BlackListed

[runic knight]

It isn't even quite that it is shitty no matter who does it, Though admitedly, clickbait garbage is, it is merely that they seem to use that as part of explanation why they dislike kotaku gawker yet engage in it themselves. At that point it isn't about any sort of ethical requirement on their part, merely they are not consistent to me.

I made the distinction I did between business and journalism ethics simply because of what you put so well in your last paragraph there: namely, who is committing the "unethical" action. In this case it is the business, not the journalists, so right off the bat it can not really be an ethics in journalism concern. The actual ruling on the action being an ethical breach or not doesn't even matter much in regard to that I think.

I do sort of have to disagree a little though, this is newsworthy. Sadly for kotaku not as an ethical crusade to rally behind, but rather as a sign of the state of games journalism in general that it has reached a point where publishers not having a popular games news site in their favor is the exception, not the norm. In that regard, it is newsworthy of just how bad the status quo of the industry is. Kinda doubt that is a story the news itself would run though.

What the devs did wasn't unethical at all. It was a free choice. Why should Kotaku get special treatment, which is what access like that is. They don't have to give every mickey-mouse publication access, and that's only fair.

I agree, I was just clarifying that it didn't even matter if it was ethical or not when it came to trying to link it to journalistic ethics, since it was never an issue of journalists acting ethically or not, when the publication decided to blacklist, it was the publication acting, thus not "journalism ethics" in the least.

Personally, I wish all publications were severed in such a fashion and that the media and the publishers were distinctly separate entities and not so difficult to tell where the head of the one ended and the ass of the other began.

 

[Calbeck]

Meanwhile, in the next room over, the 18-month battle continues to rage...

 

[Tono Makt]

What Kotaku did wasn't unethical journalism, it was stupid journalism. It was the equivalent of posting spoilers - like the people who posted the Suicide Squad video from ComicCon or where ever it was first posted. Sure, maybe there was some investigative journalism done to get the scoops, but in the end, they didn't release much (if anything) that wasn't either going to be released by the companies themselves or edited out later on.

The only positive is that it gets Kotaku clicks. The negatives are being played up to be far greater than they actually are - spoilers suck, but I'd say a good 99% of the people who were likely to buy the games aren't going to change their mind based on what little information that Kotaku released, as compared to the rest of the games. So I don't see this hurting sales, at all. Does it give "free advertising" to the games? Eh... yes. But again, 99% of the likely consumers aren't going to be affected one way or another by the game, so the effect of the "free advertising" is likely impossible to actually measure, same as how it's likely impossible to measure how much the sales could be hurt by this. (likely not at all.)

The biggest negative is what's happened - the companies decide to say "Screw you." to Kotaku for posting the spoilers, and freezing Kotaku out of future information. Blacklisting Kotaku. Maybe this will have a negative impact on the companies too; as I don't have the games in question, I can't say how big these spoilers were. Obviously it's not "Luke, I am your father." level spoiler given how many people are defending Kotaku, but maybe it's Leia kissing Luke level spoiler, or maybe it's just Chewie laughing at something level spoiler that we're trying to say is actually telling people that Han's upset that Leia kissed Luke (when there wasn't enough context in the spoiler to make that a genuine inference).

In any case, it's a selfish dick move on the part of Kotaku, and it might end up being a hypersensitive dick move on the part of the companies too. Two wrong's don't make a right, and it's going to take a bit more time to see if the companies are in the wrong for what they've done.

(oh, and the discussion on ethics in games journalism around this issue? All around the GamerGate tag, though to be fair, many posts aren't tagging it. You have to go through the conversations to see the discussions. And while it would be fair to say that a sizable portion of the discussion so far is merely "#Schadenfreude, Kotaku", there's a fair bit of actual back-and-forth between neutrals and GG supporters about whether the companies are in the right here or not.)

 

[Tono Makt]

Meanwhile, in the next room over, the 18-month battle continues to rage...

No, someone called in a bomb threat and the discussion moved to a new place entirely. That's why it's empty in there.

 

[meiam]

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations."


- George Orwell

I will just leave you with the question. Do you actually want gaming journalism? Or public relations hype train?

Even if it's an outlet that I don't particularly care for, I think this kind of chicanery on the part of the developers ultimately hurts the consumer more.

But the companies wanted that information to be printed, just not at the time Kotaku decided to do it, so isn't it still just public relationship? Except it's crappy journalism and crappy public relationship at the same time. If the game had been canceled and kotaku was leaking it after, that would be perfectly justified. But this is like if someone is all excited about coming with a big news about themselves, so they prepare a big event to tell everyone about it and just before it someone else show up and tell everyone.

 

[LobsterFeng]

I'm on to you Grey. You just know how to expertly craft your comic description so that people will bombard your comment section with their opinions.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Kotaku is part of the "Gawker-verse", right?

I struggle to consider anything that comes from Gawker or its affiliates "journalism", gaming or otherwise. Most of their articles are just rehashing other people's articles, and they make snarky and smug comments about it, and then the commenters make more snarky and smug comments and post GIFs about how awesome they think they all are.

The comments on the Kotaku article are hysterical too. People are trying to compare this to a company getting angry because you exposed that they had illegal hiring practices or were dumping toxic waste in the river.

 

[Davroth]

http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

Yeah... as much as people seem to be eager to declare Kotaku some kind of bastion of investigative journalism, I think if they are to be held to journalist standards, they clearly neglected to minimize harm. Like seriously, they published that stuff to satisfy their readers curiosity. There was no noble goal here, it was just for clicks.

But then again I don't consider Kotaku to be a journalistic outlet, and them getting blacklisted from big name publishers fazes me about as much as when a random youtuber doesn't receive a review copy for the new CoD or something like that. They don the mantle of the journalist only when it's convenient for them. I have no respect for that.

Oh, yeah, publishing stuff that's in the public interest. How terrible.

If you didn't realise what one of the primary purpose of the press is, it's to report on news that their readers will find interesting, informative and entertaining.

What the heck are you even talking about when it comes to "minimizing harm". Exactly what harm was done to anybody? I don't care much for Kotaku either, but I like the idea that people will accept developers only permitting access to simpering PR regurgitators or paid-for Youtubers that act as outsourced PR firms even less.

They reported on leaked documents on projects that were clearly not ready to be shown to the public yet. To claim it's in the public interest to know of them is ludicrous. There's tons of very good reasons why those leaks shouldn't be dragged out into the public before they are ready to be shown. Projects get scrapped and remodelled all the time, and the leak might as well not be accurate anymore by the time the product gets actually announced. That happens all the damn time.

What they did wasn't some great feat of investigative journalism. Someone tipped them off and they just published it. And nothing they reported on in that regard really warranted it. You might as well just make stuff up and it would have the same value. Since whatever you get leaked prior to the an official announcement might as well have /nothing/ to do with anything. Again, if you believe Kotaku ran these articles for anything but clicks, you are deluding yourself, and probably haven't read the articles in question, I'd guess.

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations."

- George Orwell

Yeah, well, there is literally always someone who doesn't want something to be printed, so by that logic, everything is journalism. It sounds nice, but isn't really useful as a categorisation of journalism.

 

[Erttheking]

You'd think something so mundane would be easy to agree on. But this is the internet, there's only a discussion if people are engaging in trench flame warfare. In other words.

http://i.imgur.com/YYLbZfZ.jpg

 

[IceForce]

What they did wasn't some great feat of investigative journalism. Someone tipped them off and they just published it.

You mean like this?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/features/14715-CIG-Employees-Talk-Star-Citizen-and-the-State-of-the-Company

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

>Panel 1

>actual news

Except that's a lie. Kotaku declared video games dead and has been publishing bullplop for years, even before GG. The blacklisting was 2 years ago.

>Panel 2

>ethics in videogame journalism

You mean how Kotaku's unethical bullplop likely caused them to be blacklisted? Sure, let's talk about. Oh, but you wanted us to DEFEND kotaku, right?

>Panel 3

>nobody

Except us. We've been talking about it since day 1. And no one care about kotaku, GG or neutral, because kotaku is a crap tabloid that has so many writers who have breached ethics standards.

Edit: In addition,

Cartoonists for The Escapist imply that GamerGate doesn't want to talk about the Kotaku blacklist issue.

I guess they didn't bother to check the hashtag, or KotakuInAction, or 8chan's /gamergatehq/, or anywhere else that allows GamerGate discussion. I couldn't get away from all the talk of this Kotaku controversy if I tried.

 

[StatusNil]

What they did wasn't some great feat of investigative journalism. Someone tipped them off and they just published it.

You mean like this?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/features/14715-CIG-Employees-Talk-Star-Citizen-and-the-State-of-the-Company

Nope, that's not just some unrevealed product hype, that's an article concerned with the public good. You know, examining the progress of a hugely hyped crowdfunding project that has started selling virtual spaceships that don't exist yet in virtuality for a game that doesn't exist yet for thousands of real dollars. That would be a major difference.

Meanwhile, those dastardly Internetters have got their grubby mitts on this piece of "Critical Miss" art and vandalized it! http://i.imgur.com/gMeoI4o.png

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

What they did wasn't some great feat of investigative journalism. Someone tipped them off and they just published it.

You mean like this?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/features/14715-CIG-Employees-Talk-Star-Citizen-and-the-State-of-the-Company

Nope, that's not just some unrevealed product hype, that's an article concerned with the public good. You know, examining the progress of a hugely hyped crowdfunding project that has started selling virtual spaceships that don't exist yet in virtuality for a game that doesn't exist yet for thousands of real dollars. That would be a major difference.

Meanwhile, those dastardly Internetters have got their grubby mitts on this piece of "Critical Miss" art and vandalized it! http://i.imgur.com/gMeoI4o.png

Ooh! Let me join in with an equally accurate one! http://imgur.com/S0yPJr9

 

[CFriis87]

Bethesda and Ubisoft are being infantile? I was under the distinct impression that this was about a bunch of videogame bloggers whining over no longer getting free shit like pre-release review copies and other swag.

 

[UberGott]

> thisisbait.jpg

There's a lot of good stuff in here, but there's one thing that sticks out, so forgive me, DD:

Do you actually want gaming journalism? Or public relations hype train?

I'd settle for one or the other. If they want to be a press puppet and still give us early footage and bullet points about upcoming projects, hey, that's good enough. Not what I'd like to see, but at least those who just want to know if Halo 5 has split-screen and how much the Star Wars Battlefront Season Pass cost are set.

If they want to be real journalists and pound pavement to get us info that isn't doled out like candy, that's even better! But it's the hypocrisy of Kotaku thinking they can publish leaks and still get early review copies for free that annoys me.

Kotaku - even if they themselves didn't break any laws - were extremely unprofessional in publishing leaked documents over a year before Bethedsa had even acknowledged that the game was in development. This isn't a case of the public interests needing to know about deplorable working conditions (see: Konami) or rumors of wildly inappropriate uses of crowd-funding (see: Star Citizen), both of which at least appear justified in discussing with the public - this was a simple juicy scoop that probably borked months of planned marketing, and took the wind out of the sails for some of the bigger surprises in a sequel fans had waited nearly a decade for. In short, it screwed with Betheda's plans. Whether they should be so protective in the first place is debatable, but having waited nearly 3 years for The Phantom Pain from trailer to game, I can say that Betheda's announcement a mere 6 months before the release date has a certain appeal to it.

Does the public deserve to know that Fallout 4 exists? I... guess so? It's not like the rumor mill hadn't been spinning for a while by then anyway. I agree that the secrecy this industry tends to wallow in is absurd, and pulling those curtains back would actually go a long way in being able to forgive things like DLC, day-one patches and missing featues with the realities behind them explained and laid bare... but that's a separate discussion entirely.

Does Kotaku deserve a copy of it? Why would they? Do all popular game blogs just get copies by default? Are they "entitled" - a word this particular industry so loves using - to free, early copies no matter how hard they ignore the wishes of the publisher? Unless I'm missing something this isn't an "ethics" issue - not on Bethedsa's end, at any rate.

Sure, if Kotaku lost their early access over, say, honest negative reviews or giving a competitor's produce a high rating, I'd think that was an issue - just look at Sterling and Getzmann, those were ethical lapses and in both cases Square Enix should be ashamed. But this? This was Kotaku willfully ignoring the wishes of the companies they work with, and assuming it would have no consequences. I have less than zero sympathy for them, and the fact that anyone else does is... well, it's baffling, at best.

Cory and Gray can roll their eyes at those three magical letters all they like, but let's not pretend that Kotaku stoking the fires of frivolous, trendy controversy over Assassins Creed Unity not having a playable female lead and the supposedly racist cover for Far Cry 4 might not have been a factor, if only a small one. How many times can you cry racist misogynist entitled pissbabies wolf before someone realizes the outlet you're giving free games and press passes to are doing you more harm than good, I wonder?

Notch calling Kotaku "the Fox News of gaming" was fun and all, but by far the best thing to come out of this was the creative head of Loot Crate calling Kotaku unprofessional and pointing out that their whole martyr narrative is a joke. When friggin' Loot Crate is calling you on your sh!t, it's clearly time to pack it up.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Bethesda and Ubisoft are totally justified to blacklist Kotaku for publishing leaked documents. It doesn't matter if they were legally obtained and they didn't sign an NDA. They should have respected the developer/publisher in not publishing documents they clearly didn't want published. If these documents exposed evil business practices or terrible work conditions then it would be a different story. But in both cases it was information about an upcoming title before it was ready for reveal. Heck, with Fallout 4 it was a script who's content was used in the final game.

Kotaku showed they have no respect for the developer/publisher, and published the leaked documents for a quick buck. Why should Bethesda or Ubisoft respect them?

This is hilarious. If you believe this then please tell me you don't think video game writing is journalism. I don't really think it is but if I did then they were obligated to report newsworthy things like the leaks for their audience. So if you think they really shouldn't have reported the leaks then I take it you don't believe there is such a thing as video game journalism.

EDIT: Having read some of this thread the Kotaku salt is real. I have a feeling if this happened to some other outlets more favored by those who supported gamergate the tone of these comments would be different.

 

[SecondPrize]

Kotaku lost their relationship with Bethesda because they published privileged information. You get to do that once, then you pay the price. That's how it works. It's not even just journalism and attaching someone's name to what they've told you off the record or printing something you know only gets revealed officially, it's everywhere. You don't see Edward Snowden complaining that the NSA doesn't run information by him anymore, because he knew the cost, that's why he took off. You get to do it once, then you pay for it.

Edit- Reading through this thread, many of you people don't seem to understand the basics of what's happening here. There is no blacklisting. I know Schreier and Carter and Rydell used the term, but that doesn't mean you should blindly parrot it. Blacklisting suggests a collusion of many or important people in an industry to freeze an individual or organisation out. When the Game Journo Pro list, featuring Nathan Greyson, Jason Schreier and Patrick Klepek, discussed not hiring Allistair Pinsof, that was blacklisting. This is Kotaku damaging their working relationships with Bethesda and Ubisoft to the point where they no longer exist. When you find communication wherein Bethesda and Ubisoft discuss with themselves and other publishers how they shouldn't give any access to Kotaku, then you have blacklisting. Right now you have people crying about being victims of their own decision making.

 

[CFriis87]

And in this case they're paying for it by no longer getting free handouts. Boo-friggin'-hoo.
I'll be writing reviews for games on BasedGamer, if I want to review a specific game I have to wait for it to release and go buy it myself. Why should Kotaku be entitled to getting free early copies over anyone else? Cause they're talented writers who are passionate about gaming?! HAH!