Same. They certainly took a big hit in quality after the Gawker lawsuit but even by then I’d stopped reading them on any regular basis. Then there was Kotaku,

Same. They certainly took a big hit in quality after the Gawker lawsuit but even by then I’d stopped reading them on any regular basis. Then there was Kotaku, their video game blog. It was the only site I ever got a comment ban on. I’d been a commenter for a few years, since the day they added them to the site. Then one day they posted a headline like “Pikmin comes to the DS” (or maybe 3ds I forget.) I click through and it’s basically a write up about someone who made a Pikmin picture/drawing using the handheld (something like that, my memory is vague on the details) Which was annoying because Kotaku quality was generally not too click bait-ish and I said this in a comment. I got banned. I remember the editor who did it, Brian Crecente. On the one hand their comments sections were generally non-toxic. On the other hand they had absolutely no tolerance, albeit sporadically applied, to critical opinions. Of course that’s their right, but it also made me wonder what other legitimate conversation they might be banning, and soured me on the site. Despite this I’ll say Brian Crecente was a pretty good games journalist, and I kno many sites especially at that time were struggling with how to introduce comments without it turning into a waste dump.