Is Kotaku in danger of shutting down?

xzeldax3

Member
Damn, this is some crazy news. Gawker has done some skeevy stuff and probably deserve this, but it sucks that it will be taking down so many other good people.

I used to read Kotaku all the time before I switched to GAF and yeah it had some click-baity stuff, but I always liked the site. Especially the Japanese news and cultural articles.
 

hotpocket

Neo Member
Give it time.

Thinking more on this unless we get another Zoe Quinn scandal probably not. A big portion of the hatred spun out of Klepek strongly siding with Zoe Quinn and anti-gamer gators.

Also When Patrick was apart of Giant Bomb they were all on one podcast. So if you don't like Austin don't listen to the Beastcast.
 
Serious question, but will someone buy up another company that just lost a $115M lawsuit? I just watched The Big Short so my understanding of smart economics is all fucked up right now.
No one is going to buy the Gawker mothership, no. But individual sites under their umbrella? If they have the money and a network that suits the site, sure. Kotaku or Giz or Lifehacker, etc. wouldn't be directly tarnished.

But I'm not positive anyone will be interested. If someone does buy Kotaku or other pieces of the pie, it will be networks lacking an analog. So Kotaku's best chance to be picked up in one piece would be from a non-gaming entity. And that's assuming the staff is even willing to go over to whoever bites.
 

bender

What time is it?
GB fans hate anyone that comes off "booky" to them. Austin's gotten the same amount of shit and worse, in threads on here even.

I think it's just anyone new to the crew. Everyone assumed Alex would join GB prior to him going to Harmonix and there was vocal disappointment Brad was the newest addition.
 

xzeldax3

Member
I will just add that I love Patrick, I miss him at giant bomb and I've always found the hate towards him baffling.
I completely agree. I've been watching the old giant bomb PAX panels and there are so many YouTube comments expressing hate for him and I didn't understand it at all.
 
I don't really like Patrick that much but I can't help but smile whenever he shows up at GiantBomb. He's a great and funny dude. The feud he had with Ryckert over Mario Maker was THE BEST.
 

SexyFish

Banned
Fuck. Seriously? This makes me so sad to read. GB are blessed to have Walker, he's such a talented writer and intellectual.

Is it a majority of GB fans or a sizable group that doesn't like him? :(

It's small. Probably the same amount of people think Austin's too "booky" as Dan is too "dumb". Every member of Giant Bomb adds something to the team.

Except Rorie
Kidding
 

Steejee

Member
Serious question, but will someone buy up another company that just lost a $115M lawsuit? I just watched The Big Short so my understanding of smart economics is all fucked up right now.

No one is going to buy Gawker outright with that liability - you buy Gawker you're buying that debt as well. However Gawker's assets will go on the block one way or another - either because they're put there against their will to settle the judgement (sell bits and pieces to other companies, payments go right to pay off the judgement), or Gawker could sell assets on their own to try to raise enough to appeal.

I don't think Gawker has anywhere close to enough in sellable assets (or sufficient time) to do the latter, so I'm somewhat expecting the whole thing to just fold - someone could buy the Kotaku brand and keep it going if for no other reason than they could probably get it for pretty cheap.

I have no ill will towards Kotaku, and think the judgement was pretty high, but Gawker deserved to lose that suit for some not insignificant sum.
 

UberTag

Member
Well, if Kotaku goes down thanks to Hogan I'll have another reason to resent everything he represents. This will just get added to the pile.
I consider them to be an invaluable resource for video game enthusiasts... and there are precious few of those remaining these days.
 

sensui-tomo

Member
What Gawker did was wrong but Hogan is a racist so I hope he loses. Fuck em.

Hogan won.. Gawker is still worse than hogan by leagues of issues.

Well, if Kotaku goes down thanks to Hogan I'll have another reason to resent everything he represents. This will just get added to the pile.
No if it goes down its due to gawker being a PoS company. Like not taking down a sex video a woman wanted off and being told it's nothing keep your head up high or something to that matter.
 
Well, if Kotaku goes down thanks to Hogan I'll have another reason to resent everything he represents. This will just get added to the pile.
I consider them to be an invaluable resource for video game enthusiasts... and there are precious few of those remaining these days.
Blame gawker, they are solely responsible for this whole clusterfuck.
 

Sou Da

Member
Fuck. Seriously? This makes me so sad to read. GB are blessed to have Walker, he's such a talented writer and intellectual.

Is it a majority of GB fans or a sizable group that doesn't like him? :(

Vocal minority? With the way people talk in video game discussions it's hard to separate hate, genuine distaste, and trolling.

EDIT: General rule of thumb is that anime avatars are black hearted weaboos.
 

Briarios

Member
They should have settled. Someone should have explained to them the relationship between the 1st Amendment and prurient interest. A first year journalism student would have known better.
 

Protann

Member
Yup. Maybe there's better moderation now, or I just haven't stumbled across it, but I've barely seen any Austin 'hate'.

Never venture into the YouTube comments on a GB video. It's wild that some of those people actually watch the site.
 

Raylan

Banned
Well, if Kotaku goes down thanks to Hogan I'll have another reason to resent everything he represents. This will just get added to the pile.
I consider them to be an invaluable resource for video game enthusiasts... and there are precious few of those remaining these days.
Yeah, hate Hogan because Gawker thinks "privacy" means nothing. Makes totally sense.....
 

Orca

Member
That is some shitty journalism if it's the case. Declining to comment and then being quoted as saying something is false information.

Not really, as neither party said their communication was off the record and I don't believe she said she would decline comment - it was more something like "I don't even have time" or something. Even if she said she declined comment, she can be quoted as saying she declines comment....unless she declines comment off the record, in which case it would be more like '...declined to comment further on the matter'

If you're talking to a reporter, when they've identified themselves as such from the first contact, you don't get to claim you were off the record without saying so explicitly.
 

oti

Banned
Well, if Kotaku goes down thanks to Hogan I'll have another reason to resent everything he represents. This will just get added to the pile.
I consider them to be an invaluable resource for video game enthusiasts... and there are precious few of those remaining these days.

Yeah, fuck civil rights am I right?

Dude, come on. Sucks about Kotaku but Gawker is the only one to blame here.
 

ferenz

Banned
Meh. I just finished posting hyperbolic nonsense in another thread about how happy I would be to see gawker disappear without really thinking about the repercussions on not only subsidiary media I enjoy (such as kotaku) but also personal lives of gawker umbrella employees who may also share my disgust of the flagship product. I work for a fortune 500 company who I'm confident doesn't give a shit about me or my personal dependency on their existence, so I shouldn't be so flippant to celebrate the potential destruction of an entity that employs lots and lots of people. My only attempt at consolation would be to point out that a similar thing happened to massively.com last year when its parent company decided to stop funding game journalism and they resurrected almost immediately as massivelyop.com. I'd imagine Kotaku has a way, way bigger userbase than massively so I can't imagine this being a product that anybody would be willing to throw away. I think they'll probably be fine.
 
pat and/or jason should go to Ars. they dont really do gaming scoops but there's no reason they couldn't. the occasional "Infinity Ward is falling apart" or "Sony making PS4.5" would get them some good traffic.
 

Nibel

Member
Well, first off it doesn't look like Gawker expected to win against that jury

Gawker may have lost the trial, but it is not clear that the trial matters all that much. Gawker plans to immediately appeal the verdict, and Dietrick is confident that the appeals court will rule in favor of the company.

“We’ve already taken this case up on the merits once to the appeals court on the preliminary injunction motion and we got a decision in our favor saying this is protected by the First Amendment, it’s a matter of public concern and we wrote properly about this topic,” Dietrick told POLITICO Media in October. “That’s the merits of the case. Those are the same issues that we would be taking up at the very end.”

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/artic...ds-hulk-hogan-115-million-gawker-looks-appeal

There's much more at the link and you should definitely read it if you care about the case and its possible consequences.

Personally though I think Kotaku is way too large to just disappear like that. They have a broad audience and break a lot of major gaming news, and tbh all that non-gaming stuff has been part of Kotaku since its early days. They are easily in the top 5 of gaming websites in terms of size.

I dislike Gawker and a lot of its sub-sites, but I fucks with Kotaku and man some of the supposed criticsm I'm reading here is downright embarassing.
 
What's with all the anime avatars and gifs telling him to kill himself?

I'm guessing they are fans of anime that didn't like Klepek because he doesn't like anime? But the amount of harassment he gets is rather unwarranted. I mean his work and opinions can't please every one. But hey, it's the internet.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Fuck. Seriously? This makes me so sad to read. GB are blessed to have Walker, he's such a talented writer and intellectual.

Is it a majority of GB fans or a sizable group that doesn't like him? :(

People really had a strong distaste for Klepek when he first got hired. He was kind of awkward and abrasive for a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eymeFiw7RQ

I haven't seen nearly as much vitriol for Austin. Even /v/ likes him lol.
 

Calvero

Banned
Well, first off it doesn't look like Gawker expected to win against that jury



http://www.capitalnewyork.com/artic...ds-hulk-hogan-115-million-gawker-looks-appeal

There's much more at the link and you should definitely read it if you care about the case and its possible consequences.

Personally though I think Kotaku is way too large to just disappear like that. They have a broad audience and break a lot of major gaming news, and tbh all that non-gaming stuff has been part of Kotaku since its early days. They are easily in the top 5 of gaming websites in terms of size.

I dislike Gawker and a lot of its sub-sites, but I fucks with Kotaku and man some of the supposed criticsm I'm reading here is downright embarassing.

it’s a matter of public concern and we wrote properly about this topic

Public concern? What's their logic behind that?
 
Sucks that people are going to lose jobs because of this, that's never a nice thing, but I can't say I'll be particularly sad to see Gawker go. Even their "good" sites like Kotaku are full of clickbait and articles that amount to little more than tumblr posts, and the "good" writers are just as guilty of contributing to that.
 

dave is ok

aztek is ok
GAF is weird.

You'd think people here would be celebrating the death of a website that published a video of a college girls probable rape.

But they own a video game site and Hulk Hogan said something racist. So everyone is worried about people employed by that same company's livelihood instead? Ok
 

SexyFish

Banned
GAF is weird.

You'd think people here would be celebrating the death of a website that published a video of a college girls probable rape.

But they own a video game site and Hulk Hogan said something racist. So everyone is worried about people employed by that same company's livelihood instead? Ok

So we can't be upset that plenty of people that have nothing to do with the incidents stated are losing their jobs because of some other people being fuck ups?

Gawker is a shithole, but plenty of great people worked for the network sites.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Peoples jobs are going to be lost and thats a shame, but I'm happy to see the age of "we're a blog, we can do whatever!" arrogance all come tumbling down, tumbling down.

That attitude seeped into all the Gawker sites and this a great modern parable for humility and keeping your shit in check.
 
I feel bad for everyone affected by this, but I hadn't visited Kotaku in a while so I thought I'd check it out and.. man...

Agent 47 Could Learn A Thing Or Two From These Animal Assassins

That Time Marvel Comics Had An Awful Sex Demon

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Should I Leave My Fiancée For My Crush?
 

Nanashrew

Banned
GAF is weird.

You'd think people here would be celebrating the death of a website that published a video of a college girls probable rape.

But they own a video game site and Hulk Hogan said something racist. So everyone is worried about people employed by that same company's livelihood instead? Ok

I mean, you don't necessarily have to celebrate a scorched earth. Some like Jalopnik, some like Lifehacks, some like IO9, some like Kotaku. There are plenty who had nothing at all to do with what Gawker did here.
 

Skytylz

Banned
Fuck. Seriously? This makes me so sad to read. GB are blessed to have Walker, he's such a talented writer and intellectual.

Is it a majority of GB fans or a sizable group that doesn't like him? :(

I haven't seen any hate for Austin. I don't browse the giant bomb forums as much as I use to but I still check in a couple times a week.
 

RPGam3r

Member
I don't want Kotaku to shut down, but I would like to see Patrick back under GB's wing. Even over the distance he made a big impact on their content. Also it's 2016, time to get over remote vs local.
 
This is a pretty rough situation.

I hope that Kotaku can somehow find a way to survive under new ownership, or that some of the core staff can launch a new site.
 

cordy

Banned
Is so insane that hulk hogan bought down an entire media company

Look forward to hearing Hogan say this in his WWE promos when he's back on good terms with the company.

"You know what brother, while you dudes were out here ruining your this beautiful business we know as wrestling, I was out there taking down media empires and winning millions!"

P2WJPmg.jpg
 
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