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Unfortunately, Nintendo still has it blacklisted, it being Kotaku, from advanced coverage. A move, I would argue, is both unprofessional and coercive. And while Nintendo's done a lot of crappy things, in my last video, I went over in great detail the context for why Kotaku was blacklisted in the first place. And it really had to do with a Metroid Dread article they published the day after the game came out. And we're not here to debate the merits of that. There was a lot of debate in the comments over, oh, well, it's morally correct to pirate Nintendo games. And it's, you know, the brux of the articles doesn't technically say pirating, it just says emulating. It's just a professional courtesy. Nevermind the fact, here's the paragraph at the very end of the article, which very, very clearly stated, this is before they edited the article, to pirate old Nintendo games, which is technically an illegal act. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it, I'm just saying that technically, it is them promoting something Nintendo hates, something that's also against the law that Nintendo has won lawsuits over, and then expecting Nintendo to play ball. I think sometimes outlets like Kotaku forget that getting review copies of games is a privilege, not a right. You don't get it just because you exist, you get it because you deserve to have it. And frankly, if you're gonna promote things Nintendo doesn't like, they're free to just decide not to give you the game. And you could argue just saying, talking about emulating Metroid Dread the day after it came out, give it a week, professional courtesy. Give it a week, give it two weeks. Let there be some distance from when the reviews just dropped, right? When the game just came up, but whatever, they did what they did, and that's why they got blacklisted. And for the most part, we can agree that the unprofessionalness here really wouldn't reside with Nintendo, although Nintendo has been unprofessional in the past, it really resided with Kotaku expecting to be able to do advanced coverage of a game after that. And they're not really being coercive at all here, they're just not gonna support an illegal activity. Now, that being said, the plot thickened and it thickened hard core yesterday. I don't, this comes from multiple facets. First thing, Ethan Dash, this exact same person we just talked about decided to post an editorial that was approved by upper management at Kotaku over on their website. This article says everything we're learning about Zelda Tears of the Kingdom from the leaks. Early playthroughs of the Nintendo Switch game have revealed a ton of new details. Now, I'm not gonna show you any more of the article because the article, I can't even show you the beginning text. Everything, it just goes and goes. It just goes ahead to the spoils. So much stuff about this game. Now, not story-wise, but gameplay-wise and like content that's in the game. Just over and over and over again, this article is going over a whole bunch of spoilers. Now, I want to explain something. This is them doubling down on the fact Nintendo won't give us review copies of games so screw you, we're gonna do this. Here's the thing. This article is exactly why Nintendo didn't give you review copies of games. You're gonna tell me this article wouldn't have existed anyways? Of course it wouldn't have existed anyways. Why? Because technically they are within their legal right to talk about the leaks. It is not illegal to talk about the leaks. You can report on them. There is a freedom of press stuff that'll, you know, laws in place that allow them to report on the leaks so long as they're not sharing where to get the leaks from, so long as they're not sharing, you know, direct links to the ROM and everything, Kotaku's fine and they definitely don't share links to the ROM. So they skirt the legal issues. But the thing is, this article is just another feather in the cap of yeah, Nintendo's never given you games again, ever. There's again, a lack of professionalism here. There's a reason. You're not seeing this article pop up at IGN. You're not seeing this article pop up at GameStop. You're not seeing this article pop up at Video Game Chronicle. Not even Polygon. None of these websites are daring to say let's gather all of these leaks that are coming from illegal copies of the game. People playing the game illegally. By the way, I'm not judging you if you're doing it. I'm just saying that's the truth. And then reporting on those illegal acts. I do think that there is something to be said that no other professional video game journalist outlet is doing this, just Kotaku. There's a reason Kotaku is the most blacklisted place in the industry. There's a reason that IGN Japan can make some mistakes with their demo coverage, but still get review copies of games. Why? Because they respect the companies that are giving them the privilege of getting the game early. Now these companies are not coercing them into giving positive reviews. It would be different if you were blacklisted for giving negative reviews of their games. That's coercive. This is not. You continually act unprofessional and then you call Nintendo unprofessional. It makes no sense. But it gets worse. Because here's the thing. I think when we're talking about Kotaku, we're talking about anything involving game journalism. I wanna note that I don't think all game journalists are bad people. Look, there's a lot of journalists out there I respect. I respect Brian Altano. I respect Peter Schneider from IGN. I respect Jeff Grubb. I respect one of the best investigators, maybe the only true investigative journalists out there, Jason Schreyer. And he used to work at Kotaku too. So it's not even about where you work. It just so happens that this seems to happen more and more at Kotaku, especially after Stefan Tattillo left, who's another person I respect. So this is what a surprise that the leader that I actually liked at Kotaku, left Kotaku, and it just seems to be getting worse. I don't know if they're just desperate for clicks, but Luke Plunkett. I don't know if you guys remember who Luke Plunkett is. He is a senior writer, author, and game designer for Kotaku, so he claims. I don't know about Kotaku designing games, but whatever. Maybe he's got a game design background, so that's one reason why they hired him. He posted a tweet and a couple of follow-ups saying very normal behavior. And in this tweet, it shows the article at Kotaku. Then it shows a Twitter response to this, so let me get this straight. You complain about Nintendo blacklisting you, then post spoilers based on leaks, who is being unprofessional here. I hope you go bankrupt by the end of the year with the way things are going, probably will. I will say that, yeah, that's a little too final. Wish people to lose their jobs. Oh, and I'll just leave this here, and then there's the NOA legal thing. So I want to know that he's making fun of this person. So then Luke Plunkett responds to his own little tweet there. It says, I'm years past caring what these people say. I mean, people with common sense. I'm simply aghast at the fanatical fervor, which is thrown in 2023. It's not fanatical fervor. You can't call Nintendo unprofessional for blacklisting your website, and then in return be extremely unprofessional to deserve the blacklisting in the first place, and then reaffirm how much you deserve the blacklisting. You're just being unprofessional. No other outlet is reporting this stuff. No other outlet was talking about emulating Metroid Dread the day after release, only Kotaku. If you're the only people doing it, and everyone else has access, maybe ask yourself, are we behaving in a professional manner? Is this tweet behaving in a professional manner? And then, I don't even want to show the image, but here it is briefly from Life Magazine. He put up there for the record. This is how I feel about publisher blacklist, and then he pretty much compares it to, you know, World War II times and some, I can't even believe he made the comparison. I don't even want to say it out loud. If you saw the image briefly on screen, you know what I'm talking about. I can't even, what kind of leap in logic, he basically just said, this is how he feels about publisher blacklist. He didn't specify Nintendo, but this is about Nintendo who has them blacklisted. He just compared Nintendo to that. What are we doing? How are people like this not fired? If I ran Kotaku, and I don't know Luke Plunkett, maybe he's a great guy, and maybe he's just got years and years of being beat down by fans. He just compared Nintendo to a situation that killed tens of millions of people because they're blacklisted for your own behavior. I don't even, what do you say to that? What do you even say? So like this is clearly something that is more representative of Kotaku on the whole because not only is Ethan Gash there, you have Luke Plunkett back in a while. Both of these are some of the best writers their website has. I think what happens here is Kotaku is as always, it depends sort of a laughing stock in the industry for a while, but what's happened is Kotaku is proving why people turn to YouTubers. And look, us YouTubers aren't necessarily the greatest things in SlySprite either, but this is bad. This is just, there are no words to describe what I just witnessed from Kotaku's writers. Whatever guys, I guess thank you Ethan Gash and Luke Plunkett and the rest of Kotaku who ever approved of the article going live, both back in the day of Metroid Dread and with this one. I guess thank you for the free content because you guys, wow. Just, I've been to journalism school. This is unprofessional to the nth degree. So anyways guys, thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.