For a number of centrist and conservative-leaning gamers, the mere existence of the far-left games site Kotaku has always been a peculiar issue.
Despite nominally being a pop culture/video game site, Kotaku has always given off the air that it actually hates gamers and video games. At the very least, the site certainly looks down on them.
That vibe stems from the way the site has had no real qualms about sneering down at any gamer/pop culture consumer who doesn’t fall strictly in line with the site’s far-left leanings.
As someone who once enjoyed going to Kotaku for irreverent video game news, this writer can personally attest to this strange direction the site has been headed in for quite some time.
For example, even when the site is lauding something — like the “Halo” television series in this example — it’s done with an accusatory and haughty tone.
“Halo Season Two Sticks the Landing — I Told You So” states the aggressive headline, which seems to denote how dumb Kotaku thinks its readers are. And that’s just one example amid a sea of them.
Naturally, that arrogant attitude that Kotaku clearly harbors spilled over into the ongoing controversy surrounding Sweet Baby Inc., the far-left “consulting agency” that points out to video game companies how racist they are.
Kotaku penned a breathless defense of SBI in a March 6 article, and it was the sort of flaccid whataboutism you’d expect from the left when they’re called out.
(“This isn’t what SBI is doing, you idiots. THIS is what they’re actually doing” is a succinct summary of that article.)
Have you ever read anything from Kotaku before?
When gamers dared to put together a curated list of SBI-associated games to avoid, Kotaku predictably bashed them all as bigoted Neanderthals in that early March article.
That article understandably went viral — but for all the wrong reasons, at least based on Kotaku’s parent company’s response to the debacle.
According to Aftermath — ironically enough, a new type of Kotaku run by many of Kotaku’s former employees — Kotaku’s parent company, G/O Media, made a recent decision to ditch editorialized and left-leaning drivel in favor of video game guides.
Jen Glennon, Kotaku’s now-former editor-in-chief, quit in a huff about this new direction, and Aftermath acquired her resignation letter, which was addressed to top G/O Media executives Jim Spanfeller and Lea Goldman.
“After careful consideration, I have concluded that the current management structure and decision-making processes at G/O Media are not aligned with my values and goals for Kotaku,” Glennon wrote.
She added: “I firmly believe that the decision to ‘invert’ Kotaku’s editorial strategy to deprioritize news in favor of guides is fundamentally misguided given the current infrastructure of the site. [This decision is] directly contradicted by months of traffic data, and shows an astonishing disregard for the livelihoods of the remaining writers and editors who work here.”
Glennon also took to X to announce her resignation, but this time she resorted to childish name-calling.
Some personal news! I’ve resigned from Kotaku and Jim Spanfeller is an herb
— Jen Glennon (@hellojenglen) March 21, 2024
“Some personal news!” Glennon posted to X. “I’ve resigned from Kotaku and Jim Spanfeller is an herb.”
(For the unaware, “herb” appears to be a general insult denoting someone who should be mocked, and a term that has been directly tied to Spanfeller by Kotaku sympathizers.)
Look, this writer actually does agree with Glennon in one regard: Churning out video game guides in 2024 seems like an objectively terrible idea.
If print media is, indeed, already six feet under, then video game strategy guides are another six (or 12) feet below that.
By that same token, however, even a shambling husk of a print industry is a far better option than engaging in the lowest-common-denominator leftist shilling.
Bye, Kotaku. You won’t be missed.
