How To Share Story Tips With Kotaku

Here at Kotaku, we strive to cut through the noise and nonsense and tell you real, interesting, and thought-provoking stories about the world of video games. In order to help us do that, we want people who know things about those video games and everything surrounding them to be able to talk to us securely and anonymously. So we’ve created a guide for anyone who wants to tip or share information with Kotaku, whether you’re a game developer, a customer service representative, a community leader, a PR representative, or a video game fan with a story to tell. The video game industry is shrouded in a culture of corporate silence that we do our best to penetrate every day, because we believe that people should have as much information as possible. So if you see or experience something that you think is important for people to know, or maybe just interesting, we want to hear from you, including in cases when you want your identity to be protected. If you want to reach all of us, send your tips to: [email protected] And if you want to send an e-mail to an individual Kotaku writer, find your favorite one on our masthead and shoot them a note. Our tips inbox is only read by full-time staffers, and we check it every hour of every day. If you don’t get a response, don’t worry, we’ve definitely seen it. And if you read this entire page and still aren’t sure if you should send your tip, send it anyway. At worst, everyone at Kotaku will learn something new about the world of video games, and we’ll be grateful for it. But please do read the rest of the page first: News Tips We’re interested in news involving any aspect of gaming: game development, publishing, sales, things going on within games, things people are doing with games, all of it. Sometimes that means reporting on big cancelled projects or doing in-depth looks at chunks of video game history. Sometimes it means exposing malfeasance—sharing stories about horrible work conditions at a game studio or reporting on a multinational company that isn’t paying its staff on time. Sometimes it means answering big questions that everyone’s asking, like why a game really keeps getting delayed over and over, or the events that led to a studio closure. We care about things that you yourself find interesting or surprising, and we want to help people know what’s cool to play and what to avoid. We primarily want gaming news, of course, and we care about it whether it comes from a gamer, a game-maker, or anyone else who gives a damn about video games. And if you have pictures, screenshots, video, or other first-hand evidence of whatever you want us to know about, that’s a huge bonus. We also, obviously, accept press releases, news about your cool indie game that’s about to come out, pitches from PR to interview developers or preview or review games, and all the usual stuff. We recommend sending those to individual writers you have relationships with if possible, especially if you already know someone on staff is familiar with your game/genre/franchise. But if you’re just trying to reach us for the first time, the tips email is fine for that too. Anonymous Tips Sometimes, you might want to share something with us, but want to remain anonymous because having your name attached to that information could come with consequences of some kind. That’s totally okay. In most cases, the journalist you speak to will still need to verify your identity (to prove you’d be in a position to know what you’re claiming to know), but will keep that information entirely to themselves if you prefer. We strictly do not share any information about anonymous sources with anyone for any reason. In stories where we refer to sources who spoke to us anonymously, we will generally refer to those sources with as few details as possible. Often, that will just mean writing, “a source familiar with the matter” or “an employee of [company]” or similar. Sometimes, some context clues will be necessary: for instance, if we’re writing about sexism at a studio, it may be important to identify the gender of our sources. We will always check with you first to make sure you’re comfortable with how you’re being referred to in the piece. While we strictly do not share full articles with anyone outside of Kotaku prior to publication, we can on request go over your quotes with you after we speak to remind you of what was said and confirm there are no identifying details being used. We can also provide some general context about how the quotes are being used in the story, so you can help us confirm that our reporting is accurate to your understanding. As a rule of thumb, you may not want to tell anyone that you’re talking to us—the fewer people who know about any correspondence you may have with Kotaku, the more protected you’ll be. Don’t use your company e-mail account, any company-connected phone, work computer, or work WiFi network to contact us as an anonymous source. Instead, use a personal account or phone from home, or a public Wi-Fi network if you can do so safely. You can also reach most of our writers via Signal. Several of us have our Signal information in our social media bio pages, but if you’re looking for a specific writer, you can just email us directly and ask for our Signal name, no further context needed. If the story you’d like to share with us would be improved by photos, screenshots, or other documentation, such records are often extremely helpful for us in corroborating a story and protecting your identity. If you can, it’s best to take pictures of photos or documents with a personal phone and send those, rather than the documents themselves. And when you send them to us, remove the metadata first. We do our own metadata scrubbing before we post leaked photos on Kotaku, but it’s best to be as safe as possible. Your gaming adventures Similar to news tips, but different. While a lot of our stories are about game companies and creators, we also love writing about what gamers do. Did you just play through Call of Duty without firing a shot? Are you one of the last dozen people playing the multiplayer in a game that’s long since faded in popularity? Did you see someone pull off a crazy move in a Street Fighter tournament and happen to get video of it? Have you found a glitch no one knows about? Were you the person who figured out how to game the Steam summer sale? Did you make an incredible mod for your kids? Maybe it’s not just you. Maybe you’ve got a big Discord community dedicated to a game that’s doing something neat. Or maybe you’re part of a subreddit that’s very worked up about a niche update in the latest patch of your favorite game. Perhaps you’ve got a local community putting on an in-person event surrounding something in a video game. Might be your guild in an MMO, your group chat, or maybe you’re still on forums. We want to hear about all that stuff. Send it to tips. Send it to the staff. Just send it! Whatever else we’re not thinking of that’s cool Send that, too. Thank you!