Kotaku Crushes Their Own Credibility

Eric Schild writes: According to NeoGAF, CheapyD over at CAG challenged his users to make some awesome fake sh*t up to get a big site to just run with a story. Well, it worked. Obviously, anyone who has followed Kotaku for some time wouldn't really be surprised that they'll run with anything, particularly considering their rate structure for writers and the quality of their work. Both of which are, well, bad. But that's not even the best part, rather their response - which shines like a dying star:

[Rick Astley]

When did Kotaku ever have any credibility to begin with? *confused*

[Mr_Bun]

That is a very good point!

[juuken]

Lol, agreed too.

[meepmoopmeep]

but... but.. but... they retract after a few days

[Drekken]

Be careful what you say here. Kotaku is pro-360 and this site will not tolerate any bashing! Bubbles will be taken.

[juuken]

Or disagree buttons slammed! =o

[donator]

I hate Kotaku.

[Drekken]

Juuken, I can deal with disagrees... I got bubble raped over the weekend! lol

I guess I was a little too cranky on Friday.

I bought a PS3 - I am happy with it. Quit trying to make us feel like we shouldnt have!!!!! I hate you people. :P

[dro]

Kotaku !!!!!

bubbles on the house for every one(cuz the topic made me laugh so much) i just LMAO when i saw the head line...!!!!

like rick said "When did Kotaku ever have any credibility to begin with"!!!!!

[Mr_Bun]

No matter how many times I try to give fellow PS3 owners a bubble, it never seems to work!

[rosebowl23]

completely agree. kotaku is one of the least credible sites out there.

[thebudgetgamer]

kotaku or bruceongames?

[Bloodwar]

Good stuff! =)

[meepmoopmeep]

i trust Kotaku with my life and find all information on their website to be accurate, trustworthy and legit.
this world would be crap if kotaku didn't exist.

:)

[VF34EJ25]

Bruceongames is worse than Kotaku simply because he acts like he KNOWS anything about video games. Kotaku is just annoying.

[BISHOP-BRASIL]

Nah, you can burn some oil before fanboys take you now a days. If it was like one year ago or a bit more, then you would be totally bubble drained to say anything against 360.

Actually, today, the fanboys of the other side (PS3) will give you a run for your bubbles if you go anti-PS3.

Not pointing fingers on no one, I know I'm also a fan of a console (not really a fanboy through), just stating some facts.

[bomboclaat_gamer]

drekken is a troll and should have all his bubbles taken away.

[UltimateIdiot911]

What ever happen to Leigh Alexander? She was the only pro-Sony writer. I guess they want to be 100% 360 fanboy.

[Gothdom]

You got the best agree / disagree ratio I ever saw...

I agree with your comment.

[somethingSQUISHY]

You all do realize what site you're posting on, right?

As one who doesn't put any stock in any rumors, well, pretty much ever, the fact that a rumor on Kotaku turned out to be a joke doesn't bother me at all.

I go to Kotaku daily. It's a good read.

Long live my bubbles!!

[dcbronco]

that a site that constantly approves articles seemingly written by 10 year fanboys would think Kotaku has a credibility problem.

[RememberThe357]

i was thinking the same thing. She just vanished. She probably didn't talk enough sh*t. She was actually a good writer too. Oh well.

[Kyur4ThePain]

Again?

[name]

Owned

[Andras84]

Maybe when they been running some 360 stories....they BS about PS3 all the time though.

[lnfinite]

It's Clear Kotaku's Biased Reporting and Fake News Items are Hurting their Credibility and Potential Userbase,much like GameSpot,Kotaku are Now Seen as a Biased News Outlet that Only Succeeds In Shooting Itself In the Foot from their Erroneous and Fabricated Journalism.

Thank you Dusty for Providing News4Gamers,whilst your Moderation Staff is indeed Comprised of Biased Gamers,you have Provided Gamers with an Unbiased Gaming News Outlet that Rivals the Top Gaming Websites in the Industry.

[Chandresh Patel]

Saying Kotaku is credible is equivalent to saying SonyDefenseForce is credible.

Edit@below:correct!

[Wildarmsjecht]

or xboxkings amirite?

[marcellizot]

What a load of self-congratulating sanctimonious crap. I don't know who's worse, Cheap Ass Gamer or Giant Realm.

Running into a crowded fire and shouting "THEATRE!" doesn't make you edgy, it doesn't make you clever, it just makes you a tw*t.

[Nike]

It would have been more professional to just let the facts speak for themselves, rather than damning every one. But we're gamers, and some times we have to give our own two cents (i.e. vent) given the amount of stupidity we come across a lot of the time.

[Wildarmsjecht]

Kotaku got Rick Roll'd without a single clip being played. Well done CAG!

[kitzuki]

too true

[Nike]

"Kotaku running a rumor based on credibility just reads: 'We don't need to check facts, someone else will do it for us.'"

But then, if Joystiq and Gizmondo did the exact same by relying on Kotaku to simply "be right", aren't they just as guilty? Seems like they're all playing hot potato when it comes to passing on responsibility (all blaming CAG).

[power of Green]

Kotaku is a tabloid type site and they go where the news is, they support the hype when change shows its face.

I keep hearing people say Kotaku supports one side over the other but that is simply not true. They'll flip as soon as things are not as fresh/new/exciting/no longer causes a stirrrr when folks don't care anymore.

I'm finding it hard to believe a group of haters controlling this site(N4G) that seem to be as bad as SDF; would be complaining about a tabloid site when this is the most biased mess I'v ever seen due to the control the PS3 fan have of N4G.

[The gaming GOD]

I like how people love to try to call out SDF when xboxkings is pretty much it's equivalent.

I love it even more when whiners complain day in and day out about the site being ran by "ps3 lovers". But those SAME people had no complains about the say two years ago (when the site was filled with "360 lovers")

:)

[solidjun5]

that "SDF" was managed by the game who did wii360.

[kevin1112]

I can see how you dont like this site anymore since supposedly sony fanboys have taken over it. I guess you enjoyed it more while the xbox fanboys were running rampant, since you are one.

[ThatCanadianGuy]

..What credibility?

[infekt]

True.

[kenjix]

There is no excuse for not getting all the facts and I'm glad CAG did this, Thank you CAG! nice work!

['_']

{kotaku have been failing hard http://www.alexa.com/data/d... }

[PirateThom]

Kotaku lost me years ago, but they did it again earlier this year when they showed old SOCOM screenshots and claimed they were new withouy any research.

[power of Green]

The current hate is due to Kotaku trying to get hits when MSFT was getting their ass kicked.

Kotaku has been paying attention to MSFT and the 360 for the hits they can garner.

First you had poor sales, then you had JRPG's releasing, so they covered the outcome. They cover the price drops as that is always a good hit earner hence why fanboys think Kotaku is biased with their fanboy goldfish memory.

Kotaku tries to guess the tempo/tone/popular opinion/consumer trend.

They have been right with their insider info alot lately, this is also why haters may chose to forget Kotaku attacks both MSFT and Sony(insider info about positive 360 news lately).

Can you blaim them?(Kotaku) for focusing on the 360 durring a time when it is more *exciting* good and bad. N4G has more PS3 fans in 360 threads than 360 fans, outnumbering them 4 to 1 in most cases.

"excitement - the state of being emotionally aroused and worked up"

[TheColbertinator]

Then if the websites are biased,why even mention them at all.I dont trust Kotaku,Sony Defense Force,Wii60 Homepage,and several other websites because it would be like looking for the facts on the National Enquirer.If you support these sites,that fine,but I dont expect anyone here to trust them at all because they ae looking for news.

I have all 3 systems and I like each one equally,but if someone is bashing Microsoft,Sony,or Nintendo I leave them alone because I have no stock for any of them or work for them.I will however defend the consoles and I support websites with facts not bias and crap rumors

[power of Green]

You guys use to use Kotaku's rumors as facts when they were attacking MSFT(reasons for RROD rumors, MSFT greedy posts etc)

[TheColbertinator]

What do you mean "you guys"? I'm not one of them.I just dont trust sites that favor one over the other.I used to back in 2004 but not anymore

[VF34EJ25]

"N4G has more PS3 fans in 360 threads than 360 fans, outnumbering them 4 to 1 in most cases."

Back in 2006, 360 fans outnumbered PS3 fans by 10 to 1.

The table's turned 360 degrees. Punn intended.

[marcellizot]

How many people on this thread are actually journalists?

Read Kotaku's original post, at no point did they ever claim the story as fact, Crecente referred to it as a rumour and also questioned whether it was true. So the question is, what has Kotaku (and those other sites) done wrong?

Answer: nothing and CAG and co's reaction to this farce would have been the same no matter how the story was carried. All they needed was for the story to be taken up by a blog in the first place so they could point and laugh. They knew they would have the full force of an army of feeble minded fan boys thoroughly behind them even if the sites they were targeting did report the piece as a rumour.

Sites report on rumours all the time, and often, those rumours turn out to be false. The only difference here is that the rumour was concocted by people whose only agenda was self aggrandisement, it's almost embarrassing to watch such public self-congratulation and I can't believe the support they are getting for it. Actually I can, and it's sad...

[GiantFoamFinger]

Well said.

[kenjix]

Not sure if you ever took any classes on internet and internet validity. Anyone can post something to the web and anyone can write a headline (Blogs). True journalism is finding the truth beneath all the lies. Kotaku should have been reporting that,

"There are rumors spreading about <fill in black> through much research, we've found that all the facts lead to this information being false"

That's what real journalists do, instead these guys don't know the difference between fact and opinion or spin. So it's one thing to trust a website because they are credible and it's another to follow them because they share the same values as you. Kotaku is not about credibilty, it's a fan site, not a professional journalism site. Kotaku is like the national enquirer.

There's nothing wrong with being a fun site but let's not try to pretend that their legit. Look at half of the posts on N4G they are user created and a full of spin, kotaku is no different.

[Relin]

Can't say for certain, but I can point toward at least one who is most certainly *not* a trained journalist.

Kenjix got it right: you will never see a newspaper reporting on scuttlebut and hearsay because unless they have evidence one way or the other, it's not worth reporting. Considering how easy to approach MS's PR people are, the least Kotaku could have done is reported on their statement.

There's nothing really wrong with what Kotaku did (or Joystiq for that matter), since none of them hold themselves to any degree of journalistic integrity; really, most people don't care and read anyway. Credibility is something most, if not all, game news sites lack, and until someone steps up and refuses to report on rumors without some real confirmation, we'll be nothing more than game "journalists."

[JohnnyMann420]

I'm confused here. I actualy like Kotaku... Also I only have a PC and PS3....never felt that they treated the XBOX 360 better. They run the RRoD stories and such....

lol am I going to get flamed for this?

Anyways... rumors are rumors and Kotaku has been right as well and wrong...BFD!

Kotaku for me was always just a good site to read rather than a site that claims integrity.

I go there for fun rather then a legit news site....don't you?

I see all of the bashing of Kotaku above me and wonder what is the point? It is a fun gaming site that dabbles in rumors etc...

...big whoop.

I used to go to Kotaku alot before I found out about N4G. It was a decent site with a roll up of generic gaming news. We don't bash N4G when some idiot lets a false article (sev I mean you) make it to N4G's front pages, do we?

No reason to bash it in my opinion.

[JD_Shadow]

...when these shady blogs (thanks ElementsUnknown) DO get exposed, they blame CAG for running the contest that was CLEARLY a contest, and the fanboys blame Giant Realm for running the story.

Is there ANY time in which these blogs or the people that support them actually ACCEPT responsibility for their faults?

[The Lazy One]

didn't the same story get posted here?

[CViper]

So, this is just hilarious because most of their non 360 articles are utter garbage.

[JustinSaneV2]

Care to list the articles which comprise this pro-360/anti-PS3 agenda?

[Cerbus]

http://www.gamesindustry.bi...

[Mc187]

lol

[KiddyBrownTurd]

I don't read Kotaku because of their name. It's too foreign for me.

[Pain]

and one would associate yours with... Ignorant / Homophobic/ Racist / Red neck /brain dead/ Yanky doodle dim witted Teen age American kid.....

[KiddyBrownTurd]

poor emo....

[Silogon]

Kotaku and their no talent writers are hacks. The whole site is nothing more than a me too event for stupid fanboys to go to and live inside a little trendy bubble of youtube links and inside jokes. It's stupid and the site needs to be banned from all other media outlets as a legit source.

[JustinSaneV2]

I hear the neo-nazi organization is looking for fresh volunteers.

[FantasyStar]

It's only natural.

[NanoGeekTech]

...........................

[stuntman_mike]

im not a big fan of kotaku, but most gaming websites run on rumor and this generation of consoles seems to have more rumors than ever before.

[Ludwig]

Lets ban all websites that run rumors :3 ALL OF THEM! ... oh wait..

[JustinSaneV2]

People like you are the only hope I have for this society of ignorant cretins.

[ickleben]

in the grand scheme of things.... who cares?

[Mc187]

I never thought of Kotaku as a "reliable" source

[Rageanitus]

how many times my friend who is a hardcore sony hater would bring up kotaku as a valid source....... even though some things are blatently wrong he would say "dont blame the messenger its what they said"

Then I would tell him you know messengers in the midevil ages had their headd decapitated.... If you pass on a message that is looked down upon you yourself have lost credibility.

[JustinSaneV2]

So rumors withstanding what are some of these "blatantly" wrong articles you speak of?

[poeo]

i've been on Kotaku maybe once or twice, ever, and didnt spend more than 10 seconds at most.

i consider them a sh!t site.

[Hercules]

that four sites revolved around a made-up rumor

[JustinSaneV2]

So a gaming news website goes about posting a juicy rumor as per every day business and then finds out that it was an elaborate joke all of a sudden turns that site in a joke?

Grow up people and get that paparazzi-based mentality out of human society.

[robotnik]

calm down son, its just a game

[OC_MurphysLaw]

Since when is reporting on a "rumor" posted on another site considered a bad thing if you qualify it as a "RUMOR"? I don't understand how CAG thinks they are all that and pulling one over on everyone. All it does is make us all doubt future rumors put forward by CAG.

As far as I am concerned this is a non-issue. CAG just wants their day in the sun apparently. They now get to run around saying "we burned everyone, hahahaha"... Get over yourself CAG, you aint all that.

[JD_Shadow]

1. Kotaku went and posted a story that CAG made up for a contest without even going and checking any of it out before rushing to report it (in other words, they wanted to be LOUD rather than RIGHT). That by itself should give you a reason to think of why Kotaku would never check the source first instead of trying to rush to BE first (they should know better).
2. When Kotaku found out that they were wrong and they were had, instead of taking it in stride and taking responsibility for their error in judgment as they should've done, they went and threw CAG under the bus. THAT'S where most of this issue lies with. CAG didn't have as much, if any, fault in this as Kotaku did. CAG was just trying to run a contest. Kotaku was the one that blew this thing WAY out of proportion and made this thing into more than what it should've been.

[mrnjl]

lol..Credibility...a word I dont associate with sites such as N4G or Kotaku.
Dont get me wrong I love this site and Kotaku for reading up on the latest gaming gossip.
But I wouldnt believe a thing I read on either site until it was backed by a more creditable source

[mcdingus]

You are all commenting on a site that for better or worse is a portal to sh*tty or amazing sites that provide real/rumored gaming news. I personally love Kotaku's writing and reviews. It was a GD rumor. You idiots read them every day (and likely comment). In a perfect world we could remove the top ten lists, rumored crap, which console is winning?, who burned a car because they played GTA articles and MAYBE just MAYBE read real gaming news. Push for that. You are wasting everyone's time and will likely read Kotaku TOMORROW and the next day... and the next...

[marcellizot]

Couldn't agree more. This is a ridiculous witch hunt by a bunch of self aggrandising amateurs posing as 'holier than thou' games journalists.

It seems that the thing that many people here seems to have trouble differentiating between is a story posted as rumour and a story posted as fact.

If a site like Kotaku (or any of the other sites that also ran the story but are conspicuously being left out of this debate) posts a story as rumour, they are not obliged to back it up with sources. If they post a story as fact without checking their sources, that's a different story, but that is not what happened here.

I don't know how much more clearly I can put it, but I'm sure that some idiots pretending to be games journalists will still find reason to find fault with my argument. I am a games journalist and I could name ten stories off the top of my head from various big news sites that have been posted as rumours over the past month, that turned out not to be true. Where are the articles damning them and claiming they are not 'proper' journalists?

This whole farce has served only two purposes; it's given the people at CAG (and apparently Giant Realm too) a conceited reason to behave like a bunch of smug self-congratulating adolescents, and it has given forum trolls everywhere the opportunity to jump on the moral high ground and make ill informed sermons about investigative journalism (many of which are now claiming they themselves are journalists).

The whole thing stinks to high heaven!

[pixelsword]

They're not even good anymore, just another glorified blog.

[Nexy]

It's funny to see a bunch of cretins trying to offend a really good and proffesional site Kotaku certainly is.

Now when I read all this BS of fanboys and trolls I like Kotaku even more. At least they know how to regularly get rid of stupid venomous trolls/ fanboys from their commenters.

[Mitch_Cumstein]

Look at Kotaku's own motto and you see the word "gossip" there. "Gaming gossip" is a very much a part of blogging, and without it the gaming news sites would all be the same plain redundant crap. In this particular situation Kotaku printed this story, but made it blantantly clear that this was an UNCONFIRMED RUMOR. In other words Kotaku just reports the rumor and lets the readers debate its validity. Kotaku ALWAYS makes it clear if a story is unconfirmed, and then will update upon confirmation. You are completely clueless if you think Kotaku did anything wrong here.

[Killjoy3000]

Wow, I think Kotaku is such a poor excuse for a major form of media. They're simply worse than Gamespot now. Everyone from Kotaku will soon flock to IGN and even the 1up without Elliot.

[PSWe60]

probably means FOX NEWS in Japanese, there's your credibility

[Lord_Ash]

The only time I remember Kotaku had a valid rumor that no one else had was the PlayStation Home about a week before GDC '07 and I remember Sony asked them to take it down and threatening to cancel their invitation to the show, that was the day people saw Kotaku as a valid source but since then nothing there you couldn't find any where else.