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Kotaku incorrectly mocks Smash Bros U by making up a disability slur

Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
Laura Kate Dale wrote an article on Kotaku UK claiming that a song from Persona 5 in Smash Bros has a disability slur in it.

This slur is 100% false and made up. To Kotaku UK's credit they did apologise for the mistake here.

The issues here are the following
  1. Laura Kate Dale should have researched this properly and taken into consideration the heavy accent of the singer. The words in the song are the only English words in an otherwise Japanese language song. The singer improvises this part fo the song everytime it's sung live so it's different each time.
  2. She should not have written up the article without getting the facts first.
  3. Kotaku should have overruled her on this and said, no, we're not publishing ther article until thre is enuogh evidence here and we have a responce from Atlus on this issue.
  4. Atlus eventually did respondand said the issue is totally made up and the alleged words are not in the song so Kotaku was fprced through public pressure to put up an apology article.
  5. Kotaku in their apology article made every excuse under the sun as to why this happened instead of saying the real reason - "we screwed up"
Laura Kate Dale is well known for having behind the scenes Nintendo information and puts out good leaks from tiem to time. Why ruin this good reputation with a stunt like this?
 
This was all ****ing stupid.

Made even more stupid by the fact Persona 5 came out a while ago and had the same song in it when it released, but Kotaku only want to try and run a smear campaign now that Joker is in Smash?

They just wanted clicks to fund revenue on their site, Smash trafficks well and a sensationalist piece like this obviously gets them a lot of attention.

I heard Laura didn't want to post the article until she heard back from Atlus and Nintendo but her boss posted it against her will.
Be that as it may the article from the very beginning was a dumb ****ing idea. No one had a problem with the song until now...

Clearly Kotaku need to change the name of their site to something that doesnt reference Japanese pop culture because they clearly didnt play or pay much attention to Persona 5 at launch...
 
Joined
Nov 26, 2017
One does verily weep for the human race when such tripe as this is the standard discourse of the day; a self writing drama, a perfect encapsulation of outrage...
 

CynicalSquid

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This is why gaming journalism is a toxic cesspool of bull**** and half assed articles just to get clicks. It’s ridiculous that they still pull stunts like this after all the negativity that sites like Kotaku get.

What I find the most disheartening about this is that most people don’t even read the article. They will just see the title and it makes Nintendo and Smash fans look bad. The fact that the article is still up even though it has been proven to be false information is probably the worst part. It just ruins the reputation of a company for no reason whatsoever.
 
Joined
Jun 14, 2011
To be fair it does sound like the singer is saying the alleged word, but here's the thing, that's very common in music where Singers sings certain lyrics in ways that may throw the listener off because of the way they sing or speak their lyrics, to the point they misinterpret what they are actually singing. This isn't limited to foreign singers, it happens to every singer and it happens all the time.

I pretty sure that word isn't in the actual lyrics. I know very little about the persona series, but what i've seen it doesn't look like the sort of series to promote smut. And if said word WAS in the song, Nintendo would not allow that particular song in Smash Bros period.

That article is a prime example of the writer/editior lacking common sense and turning speculation into fact without properly looking into it all with the sole purpose of getting alot of clicks for the article and their site. It's very typical for Kotaku and to be honest, I'm not suprised they'd do something like this, they've always been a questionable site in terms how they share and communicate their content.
 

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