Was kotaku journalism? The method to their madness. Tl/DR: The journos have a "good" defense to accusations of ethical violations, but they do not have any defense for criminal ones. Hence why we should look at if they have been breaking the law, which is something that i feel we have enough evidence to already to prove.  This is not going to be a popular opinion, but its something that should be considered.Its going to be something that upsets a lot of people, but its something i feel that should be said, hence why i am saying it here and not at the "other place"  I have been following gamergate since the beginning, and one thing has been bothering me from the start: Is kotaku a journalism outlet, or a humor outlet? Is polygon journalism, or humor? Can these outlets really be taken seriously? This is extremely important, because it gives these guys a very powerful defense against any charge of journalistic misconduct: They simply have to say "we are not journalists, we are humor writers". this has been called, in journalism circles, the "John Stewart defense", and has the 1st amendment on its side.   In the case of kotaku and polygon, it would be a good defense. Look at the titles of their articles, look at what they are based on. look at what they are saying. they can argue, and probably win, that they should never have been taken seriously from the beginning.  This is an important thing to consider, because this gives the journos a very good defense to our accusations of unethical journalism. I can not stress this enough. BUT, it can not defend them against allegations of: Fraud, racketeering, market manipulation, money laundering, tax evasion, or any of the other financial crimes.  And that is the real reason why we are here. Over the last 10 years, many of us have been burned by the purchases of shitty games. Many of us were burned by pre orders, early access titles, and over hyped games. What set this movement off, was that people discovered that the shitty games, got hyped, and created, because of cronyism.  And more came out. These people give each other money, these people lie about their connections to each other, their backgrounds, their education, their skills.  This is important, on a number of reasons, because the fraud and the scams are getting bolder.  http://www.cmf-fmc.ca/funded-projects/funded-projects-database/1/?program=Experimental&activity=Development&fiscalYear=2014-2015&displayCommitment=0&maxPerPage=10 On this site, we see that silver string media, received $270,115 (i believe this is in Canadian dollars), to make a game.  This is money taken from the Canadian taxpayer.  This also raises a bunch of questions: How did they get that grant, where they honest in the application, was this based on their flawed youtube channel?  And will they spend a majority of that money on that game?  this is what they do not want us talking about. They will do whatever it takes to distract us, because this is a very nasty and slippery slope.  This is not some kickstarter, where they can spend the donations on whatever they want. This is tax dollars, that fall under both Canadian laws, and the US laws, and both laws are strict in this.  Its especially interesting, because silverstring does not talk about this game at all. Conquest never comes up in searches, despite being 6 months in development.  This is the interesting stuff, this is the stuff that can not be easily defended, and this is the things that will get Gamergate the serious attention. Not some stupid website that talks about stupid shit.  More importantly, this is where the damage has been done. Because that money could have gone to a real dev, who needed it, to make a real game. Instead, it went to a very questionable company, that has a history of questionable uses of donated funds.