Great read. On the topic of the gaming press, sure, it&#x27;s sad that they&#x27;re put on a tight leash by the industry...but they have always been on a leash, haven&#x27;t they? Kotaku complained about being put on the Fallout 4 blacklist (ostensibly because they were the first to break the news of its development)...but in the weeks since, have done almost nothing but wall-to-wall shitposts giving attention to Fallout 4 -- one of their latest pieces of journalism? &quot;Fallout 4, Reimagined In Counter-Strike&quot; [1]<p>Kotaku has some measure of control over this vicious cycle: stop giving Fallout 4 fanboyish coverage. In fact, it&#x27;s a bit sad watching them make a principled stand for an independent press [2], but then, on a normal day, just post constantly about what cute meme they discovered in a mass-marketed AAA game, as if there were no other things to talk about in the gaming universe. Kotaku is not only biting the hand that has stopped feeding it, but then goes back to lick the hand as if that would change things.<p>The Verge&#x27;s complaint about not being allowed a pre-release review of Star Wars is also weak. The Verge, Polygon (which was supposed to be the thinking person&#x27;s gaming press but has devolved into a lesser IGN, covering comics and games), i09, and so forth, have done little but give Star Wars fawning hype in the lead-up months -- apparently thinking that what makes them different from just a fanboy site is that they will get to review the movie beforehand and thus have a controlling impact on that movie&#x27;s box office success. Well, now that Disney&#x2F;Abrams et al. have wisely realized that they could get the best of both worlds -- fawning hype without the chance of a non-positive review -- maybe the entertainment&#x2F;tech sites will wise up and not spend so much of their readers&#x27; attention on Star Wars updates. But I doubt it...those Star Wars posts bring in pageviews...for these blogs to willingly cut that off in order to pursue something better would be like expecting newspapers to make their classifieds free (classified ad revenue made up as much as 25% of newspaper revene) when Craigslist first appeared on the scene.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;steamed.kotaku.com&#x2F;fallout-4-reimagined-in-counter-strike-1746326285" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;steamed.kotaku.com&#x2F;fallout-4-reimagined-in-counter-st...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kotaku.com&#x2F;a-price-of-games-journalism-1743526293" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kotaku.com&#x2F;a-price-of-games-journalism-1743526293</a>