ay don kehr

Maybe somebody at Kotaku should find someone at Bethesda and Ubisoft to sleep with...

I suppose it's too much to ask that people formulate their own opinions instead of mindlessly hating. I'm going to be playing devil's advocate and join Team Kotaku for a bit:

You guys know that you love the leaks. 

Good. Kotaku deserves it for how they have treated those and other companies. Has Nintendo blacklisted them? If not, they should.

I really don't like Ubisoft, but I absolutely hate leaks so in this case I sympathize with them. A huge amount of time, money, and effort goes advertising/announcing a game yet alone development of the game. It rushes them and Ubisoft really doesn't need to be rushed.
I remember the Smash bros. leak came out of nowhere and almost all the sites just had to put on blast.
What Kotaku is doing isn't validated by any means. Companies don't have to invite you or give you early copies, they do so under mutual understanding. Nothing corrupt about it, nothing unfair about it. They can argue "journalism" all they want, but at the end you were aware of the mutual understanding and thus the consequences.

Ignoring all of the other crap Kotaku and Gawker in general get up to, just leaking people's stuff like that is a fairly good way to ruin relationships.
Game publishers should be free to control the timing of news on their own projects. Kotaku helps no-one but itself by leaking that stuff early. That's not a service to the consumer in any way.

It's like just feeding someone's kids an hour before their parents are cooking dinner. You might be superficially pleasing the kids but it has no positive impact on anything in any important sense.

Fun to watch boogie call them out on this as hes apparently been blacklisted by kotaku himself

View on YouTube

I don't hate Kotaku.  I used to visit the site now and then, a long time ago.  I have no illusions about the nature of Kotaku, either.  They're less a gaming news site than a gaming culture site, which means they're more apt to publish stuff that interests the writers and editors.  Sometimes that means fluff, agenda pieces, or tabloid articles.  If someone doesn't like that style, they they can simply go elsewhere.  

However, I don't blame publishers and developers if they cut off access to a publication that leaks inside information.  That's the path Kotaku has chosen to follow.  No use crying when it turns bumpy.

Kotaku favors all things Japanese - or at least they used to. It's part of their schtick. Ubisoft and Bathesda aren't Japanese.

There's your answer.

Good, given that Kotaku's only purpose is to steer shit and make click-baits, because 'facts and information about new games are boring so we need to spice it up' as per Stephen Totilo in Totalbiscuit interview.