Kotaku Australia and Several Other Gaming Sites Shut Down
Australia is losing a bunch of gaming websites, to the cries of probably no one. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Pedestrian Group, an Australian “third-party publisher,” is “exiting its licensing deals to publish third-party brands,” which include a number of video game websites: Kotaku, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and Refinery29. This is an attempt at cost cutting for Pedestrian, which will also cut “up to” forty jobs and lose its CEO, Matt Rowley. This comes amid many cutbacks in the gaming media realm, such as Kotaku’s owner, G/O Media Inc., selling Gizmodo, The A.V. Club, Jezebel, and The Onion, and employees across their various acquisitions – including Kotaku – being laid off.
Folks, I have some sad news to share. Today, the story of Kotaku Australia comes to a sad and abrupt end. It has been one of the great joys of my life to wake up every day and run a site I love with all my heart.
— David Smith (@RhunWords) July 8, 2024
It’s starting to feel like this entire industry is hanging by a thread. I know that’s not exactly true – IGN recently acquired a bunch of gaming sites when it bought Gamer Network, such as VG247 and Eurogamer – and Kotaku is still around, even if it won’t be distributed in Australia anymore. But it’s looking more and more like the writing is on the wall for this company. A while back, their editor-in-chief quit (after a five-month tenure) when G/O Media decided to make the site focus on gaming guides rather than video game news. Many, including former Blizzard producer Mark Kern, suspected this was meant to get as many Kotaku writers as possible to quit so they could more easily discard the site. Following that, its senior editor, Alyssa Mercante, made a fool of herself several times over and continues to harass people. Kotaku is hanging on right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if news comes that it’s being shut down sometime soon.
Speaking of the Discord infiltrator, she’s not taking this news well:
Alyssa is having a bit of a meltdown over Kotaku Australia shutting down. pic.twitter.com/5QDzLRIKVu
— MasteroftheTDS (@MasteroftheTDS) July 8, 2024
Set your loved ones’ social media accounts to private, because she may go one the warpath again soon.
Comments (5)
Not that it wasn’t insane to threaten people like she did, but the way it played out with Vera Dark was so funny it was kinda worth it.
Mercante does really crazy stuff, like blocking Grummz, then unblocking him just long enough to comment on a post of his and attack him, then block him again. She’s a loon.
I think there is something very important that you missed, which were the tweets by Luke Plunkett. Many of the old pages and images were not kept on the US site, in fact a lot of “archived” content was kept on the AU site, including anything pre-2009.
Why is this important? Three letters: SEO (Search Engine Optomised). Remember the reason why they were told to focus on guides was the only value Kotaku had in the eyes of their owners was SEO content, if a lot of this stuff goes away after the AU site goes down, what little value Kotaku was bringing in alongside the loss of their only remaining licence (I think there used to be a UK one as well at one point) could spell even more woes for Kotaku’s ability to stay in business.
Wow, that’s very interesting. They may be in even bigger trouble, or at least bigger trouble will find them sooner.
I wanted to add my two cents on this topic because I know for a fact that everyone will be very happy once Kotaku goes down in flames because NO One likes Kotaku because they are a Garbage company filled with Mentally Ill activists like Alyssa Mercante. On another note,I wanted to bring up that Unhinged/ Woke nutbag Alyssa Mercante. This pathetic tart seems to enjoy getting off trying to talk tough towards gamers & others online. She also seems to like committing Illegal acts online and not thinking that there’s gonna be any consequences that will come back on her,but I hate to say this to Alyssa Mercante and that is what you do onto others will come back on your ass Ten fold
Mercante is an unhinged, mentally unstable weak link. There is some saying that you are only as strong as your weakest link. Her mouth writes checks that her rump can’t cash and Vara Dark made her tell her story walking, as she had to kick rocks with a tucked tail.