I know … we're not supposed to be anything but sympathetic and supportive when journalists get laid off. I remember a time when you could get suspended from Twitter for telling journalists to "learn to code."
I'm sort of a video gamer. I bought myself a PlayStation 5 for Christmas in 2023, and Sony tracks your usage and sends you a report at the end of the year telling you things like which games you played and how much time you spent playing them. For 2024, I learned that I spent a whopping 40 hours on my PlayStation. Nintendo does the same thing with the Switch, which I played for less than an hour in 2024.
I'm still interested in video games — mostly JRPG, or Japanese Role-Playing Games — and years ago, I read the gaming site Kotaku every day. It was a regular stop in my browsing. But Kotaku was owned by G/O Media, the same clowns who own Gizmodo, Jezebel (hah!), Ted Cruz's sports site Deadspin, Lifehacker, The Onion, and The A.V. Club. So you won't be surprised to learn that Kotaku went the way of Jezebel, posting liberal political posts that had nothing to do with video games. It became unreadable, and I stopped visiting and never went back.
So it caught my eye that Kotaku just got sold off.
Kotaku just got sold off in a fire sale.
— Grummz (@Grummz) July 2, 2025
G/O media is shutting down.
This is a great day for gaming. The chuds have won. pic.twitter.com/GyolY9rf4a
According to Google, this leaves G/O Media with one website — The Root — which it's still trying to find a buyer for.
Yes, the Gawker empire is dead.
So will it be readable again?
— Tom Whitworth (@page_speed_king) July 2, 2025
Finally. Game journalism in itself is awful, yet somehow Kotaku managed to be the worst of it.
— Ryan Dandin (@jrdandin) July 2, 2025
Cash deal says this is a loss strategy for tax purposes - someone needed to tie liquid capital in something that would lose money.
— WastedGenius (@awastedgenius) July 2, 2025
Keeping the editorial staff on proves this.
They’ll run it into the ground for as long as they need the loss then either sell or shutter it.
I don't remember which article it was that made me swear off Kotaku forever, but I did a Google search, and there have actually been a lot of discussions on Reddit about just this topic. One example: "Why Were There No Women Presenters at the PlayStation 4 Event?"
There have been worse offenders, though: back in 2022, the Washington Post published an article in which two reporters "reached out to over 20 major video game companies about whether they intend to speak up in favor of reproductive rights or provide monetary aid to employees."
Or remember that boycott of "Hogwarts Legacy" over J.K. Rowling's being a TERF? The game made over a billion dollars. The gaming site I now read, IGN, gave it a 9 out of 10, but added, “whether it’s ethical to play is a separate still very important question.” WIRED gave the same gave a 1 out of 10, saying it lacked the magic of queerness.
IGN is the least woke gaming site I know of, but they're still quick to turn off comments when they publish something they know isn't going to fly with the average gamer. I skipped all of their Pride Month articles.
Gaming is a lot like Hollywood — it's nearly impossible to escape the woke agenda. This is supposed to be escapist entertainment. But Kotaku just couldn't help themselves.
Does anyone want to buy The Root and put the company out of its misery?
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