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Fifty game guides a month. Holy fucking shit. You're not in the news business anymore boyos, your job is strictly and literally to play video games and write descriptions of them. Could an editorial department even be more humiliated? It's clear their owner regards them as worthless.
Jesus this is like in Ghost when the badguy died at the end and those shadow things dragged him off to Hell or whatever. It's not "We regret having to shut down this delightful publication, but you know, blah blah economy!" or some face saving death like that. This is pure ignominious "Your editorial voice isn't worth the pixels, just write game guides, peons!"
This is so hilarious I almost feel guilty. It's too perfect. It's like a Requiem For A Dream tier bad ending for the publication as it previously existed. It's the video game journalism equivalent of an old man throwing dollars at them while screaming "Ass to ass!"
Looking at their YouTube pages, and it seems like while IGN gets the most views out of every "mainstream" gaming outlet, outside of gaming events it still struggles to get at least 50k views per video. Also, do people actually use these websites anymore?
IGN owns Humble Bundle, which sells and publishes games, so they can probably afford to keep going for a while.
I think IGN still survives because their guides are decent and have a pretty solid ease of navigation. Kotaku isn't long for this world, once their parent company inevitably loses their defamation lawsuit because Deadspin writers are every bit the racist dumb fucks Kotaku's writers are.
Fellow Kotaku readers,
It is with a heavy heart that I share with you all the decision in the subject, hoping it will help me getting closure.
Today I say goodbye to the ghost of what once was a great news/blog site.
Too many are the articles and writers I'll fondly remember.
I will always have a soft spot for the great investigative journalism pieces such as Cecilia d'Anastasio's Long-Lost 'American Sailor Moon', or the hilarious story of Mike Fahey's game stuck on a ceiling (together with his very personal tale of game addiction).
Jason Schreier is another writer who absolutely deserves to be mentioned (his Anthem's article is only one of many memorable pieces), together with Tim Rogers (I absolutely loved his FF7's slow translation).
Again, so many to be mentioned. But I'll stop here.
So, why today? Kotaku has been the target of many criticism over the past two years (and rightly so). What broke the camel's back for me?
Here's the thing: sometimes I'm so busy with work/life that I can't find the time to browse my favorite websites. And to avoid missing interesting articles, I just wait for a bit of peace and quiet, and go back in time to the last article I read, and work my way up. I might read a month's worth of posts over one single weekend. And this is exactly what happened over the last three days (I had a long weekend all for myself). I went back to the very beginning of 2023 and caught-up with Kotaku's article up to today. And now that I've done that, I don't want to open this website ever again.
Because of my latest fast-forward, I could get a very good look of what is the current status of the website. Half of the articles now start with a number or introduces a ranking ("8 best ways to get this", "10 most hated things in this game", "Best to worst titles in this series"). A barrage of click-baits. Videos everywhere. Posts that really, really have nothing to do with gaming or even distant-related topics. And I sincerely don't mean to be disrespectful, but the quality of the writing in general has gone downhill for quite a while.
I just can't anymore. I'm forcing myself to browse this website at this point. Why would I continue doing that? And so I stop today.
I wish the best of luck to all the Kotaku's staff (I truly do). I'm moving to greener pastures (and I welcome suggestions on where to find these).
With love and respect, from a former loyal reader.