Corruption
18
Perceived issues
And 1 lesser issue
Cleaning
7
corrections
28% correction rate, much higher than site average
Corruption

Apparent

Corruption

About

Wrote two times about Gemma Thomson without disclosing their personal relationship and Patreon support — from Thomson to Dale (and her outlet Indiecade) at the time of the first article, and from Dale to Thomson at the time of the second.
Cronyism

Apparent

Cronyism

About

Covered games that were represented by the public relations agency TriplePoint on seven different occasions without disclosing her personal and professional ties to Stephanie Palermo, who was employed by TriplePoint at the time and involved in the PR work of the games Vincent covered. After Palermo joined Capcom’s PR department Vincent covered said company and its games on at least on at least thirty two occasions. When contacted, Vincent promptly responded in email she asked to keep private to a request for clarification, providing an explaination and a reasonable argument for this being just an apparent conflict of interest.
Cronyism

Amended

Cronyism

About

Has written about Harmonix while the company was employing his former editor at Destructoid, Nick Chester, without disclosing this relationship. Responded privately to DeepFreeze’s staff, saying that while he considers these articles lapses in judgement, he is no longer working at the involved outlets and in no position to add disclosures—disclosures which, either way, he doesn’t feel would benefit readers so long after publication. Destructoid added a disclosure when informed.
Intimidation

Apparent

Intimidation

About

Gloated about Jack Thompson's heart disease, saying he should be sent poison candy.
Cronyism

Apparent

Cronyism

About

Wrote numerous times about Harmonix without disclosing his friendship with Nick Chester — PR for Harmonix, fellow member of GameJournoPros and his predecessor as Destructoid Editor-in-Chief.
Censorship

Apparent

Censorship

About

Blacklisted Alistair Pinsof on GameJournoPros.
Dishonesty

Apparent

Dishonesty

About

Fired his employee Alistair Pinsof in what were later discovered to be insincere and questionable circumstances.
Censorship

Serious

Censorship

About

Deleted all of the articles written for Destructoid by former staff member Holly Green due to a personal dispute with her.
Collusion

Possible

Collusion

About

His “There are gamers at the gate, but they may already be dead” article is considered to be part of the “Gamers are dead” media blitz, despite having been published a few days after the first blitz.
Corruption

Apparent

Corruption

About

Wrote about the game I’ve Got To Run! without disclosing that the one-woman company creating it, 4 Corner Games, had financially supported the Kickstarter campaign for his webseries Sup, Holmes? for an amount of 120 dollars. States the Kickstarter money didn’t go through him.
Wrote about the Fangamer company without disclosing that they had financially supported the Kickstarter campaign for his webseries Sup, Holmes? for an amount of 120 dollars, as proven by the sponsored logos appearing on episode 113, awarded to highest tier Kickstarter backers. Holmes states the Kickstarter money didn’t go through him. The article also mentions the work of Ashley Davis, who worked at Destructoid with Holmes, and Jake “Virt” Kaufman, who composed the “Sup, Holmes?” intro song.
Wrote about the game Neverending Nightmares without disclosing that it was a sponsor for Kickstarter campaign for his webseries Sup, Holmes? for an amount of 120 dollars, as proven by the sponsored logos appearing on episode 117, awarded to highest tier Kickstarter backers. States the Kickstarter money didn’t go through him.
Wrote about the Boston Festival of Indie Games and its organizer Dan Silvers without disclosing that Slivers had financially supported the Kickstarter campaign for his webseries Sup, Holmes? for an undisclosed amount. States the Kickstarter money didn’t go through him.
Wrote two times about Til Morning Light without disclosing that the game’s creator Adam Tierney had backed the Kickstarter campaign for his webseries Sup, Holmes? for an undisclosed amount — apparently over 50 dollars. States the Kickstarter money didn’t go through him.
Wrote about #Fortune without disclosing that the game’s creator Zach Gage had backed the Kickstarter campaign for his webseries Sup, Holmes? for an undisclosed amount. States the Kickstarter money didn’t go through him.
Corruption

Amended

Corruption

About

Reviewed Xeodrifter without disclosing that the game’s creator Jools Watsham had backed the Kickstarter campaign for his webseries Sup, Holmes? for an undisclosed amount — apparently over 60 dollars. States the Kickstarter money didn’t go through him. Destructoid added disclosure after DeepFreeze’s filing, apparently without Holmes’ knowledge.
Cronyism

Apparent

Cronyism

About

Gave positive coverage to Zoe Quinn without disclosing their friendship. Has discussed this relationship both facetously and seriously after it was filed on DeepFreeze.
Dishonesty

Apparent

Dishonesty

About

Has stated he was not aware of the identity of his Kickstarter's backers he gave coverage to, but he discussed the rewards with several subjects before his articles. This includes Adam Tierney, six months before the coverageDanny Silvers, five months before, and Syrenne McNulty, just two weeks before.
Sensationalism

Amended

Sensationalism

About

Wrote about the copyright claim takedown of River City Ransom: Underground. The article mostly consisted of the statements of said game’s composer Alex Mauer — who filed the claim over an alleged lack of payment — and concluded with heavy criticism against the “sadistic feeding frenzy” against Mauer, led by “ambulance chasing, opportunistic video game pundits demonizing her in long winded, fruitless Youtube rants”. As likely pointed out in the heavily censored and soon-disabled comment section, the article omits a lot of key information in a very long controversy— Mauer not only filed multiple unfounded copyright claims towards games they scored, sent spurious takedown requests (an act of perjury) to several dozen of Youtube and Twitch videos featuring these games and sent multiple documented death threats, but also changed their story multiple times and explicitly stated their actions were malicious. Mauer’s claims were called fraudolent by both Youtube and Steam, and during this controversy Mauer was served with a restraining order and even involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation. Before the article, the controversy had already been covered by extremely large Youtube channels, and apparently Holmes had been explicitly informed of the death threats issued by Mauer by one of the recipients. Following the backlash, Destructoid moved the article to its blog section, with Holmes adding a through update apologizing for the article, with apologies also being issued on his personal Twitter.
Cronyism

Apparent

Cronyism

About

Cronyism

Amended

Cronyism

About

Positive review of a Borderlands 2 DLC, without disclosing his personal and professional relationship with the game’s lead writer and his former colleague at Destructoid Anthony Burch — as noted by Burch himself. Disclosure was added to the article at some point between 04.11.2015 and 07.08.2015, much after Leray's last article on Destructoid.
Cronyism

Amended

Cronyism

About

Wrote a total of five reviews of Borderlands 2 DLC, without disclosing his personal and professional relationship with the game's lead writer and his former colleague at Destructoid Anthony Burch — as noted by Burch himself. Has stated that their relationship didn't influence his reviews, and didn't stop him from giving the content negative scores. Disclosure was added to all reviews shortly after Burch spoke up.
Sensationalism

Apparent

Sensationalism

About

Participated in manufacturing the Fire Emblem: Fates scandal, claiming in an article that the game featured the “gay conversion” of a lesbian character, via a magic potion. Not only is the translation that he took as a source completely inaccurate, but the character in question only has male romantic supports, as opposed to the two actually bisexual characters in the game, which, together with the rest of the plot, clearly shows the character is not gay, instead following different Japanese tropes —and the same character archetype of a male character in the previous Fire Emblem, who faces the same issues, with his relationships mostly dealing with his problem, including one attempting to solve it with magic. Despite stating that he was not advocating for the scene’s removal, Whitaker reacted with delight when, following this scandal he contributed to creating, the scene was censored—with further, heavier censorship following soon after.
His article "’We want more female heroes and less sex objects,’ say teenage boys" quotes a discredited survey. The survey’s numerous flaws include: no peer review, very loaded questions, and being taken exclusively over social media with no way to check if the sample truly consisted of the projected demographic of teens (who couldn’t take the survey without adult consent anyway). The survey’s author, too, partially backpedaled on it and admitted it had no claim of academic legitimacy, its only goal having been to start a discussion. Unlike others reporting on the survey, Whitaker at least describes the survey as exploratory.
Cronyism

Amended

Cronyism

About

Wrote about the Ablegamers foundation without disclosing that he was a volunteer at the foundation. Disclosure was promptly added after he was contacted about this issue.
Corruption

Amended

Corruption

About

Wrote two times about Axiom Verge without disclosing that the game’s creator Tom Happ had backed the Kickstarter campaign for the webseries Sup, Holmes? — which he produces and engineers for Jonathan Holmes, aside from handling the donations directly. He acknowledged the lack of disclosure as a mistake, and disclosure was added to one of the articles.

Censorship, Dishonesty, Intimidation and Sensationalism emblems may be based on subjective criteria.

Readers are encouraged to take entries critically, and form their opinion independently.

Destructoid
Address
www.destructoid.com
Activity
Founded in 2006
Publisher
Yanier Gonzalez
Editor-in-Chief
Chris Carter

About

Started as founder Yanier "Niero" Gonzalez's blog in 2006, and relaunched in 2007 with a staff of contributors. Features community blogs — without editorial supervision — as well, and a large output of articles.

GamerGate info

In 2014, new information revealed the questionable behavior of its management during the 2013 termination of their journalist Allistair Pinsof, which put the site on GamerGate's boycott lists, despite the immediate updates to their ethic policy taken during the consumer revolt and later refinements that extended the disclosure policy even to Kickstarter backing.

While Destructiod is often accused in GamerGate material of participating in the "Gamers are Dead" media blitz, their contribution was an unsupervised community blog, with an extremely mild possible entry from the site's staff coming out days later.

Offers fairly frequent anti-GamerGate content, although the community content can also swing in favor of the consumer revolt.

Articles

Mentioned in DeepFreeze reference articles: