All this drama surrounding Kotaku is simply too entertaining!

If this was in response to honest reviews that the publishers didn't like, that wouldn't be cool but by the same token it's completely within the publishers right to do so. Quit whining and get on with the job.

Well, nobody like leaks, so i kinda understand, imagine if the FFVII Remake, Shenmue 3 leaked before E3 2015 or the recent Nintendo Direct about Cloud in Smash and Twilight princess HD leaked would totally ruined all the fun.

Sounds to me like everyone needs to read the article in question in full. Most of you clearly haven't.

They're not 'angry' about being blacklisted. They're explaining their reasoning for the leaks, and the reasons for some of their late reviews. All of which are justified in my opinion. They've also been rallying against review embargoes, which are fairly anti-consumer. None of you can possibly be apologist enough to the point where you sympathize with publishers over review embargoes.

Rallying against review embargoes?  The article clearly states the reason why they were cut off right at the start: "The truth is that we’ve been cut off from Bethesda since our December 2013 report detailing the existence of the then-secret Fallout 4."  Everything else is the writer attempting to portray Kotaku as the noble underdog fighting for its readers.  There is no need to drop red herrings.  The only provable correlation is right there in black and white.  Unless we get confirmation of blacklisting from other large media outlets who have criticized the publishers in question but have not posted leaked information, then the leaked information should be considered the crux of the dispute.

The arguments that appear to be the most relative are: 1) whether or not media outlets should publish leaked information, and 2) whether or not videogame publishers are just in cutting ties with media outlets who post leaked information.

Personally, I have no problem with either one.  Kotaku can publish leaks if they want.  Game publishers can give media access to whomever they want.  Kotaku is simply trying to have their cake and eat it too, and they're trying to embarrass UbiSoft and Bethesda into caving, as they claim to have done with Sony.  That's where I get annoyed with the Kotaku article.  They're trying to paint themselves as the righteous defenders of gamers, and posting leaks about someone else's intellectual property as some kind of journalistic manifestation of justice.  Honestly, I find that insulting.

There is no "need to know" justification for leaked videogame content.  If that's their reason, it's a bad one.  I'd have more respect for them if they just admitted they do it for the clicks.

Regardless, I'm fine with what Bethesda or Ubisoft is doing, provided this is about leaked information.  

I was going to write a reply to this thread on my phone...but the keyboard kept Disappearing in an obvious glitch intended to make me click an ad. I think that's criminal and I hope someone on this site suffers the consequences. Bullshit.

The issues most have with kotaku is that they jumped onto every sjw story they could and latched onto it for every single advert hit they could get one way or the other basically whoring out their site to be used as a battle ground for idiots to argue about nothing, I parted ways with anything Kotaku when they went full on clickbait a number of years back, I find in general people on the net or irl dislike a person or site white knighting something when they know little about the subject matter or feign ignorance of the issue at hand for replies pointing the obvious out.

Enjoy playing devils advocate for them tho, I personally am not a fan of sites leaking info since it can ruin massive fantasic well made reveals such as the reaction people had to the e3 playstaion 4 used games flip off to ms or the recent cloud reveal in smash4. also consider that if companies cant trust others in the industry to respect contracted silence til dates are passed then our game devs have to waste time and money keeping things hidden and burning cash on legal fees to get lawyers in to write up NDAs for basic stuff

I couldn't have said it better than Jim Sterling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeL34nbEo8s

Unlike most people here who fail to grasp the broader implications he takes a dim view of blacklisting. I hope Kotaku continues to do well so that publishers realise that blacklisting is not a legitimate tactic and is bad for gaming media because it turn gaming media into merely an extension of the game industry PR machine, which is ultimately bad for us the gamers. If the occasional website behaves like a dick then that's the price to be paid by keeping the gaming media and the game industry at arms length.

Not really, pretty sure Kotaku isn't an extension of Ubi or Bethesda, so that kinda fails under scrutiny.   It's also the developers/publishers choice.  Just as Kotaku is free to write whatever they want, Publishers/Devs are free to associate with whomever they want (protected under the same amendment). 

"Kotaku is a tabloid, and this argument that they post about leaked games for “truth” instead of pageviews is a blatant lie."

xD