecker stepping in to helm the transition, transforming into a pitch-perfect lampoon of Jones himself, all but erasing the conspiracist’s legacy in the process.
Just in time for the midterm elections, the sardonic media giant has casually gifted the world yet another unprecedented banger in the form of its very first video game, The Onion Voting Simulator 3D. Available to play for free in browsers on mobile or (those that aren’t Safari) on desktop, the first-person platformer even got its own launch trailer, just like any AAA title would.
“Tired of the same voting routine,” asks the trailer’s narrator, soon revealed to be none other than Uncle Sam, who goes on to invite players to “explore a photo-realistic middle school gym. Avoid the poll watchers and help save democracy. Or just stay at home in your digital apartment and masturbate.”
Having 100-percented the game myself in advance of this write-up, I can attest that players can indeed partake in all these actions and many more. Without spoiling too much, I’ll encourage would-be democracy participants to take their time exploring the surprisingly expansive world map to find all the collectibles, Easter eggs, and digs at former corporate owners hidden throughout. And don’t forget to try the “Stay At Home Mode” option, available from the title screen, for a taste of the consequences that come with apathetic dereliction of one’s civic duties. Frankly, this might just be the most immersive life simulator on the market until GTA VI drops next month.
In 2024, following The New York Times’ acquisition of the indie hit, Wordle, for a “low seven figures” fee and the subsequent launch of its NYT Games app, the legacy paper experienced a massive influx of digital subscribers looking for their daily puzzle fix. This sudden boon bucked all the trends of layoffs and declining readership plaguing the media ecosystem of the 2020s, and its gaming-based revenue has only gone up quarter after quarter. This shift in focus led to the astute headline from Robinhood’s media subsidiary Sherwood. News that “The New York Times is a games company with a newspaper side hustle.”
One would hope to live in a world where insightful reporting, satirical or straight-laced, could survive on its own merits, but if this is the world we’re stuck in, we should all be grateful a storied institution like The Onion is clear-eyed enough to see the writing on the wall and is making moves that will keep it around for the long haul. So, maybe if enough of you get out there and digitally vote, we’re not too far out from an Onion gaming app with content infinitely more interesting than Tiles and Letter Boxed.
