This is, as many of you know, a subject near and dear to my heart, so it breaks my heart every time I have to write something like this. But it seems that what we think of as “the traditional video games press”, at least in the profitable, commercial sector, is circling the drain.

The latest site to “fall” is Kotaku, a publication which most certainly has had its ups and downs in terms of reputation with different groups over the years, and one which I’m definitely not surprised to see affected by the growing trend for enshittifying everything.

While I had very little time for Kotaku itself, particularly over the course of the last decade or so, it’s still saddening to see once-prominent institutions in the games press landscape gradually sinking into the mire of slop that a significant portion of the Web has been becoming for years now. Let’s ponder the reasons for that a little further.