Kotaku

• 1. Introduction

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  Kotaku launched in October 2004 as a small corner of the Gawker Media network, aimed at young men and named after a Japanese portmanteau of the word otaku, meaning obsessive fan, and the prefix ko-, meaning small in size. Within its first month it was already struggling. Its debut lead writer, Matthew Gallant, had not found the audience, and a rescue mission was needed. That mission fell to Brian Crecente. What followed over the next two decades was a story of buyouts, defections, blacklistings, harassment campaigns, and the slow erosion of an archive built by dozens of writers across multiple continents. How did a failing niche blog become one of the most recognizable names in games journalism? And what happens when the publication that covers an industry becomes the story itself?

• 2. Crecente's Rescue

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  Brian Crecente arrived at Kotaku roughly a month after its October 2004 launch, brought in specifically to save a site that was not working. He succeeded well enough that by 2006, gaming trade press outlet Edge had named him one of the top 50 journalists in games coverage. Three years after that, GamePro named him one of the 20 most influential people in the video game industry over the prior two decades. The site itself also climbed in reputation during his tenure. It landed on CNET's Blog 100 list and was ranked 50th on PC Magazine's Top 100 Classic Web Sites. Crecente built Kotaku into something large enough to attract serious interest: in 2009, Business Insider reported that Hearst Corporation had sought to buy it from Gawker Media. That acquisition never materialized, but the overture signaled that Kotaku had grown beyond its scrappy origins. Crecente held the editor in chief position until 2012, when his deputy, Stephen Totilo, who had joined the site in 2009, took over the role.

• 3. Going Global

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  Kotaku's expansion beyond the United States came in waves. Country-specific editions for Australia, Japan, Brazil, and the UK all launched over the course of the site's history. The UK edition came in April 2014 through a partnership between Gawker Media and Future plc. The Australian edition arrived through a deal with Allure Media the same month. Kotaku Australia later changed hands in December 2018, when Pedestrian Group, owned by the Australian media company Nine Entertainment, took over the property. For roughly sixteen years, Kotaku Australia published original work from dozens of Australian writers. When it eventually began to wind down in October 2024, redirecting to the main Kotaku site and making its archive inaccessible, the damage was wider than it first appeared. As the outlet Aftermath reported, thousands of articles from Kotaku's American run had survived only because they had been reposted on the Australian site, and those were lost as well. By March 2025, the Australian domain had been redirected to a site described by Aftermath as an AI-driven content farm called The Kotaku Times, registered to an Australian SEO specialist.

• 4. The G/O Media Exodus

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  Univision Communications purchased Kotaku in August 2016 as part of its acquisition of Gawker Media, placing the site under a new umbrella called Gizmodo Media Group. That group was then sold to the private equity firm Great Hill Partners in April 2019 and renamed G/O Media. The change in ownership set off a sustained wave of departures. Cecilia D'Anastasio left in December 2019 for Wired. Joshua Rivera and Gita Jackson followed in January 2020, both publicly stating the new management was impossible to work with. Jason Schreier, a writer at Kotaku since 2012 known for his investigative coverage of studio working conditions and game development histories, announced his departure on the 16th of April 2020. He cited disruptions that filtered in from a crisis at sister site Deadspin around October 2019, and he subsequently joined Bloomberg News. Senior writer Harper Jay MacIntyre left in May 2020 under similar circumstances, taking a position at game developer Double Fine Productions. Stephen Totilo announced his own departure as editor in chief on the 5th of February 2021. Riley MacLeod held the interim role before Patricia Hernandez started as editor in chief on the 2nd of June 2021. Hernandez was herself reportedly fired in August 2023 following a personal disagreement, and Jen Glennon was appointed as editor in October 2023. Glennon resigned in March 2024, publicly opposing G/O Media's stated intention to move Kotaku away from news coverage toward game guides. November 2023 also brought layoffs of 23 people across Kotaku and other G/O Media properties.

• 5. Blacklistings and Disputes

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  Sony temporarily blacklisted Kotaku in 2007 after the site published a story about rumored upcoming PlayStation 3 features that the company had not announced. That same year, attorney Jack Thompson sued Gawker Media and editor Brian Crecente over Kotaku's refusal to remove threatening user comments; the lawsuit was dismissed the following day. In 2010, Kotaku criticized Japanese magazine Famitsu for its endorsement of Konami's Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, calling it a conflict of interest. Konami responded by revoking Kotaku's invitation to the game's launch party. By 2015, Kotaku was claiming it had been blacklisted by both Bethesda Softworks and Ubisoft. That status had real-world consequences: in 2019, when Geoff Keighley invited Kotaku to serve as a jury member at The Game Awards, the site declined because of those blacklisting relationships. Nintendo added Kotaku to its own blacklist in 2023, reportedly in response to articles covering leaks of unreleased Nintendo games. Additional controversy followed shortly after, when then senior writer Luke Plunkett posted a picture of a fighter plane bearing victory markings featuring the Imperial Japanese flag.

• 6. Gamergate and Its Echoes

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  In 2014, a writer at Kotaku named Nathan Grayson became the unwilling focal point of the online harassment campaign known as Gamergate. He was falsely accused of writing a favorable review of the game Depression Quest in exchange for a relationship with its developer, Zoe Quinn. An internal review found that no such review existed. Grayson had written one article that mentioned Quinn in passing, and that article predated any relationship between them. The harassment campaign nonetheless metastasized. A Reddit community called KotakuInAction became a hub for Gamergate participants. Its own creator sought to shut it down in 2018, describing it as infested with racism and sexism, but a Reddit administrator reinstated it under the platform's existing guidelines. A decade later, in March 2024, a similar dynamic played out when online users accused the narrative development studio Sweet Baby Inc. of promoting a so-called woke agenda. Kotaku editor Alyssa Mercante published coverage of the backlash and became a target of harassment herself. Publications including The Week, Wired, and The Verge drew direct comparisons to Gamergate or described the episode as Gamergate 2.0.

• 7. The Emulation Controversy

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  On the 9th of October 2021, Kotaku published an article about Metroid Dread, a game released just one day before, noting its performance on Nintendo Switch emulators. The piece praised that performance, thanked pirates, emulators, modders, and hackers by name, and encouraged readers to emulate older or expensive games themselves. The response was sharp. Critics accused the site of promoting piracy of a brand-new title. Supporters argued the piece had opened a legitimate discussion about emulation's role in video game preservation. The following day, Kotaku revised the article to clarify it was addressing preservation specifically. After a subsequent complaint from Nintendo, the site removed all references to piracy from the article and issued an apology, stating that while it considered emulation a vital part of the world of gaming, it did not endorse using it to obtain games without paying for them. The episode arrived two years before Nintendo would blacklist the site entirely.

• 8. Sale to Keleops

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  In July 2025, G/O Media sold Kotaku to Keleops, a Swiss media company that already owned Gizmodo. Keleops CEO Jean-Guillaume Kleis stated that the company had agreed to retain Kotaku's entire staff as part of the deal, mirroring its approach during the Gizmodo acquisition. Kleis added that Keleops had no plans in the short run to make major changes to the site's output. Trade publication Adweek reported that Keleops intended to invest in Kotaku's editorial growth and maintain its existing team. Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick had sued G/O Media for defamation in March 2025, months before the sale closed, claiming that articles in both Kotaku and Gizmodo had repeated allegations of workplace misconduct at Activision without noting that state regulators had investigated and dismissed those claims. Kotick said he and his representatives had repeatedly asked for corrections. Whether that lawsuit and the arrival of a new European owner will reshape Kotaku's approach to accountability journalism in the games industry is a question the site's writers are now positioned to answer.