http://kotaku.com/a-price-of-games-journalism-1743526293
Kotaku has a big article up detailing the reasons they were not able to get Fallout 4 and Assassin's Creed Syndicate Reviews up on day one like everyone else. Apparently Bethesda and Ubisoft have both been blackballing Kotaku for posting articles about Fallout 4, AC Unity, and AC Syndicate before they were publicly announced.
They were not breaking any embargoes when they published these articles because the games weren't even supposed to exist when the articles were published. Kotaku came across leaked information and chose to publish rumor articles.
In retaliation for Kotaku posting these articles before Bethesda and Ubisoft's marketing teams decided to publicly announce the games in question both of these major publishers have stopped sending Kotaku early review copies of games. They have also stopped responding to interview requests, stopped inviting Kotaku reporters to press events, and stopped responding to any emails or phone calls from Kotaku.
Even more interesting was a link in this article to a story from back in 2007 where Sony did the same thing when Kotaku published a rumor about Playstation Home before it was publicly anounced. In this case the senior director of corporate communications at Sony actually took the time to email Kotaku and tell them they were being black balled. He actually told them they were no longer invited to any of the events they already had invitations to and said they would no longer be working with Kotaku.
Unfortunately for him Kotaku published his ridiculous email and Sony was quickly forced to reverse their decision.
https://web.archive.org/web/2007030.../gaming/top/sony-blackballs-kotaku-240860.php
Kotaku has a big article up detailing the reasons they were not able to get Fallout 4 and Assassin's Creed Syndicate Reviews up on day one like everyone else. Apparently Bethesda and Ubisoft have both been blackballing Kotaku for posting articles about Fallout 4, AC Unity, and AC Syndicate before they were publicly announced.
They were not breaking any embargoes when they published these articles because the games weren't even supposed to exist when the articles were published. Kotaku came across leaked information and chose to publish rumor articles.
In retaliation for Kotaku posting these articles before Bethesda and Ubisoft's marketing teams decided to publicly announce the games in question both of these major publishers have stopped sending Kotaku early review copies of games. They have also stopped responding to interview requests, stopped inviting Kotaku reporters to press events, and stopped responding to any emails or phone calls from Kotaku.
Even more interesting was a link in this article to a story from back in 2007 where Sony did the same thing when Kotaku published a rumor about Playstation Home before it was publicly anounced. In this case the senior director of corporate communications at Sony actually took the time to email Kotaku and tell them they were being black balled. He actually told them they were no longer invited to any of the events they already had invitations to and said they would no longer be working with Kotaku.
Unfortunately for him Kotaku published his ridiculous email and Sony was quickly forced to reverse their decision.
https://web.archive.org/web/2007030.../gaming/top/sony-blackballs-kotaku-240860.php
