https://richardlewis.substack.com/p/the-deadlock-debacle-shows-that-still
The Verge "infiltrated" the worst kept secret in gaming for no other reason than to show off to the "the gamers" that they could, then seemed put out that they got banned for breaking the only rule.
Almost all of them have been pretty bad lately. Verge, Kotaku, ScreenRant even. I mean, Kotaku was always a joke, like even more than The Verge, but everything has only gotten worse compared to like 15 years ago.
All businesses these days (journalism or not) seem like they were inherited by one of two kinds of people:
People who demand short term profit even at the expense of long term growth
Activists that let their emotions make the worst business decisions imaginable
Not necessarily gaming related, but I remember their early coverage of every new Apple product as somehow more masturbatory than anything MacWorld put out. Then you've got their infamous complete mess of a PC build video and everything that followed that. I guess at least they aren't written by AI yet?
The Verge was a breathe of fresh air when it first launched. The rest of tech news had enshitified pretty well at the time. But now they've been around long enough to be the establishment rather than the disruptor
I think I agree with the major point of the article, that many gaming journalists... don't do a great job. At all. Many seem to outright hate the communities they serve, which can't be healthy for either side.
But it certainly wasn't this article that convinced me. It's needlessly hostile, contains personal attacks and petty insults, and despite its many claims and assumptions about Deadlock, gaming companies, journalists and gamers, it has only 4 outgoing links—one of them, bizarrely, simply to x.com—and nothing else. Screenshots? More supporting evidence? Have a useless picture of Valve's office, I guess.
One of the linked resources is a tweet:
bye Twitter Quoted tweet: "Where to find Verge staff on Mastodon https://theverge.com/23519135/mastodon..."
Why does the author think this is relevant?
Their Twitter account links to a Mastodon address, a throwback to when Elon Musk bought the website and the journos had a hissy fit because they could no longer backchannel to have accounts banned for telling them to “learn to code.”
Wow, that's why you think people were complaining? Nothing else, no other possible undesirable consequence arising from Musk's takeover of Twitter? Not even his influence in levels and management of hate speech and misinformation in the platform?
Indeed, the majority of his last month’s output on Twitter – now X.com – is whining about Musk and bizarrely saying “bye Twitter” despite The Verge still being very much active on the site. It’s all so tiresomely typical.
It's actually quite common for organizations that give mastodon a chance to keep their Twitter account as well. It's the sad reality that most people (many of their following) will stay on Twitter. See Mozilla for another example, they host their own instance, even, but that sadly doesn't mean they can throw away Twitter.
So the journalist in question shows support for mastodon, both by mentioning their account and bringing attention to the fact that The Verge is also joining, and this is your reaction? If you know why this happens, it's misleading, and if you don't, then it's a failure in reporting. Both are bad and make me hesitant to believe anything else you say.
By the way, I'm curious about your choice of platform. I wonder what factors led to you picking nazi central as your center of operations. I'm not claiming you're a Nazi, it's just... you're sitting at the table with them, you know?
The answer is games journalism, maybe journalism in general, has become a largely self-serving practice where nothing matters except appearing smarter than the audience you’re supposed to serve.
Well said, Richard. Definitely got that feeling just now.
And to people thinking The Verge sucks completely: don't generalize publishers like this, please! You should be critical, aware of their leanings and biases, but remember that they're still an organization hosting multiple writers with different skills too. The Verge has some solid reporting, like when they showed how SEO ruined the web. They also have some utterly shameful moments—let us never forget The Verge PC—just like most other media.
Yup, came here to say something similar. The author completely lost me when I got to the part talking down about Mastodon
If they were actually concerned about it, Valve could have done real NDA's and/or plastered the build info and user name on-screen like most game tests. They've done it in the past so I assume this was a calculated risk/choice.
Is there a chance Valve did this on purpose? An NDA isn't anything new, but they didn't have people sign any and a simple in game notice, to not share information, is pretty much the same, as telling people to not think about a purple elephant, the second you mention it. Marketing is everything these days and all I see is a ton of news and people talking about this game. You almost couldn't have done it any better way.