On the other hand (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Friday, April 15, 2016, 20:54 (3387 days ago) @ Xenos

Thanks for clearing that up - you guys are totally right. WTF Kotaku? I feel like the gaming press' failure to verify sources and cross-reference information leads to an awful lot of the "chatter" about how good games are going to be.

Kotaku is also the same site who whines that Ubisoft has stopped inviting them to press events or sending them press info because Kotaku finds leaks and sources and reports on them. Gaming journalism in general is pretty bad, but Kotaku actually makes me angry. You can either be friendly with a company, or you can actively look for and report leaks, you don't get to do both.

Personally, that's not how I interpreted the situation. Nothing about Kotaku's statements around that Ubisoft situation came off as "whiney" to me. Rather, it seemed like a very straightforward response to all the questions they were getting from their fans about lack of day 1 reviews of ubisoft games. It seemed to me that they were simply explaining that Ubisoft was no longer sending them review code, and the likely reason for the "blackout".

But I may also be a little biased, because in general I have a huge problem with the roll that most publishers play in how their games are covered and written about, pre and post launch. Kotaku has a checkered history, to be sure... however, I do applaud their willingness to say "You know what, we've come across some genuine videogame news and we're going to cover it, even if it costs us review copies of a few games". I'm not saying they are perfect, but they are one of the few outlets who overtly displays that they are not in the pockets of the major publishers. Patrick Klepek and Jason Schrier are the only 2 members of the games press I can think of who do true reporting of the industry. Virtually everyone else is just playing along with the hype cycles spun up by the publishers, regurgitating press releases and covering games based on experiences at carefully contained press events.

I do feel for hard working developers who's jobs are in some way effected by leaks. But it really shouldn't be the job of the media to prevent those leaks from happening (the opposite, actually). Ultimately, I think the level of secrecy around videogame development is insane, and serves nobody but the publishers. I think the media is far too willing to play along most of the time.