Kotaku is Irrelevant: The Fall of Game Journalism

This is a follow-up editorial to my Sweet Baby Inc editorial. A lot has happened in the days since I dropped it, and there hasn’t been a lot of new Switch games that caught my interest so I’ll write a follow up. Essentially, the Sweet Baby meltdown over the steam group exposing it has blown up into something bigger. And the friends of Sweet Baby Inc, namely Kotaku Writer Alyssa Mercante, decided to fire back with a fluff piece where she reveals she “infiltrated” the SBI detected discord, where she wondered why people weren’t using their real names and pictures so she could dox them:

But here’s the thing, while her tweet about the Kotaku article blew up, the article itself is largely irrelevant. It hasn’t dampened the backlash against sweet baby. If anything, it inflamed it. This is in stark contrast to the “Gamers are over” article slew that appeared after Gamergate in 2014(like this one). That slew had a major cultural impact, shifting that narrative away from what the backlash was really about(corruption in games journalism) to being about harassment. But now, it will have no effect because proper games journalism websites are dying, the focus shifting to actual gamers discussing games on Youtube and Twitch.

Kotaku is Dying

In the beginning, gaming websites were run by nerds for nerds. Then these websites were taken over by woke game journalists. We saw the early murmuring of the shift with Gone Home, where woke journalists propped a woke game made for them(read that review for a more in-depth discussion). Then gamergate proper hit in 2014, which was kind of a loss for gamers as things became much worse in the industry, as the wokeness seeped into the games themselves. But here’s what’s different: Kotaku and it’s ilk don’t have the power they once did. They are dying.

There are recent massive layoffs of games journalists, as sites fold and are sold. They just aren’t profitable and never really were. They were propped up with venture capitalist money, and that money has dried up. And when these sites have to be profitable they can’t survive(Full disclosure: This site is not profitable either, but this is a hobby for me, not my actual job). Kotaku has largely shifted away from wokeness(for the most part), because they have to. Nobody goes on websites looking for reviews or gaming opinions much anymore. I only get traffic because I’m in a particular niche where a gaming review of obscure games stand out in a google search.

Kotaku will probably fold sooner or later. They get traffic by using clickbait, but even that’s probably wearing thin. I give them another year or two, and they’ll be kaput. They’re running on fumes.

Conclusion

I don’t know where the flare-up over Sweet Baby will end up, but one thing is for certain: that Sweet Baby’s friends like Kotaku won’t have much effect. However, the rot goes deep. People need to speak with their wallets, otherwise this flare-up will have no effect. Don’t buy woke games. Put the companies who use consultants like Sweet Baby out of business. That is the only way change will happen. As Kotaku and the games media are no longer relevant, that message can be sent loud and clear. You know what to do. Do it!