It's also interesting to see which publishers aren't listed.
For example, they've leaked a zillion EA and Activision things, but they're not listed here.
Updates:
Kotaku:
Polygon:
For example, they've leaked a zillion EA and Activision things, but they're not listed here.
Kotaku said:A Price Of Games Journalism
Stephen Totilo
For the past two years, Kotaku has been blacklisted by Bethesda, the publisher of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series. For the past year, we have also been, to a lesser degree, ostracized by Ubisoft, publisher of Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and more.
In those periods of time, the PR and marketing wings of those two gaming giants have chosen to act as if Kotaku doesn’t exist. They’ve cut off our access to their games and creators, omitted us from their widespread mailings of early review copies and, most galling, ignored all of our requests for comment on any news stories.
Neither company has officially told us that we’ve been cut off. For a time, it was possible to make a good-faith assumption that this was just a short-term disagreement. Maybe their spam filters were misplacing our emails. Maybe they’d get over it. Or perhaps they feared a repeat of 2007, when then-Kotaku editor-in-chief Brian Crecente embarrassed Sony out of blacklisting this outlet for reporting the existence of then-unannounced PlayStation projects.
...
Source: http://kotaku.com/a-price-of-games-journalism-1743526293In recent weeks, readers have asked questions. They’ve wondered why I, someone who has enthusiastically covered Assassin’s Creed games for years, didn’t review the most recent one. They’ve wondered why we didn’t seem to be subject to Fallout 4 embargoes of embargoes and why we didn’t have a review of that game on the day it came out. In both cases, we managed some timely coverage because Ubisoft and Bethesda did send review copies of their games to one of our remote freelancers, presumably with the hope he’d cover them for the other main outlet he writes for, The New York Times. Make no mistake, though, their efforts to shut out Kotaku have been unambiguous. Our colleagues across the world in Australia and the UK have been met with the same stony silence. Representatives from both publishers did not reply to requests to share their perspective for this story. Points for consistency.
Updates:
Kotaku:
To be clear, we've been blacklisted by both companies. Because we do real reporting and refuse to act as publishers' marketing arms. If anyone has any questions, let me know.
Let's be clear about a few things. For one, the stories I'm most proud of writing are not stories about leaked Fallout 4 scripts or even the Prey 2 "press sneak fuck" e-mails. The stories I'm most proud of writing are real investigations, the type that reveal information nobody would have learned otherwise, whether it involves horrible working conditions, behind-the-scenes stories of how a game like Destiny turned out the way it did, or an explanation about what a highly-anticipated cancelled game like Titan actually was. You've all seen and hopefully appreciated those stories, so you know where I'm coming from here.
All that said, it is my responsibility as a reporter to serve my readers by reporting news about the gaming world, whether or not that's news that game companies are ready to announce. Kotaku does not work around publisher marketing plans. If someone sends me a tip that a studio has been shut down, I will investigate, assess the news value, and report. If someone sends me a leaked video, I will investigate, assess the news value, and report. Same with a script, screenshots, or whatever else people decide to pass my way, whether it's because they're mad at their employers or because they believe, as I do, that the video game industry's obsession with secrecy is irrational and misguided.
That doesn't mean I have or will publish every piece of information I get. But if something has news value, it's my responsibility to share it. The Fallout 4 scripts, for example, had news value in the wake of the Survivor 2299 hoax and frantic questioning about what Bethesda was actually working on. In the interest of serving readers, we chose not to post the pages that spoil what happens at the beginning of Fallout 4, and instead we just shared the two or three that we felt told the complete story -- that amidst all the hoaxes and rumors, it's true: Fallout 4 is real.
Other bits and pieces of information I've heard over the years, I've decided not to share, usually because it didn't have enough news value in our eyes. We have no interest in reporting on leaked games just for the sake of reporting on leaked games.
When publishers like Bethesda and Ubisoft decide to blacklist us for how we report, that's totally their prerogative. They have the right to work with whichever outlets they prefer, and I think it's been clear to anyone who reads Kotaku that their decisions have not affected our coverage of them or their games over the past two years. Nor will those decisions affect how we approach reporting on leaks in the future.
Polygon:
We were in a similar situation with one of those publishers for the past year, and it appears we just got a soft blacklisting from another major publisher. Typically what it does is make you double down on digging into them, coming away with a Fuck It attitude and rarely does it have the desired impact from publishers.