Did Patrick Klepek leave Kotaku?

I think you completely fail to note that this guy wasn't in the public eye. He wasn't a hypocritical politician speaking out against gay people. He's not a celebrity that gossip sites like Gawker bother with. He, himself, wasn't in any way famous or of any note, other than being related to someone else that was more in the public eye. About the only thing that makes him noteworthy is that he works for a Gawker competitor. I guess that might elevate him to "high enough profile" for you if this was intended as a hit piece, and it may have been. Otherwise, he's only a CFO, not a CEO or president, and he hasn't committed any crimes. He's a tiny blip on the radar for the vast majority of people.

Real journalists generally have no problem publishing material that might have involved shady dealings as long as it serves a purpose. The problem here is that this piece serves no public purpose and involved assisting a blackmailer.

All three things are unique to this story, but I will admit that the second is the biggest issue of the three for most.

Most gaming websites are becoming more oriented towards doing video content than writing about games in general. I personally dont really read game reviews anymore since I can get a better idea about a game from watching a quick look or from watching a twitch streamer play the game.

I think that Kevin Van Ord leaving Gamespot is a sign that the site is moving heavily towards content that has less to do with the traditional game journalism. A few months back Gamespot also fired a couple members of its staff who didnt appear that frequently in their video content and usually did traditional game reviews. Since then Gamespot has outsourced most of its game reviews. People like Danny O´Dwyer are the kind of game journalists that gaming sites want to hire these days.

The problem that Kotaku has is that it is a site that relies very heavily on the written word. In order to get people interested in the content the staff has to come up with very catchy titles. This can lead to some very clickbaity titles in order to generate views.

While I can understand that Patrick couldnt continue working for Giant Bomb while living in Chigago since Giant Bomb is a site that relies heavily on creating content in collaboration with other staff members. It still is sad to see Patrick kinda disappearing into a site like Kotaku which produces a lot of news that is just kinda copy & pasted from other gaming sites. But as other people have said I also believe that writers who want to write about games dont really have a lot of choiche when it comes to employment. Especially if you want a decent salary.