The Perpetuity of Anti-Kotaku Sentiment

At this point, it’d be folly to assume it has any rhyme or reason.

Screenshot of the tweet that spurred this most-recent controversy.

Seven years out from the first violent outings of Gamergate and it seems as though we’re nowhere closer to solving the puzzle of what the movement actually seeks, if only for their inconsistent demands as evidenced by the latest round of criticism levied against Kotaku for embracing candor in their journalistic output, something they’ve long been reproached for steering clear of. What precipitated this is a streak of explosive headlines — no doubt inspired by Patricia Hernandez’s new editorial direction for the site — with the latest being ‘2K very quietly launches new XCOM game that looks like shit’, an entry that seemed to upset those who would’ve not wavered from adopting such a tone on their personal accounts, now decrying the outlet’s lack of professionalism in merely stating what is a hard-to-dispute fact.

To briefly touch upon the contents of the piece, it lays out what is pretty self-explanatory–a publisher covertly launching a game on mobile from a coveted franchise probably does so explicitly with the goal of avoiding negative press, so Kotaku are essentially doing the public a service by warning them ahead of time that the game is unlikely to satisfy their expectations if they’re a fan of the genre or simply vying for more XCOM.