Patrick Klepek Leaves Kotaku, Joins Vice Gaming as a Senior Reporter

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DevourerOfTime

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#1  Edited By DevourerOfTime

Full Story here: http://kotaku.com/farewell-kotaku-1784716337

First Austin leaves GBEast

Then Adam leaves Sony

Then Dan is ??? after that Loser Leaves Town match

Now this.

What the hell is even going on anymore in this Giant Bomb connected part of the industry?!

EDIT: Rumours are true! Patrick is joining Vice Gaming alongside other Giant Bomb alumni Austin Walker. It's like our home away from home!

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deactivated-63d5c454eb6aa

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Vice with Austin is my guess.

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Nime

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The Patrick and Dan collusion.

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CountPickles

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First Peter Brown leaves Gamespot to start his own p'zone-making company. Then Brad and Dan leave to create a website about Taye Diggs. Now this? Maybe Patrick is coming back to Giant Bomb.

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chris24680

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It's probably for the best, after the whole Hogan V. Gawker debacle the whole network seems to be a sinking ship.

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Toxin066

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Come home, Scoops.

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hassun

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#7  Edited By hassun

That Scoops can't stay still!

Would be interesting if Austin headhunted him. That or Glixel I guess...

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Humanity

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Buddy900

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Wow its been 2 years already

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Castiel

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#10  Edited By Castiel

The remaining employees at Kotaku are the musicians in this scenario:

Loading Video...

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nophilip

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Can't imagine he comes back to GB. What if he ended up working for Austin at Vice? That'd be weird.

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wjb

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I wonder what site Patrick is going to use to pimp out his YouTube channel?

I imagine @cageysquid is right. Is there an ETA for when Vice Gaming rolls out a proper, Austin-headed site?

As much as I would love Bombin' in the AM to come back, I doubt GB needs a Chicago dude anymore. They need a SF/NY person depending on what the fuck is happening.

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Gaff

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deactivated-5b85a38d6c493

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Welcome back to GB Scoops! Going to be awesome seeing you take Dan's spot as he joins GBEast.

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BisonHero

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@nophilip said:

Can't imagine he comes back to GB. What if he ended up working for Austin at Vice? That'd be weird.

Vice seems really likely. Patrick has always been a better on-the-ground, getting-people-to-go-on-record reporter than a video personality/streamer, and Vice will likely be doing a lot of actual reporting. He was always a weird fit for GB because so little of the site's focus is on breaking news. Patrick and Austin broke some stories during their time here, but it seems like they were given very little time to do reporting stuff vs. the constant attention they had to give to video content.

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Y2Ken

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He'll do good wherever he ends up, I suspect. Dude's got moxie.

Definitely could see him working with the new Vice team, that'd be real exciting alongside Austin and Mike. Alternatively, of course if he wanted to come back as part of GB East I'd welcome him with open arms. But wherever he goes, I'll definitely keep a close eye on his work.

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DevourerOfTime

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kasaioni

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Loading Video...

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tiffanytryhard

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Patrick Klepek, the Rickey Henderson of games journalism.

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DrDarkStryfe

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Austin has had nothing but piles of praise for Patrick. It would not surprise me if Scoops was the first name on his list for full time staff.

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mrcraggle

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@hassun said:

That Scoops can't stay still!

Would be interesting if Austin headhunted him. That or Glixel I guess...

I just looked up what Glixel was and the way their headlines are written just put me off.

The first word from their current front page:

What
'Dots
'We
Meet
Meet
Why
Why
What
Why
Evo
What's
Why
How
Half
How

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hassun

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Loading Video...

Maybe Rolling Stone is the right choice after all...

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CountPickles

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Holy shit, what if Patrick started his own X-Files. Like, a real X-files. Where he investigates aliens and ghosts n'stuff

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Monkeyman04

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Well, we know he's not going to work at Iron Galaxy.

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Sooperspy

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Bet he goes to Austin Walker's Vice Gaming Inc.

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DevourerOfTime

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Didn't see this on the front page until now and nearly had a heart attack.

No Caption Provided

Thankfully, he was just referring to getting people to play Silent Hunter.

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pastor_richards

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#27  Edited By pastor_richards

So, these aren't "big" events. Employees leave and go off to new ventures very regularly. Especially in a small community such as the game industry, trust me. I've been a game dev for a decade now and staying at a company for more then 3 years is considered crazy or unheard of. There is always lots of moving around and getting better opportunities elsewhere. There isn't anything "going on" or any big conspiracy, it's just the nature of the business. And hell, it's not even unheard of in other industries either. It's just a common occurrence that just so happened around the same time. Not a big deal.

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atomicoldman

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Polygon would probably be the best fit for him at this point. Vice Gaming too, I guess.

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hassun

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I just looked up what Glixel was and the way their headlines are written just put me off.

The first word from their current front page:

What

'Dots

'We

Meet

Meet

Why

Why

What

Why

Evo

What's

Why

How

Half

How

Yeeeaaaah it's not great. Those clicks don't come easy I guess.

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Maluvin

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Lots of well-deserved praise for him on twitter right now.

As a side note in the game of "where will Patrick be headed next" it's probably a safe bet that people publicly praising him right now on his next ventures are good indicators of where he won't be headed next. It's the silent ones that probably already know or have a good idea what's next for him.

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Seikenfreak

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/cashslapdown

..my monies on Vice because of Austin.

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personandstuff

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Patrick moving to Vice wouldn't be surprising at all but it probably depends on the type of site Austin is making and if Patrick is willing to move.

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Y2Ken

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@maluvin said:

Lots of well-deserved praise for him on twitter right now.

As a side note in the game of "where will Patrick be headed next" it's probably a safe bet that people publicly praising him right now on his next ventures are good indicators of where he won't be headed next. It's the silent ones that probably already know or have a good idea what's next for him.

This is a good possibility - but at the same time if I'd just hired someone (or knew they were coming to work with me) I'd probably throw them a best wishes message on Twitter too, just to throw off speculation. Gotta play it off as though you're not involved in any way until the new gig is revealed.

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Dixavd

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Fuck. When I took a break from the Internet to avoid Internet speculation on Dan's future, I didn't expect to come back to this. I'm going back to ABZU, the world feels safe there.

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Shindig

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#35  Edited By Shindig

More time to concentrate on youtube, I guess.

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DevourerOfTime

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#36  Edited By DevourerOfTime

@pastor_richards said:

So, these aren't "big" events. Employees leave and go off to new ventures very regularly. Especially in a small community such as the game industry, trust me. I've been a game dev for a decade now and staying at a company for more then 3 years is considered crazy or unheard of. There is always lots of moving around and getting better opportunities elsewhere. There isn't anything "going on" or any big conspiracy, it's just the nature of the business. And hell, it's not even unheard of in other industries either. It's just a common occurrence that just so happened around the same time. Not a big deal.

Yes, you are correct that people shuffling around is very common in the industry. But it seemed like, with people who are relevant to the Giant Bomb community, it's been a wave, not a constant drizzle, since E3. That's what had me shocked. And, to add to it, they are all separate events. It's not like a game just shipped and a bunch of people who worked on it took better opportunities elsewhere.

And, not to diminish what we do (I'm a programmer), but having journalists leave publications is a much bigger event to the public than people shifting from one company to another behind the scenes. Giant Bomb is proof that Games Journalism is, on one level or another, a personality driven business and the public will go where the personalities they like go, for the press is the connection the public has to the industry. Sure, that's not as true as it used to be, as Nintendo has their own people talking about their games on youtube and people trust content creators more and more, but that just speaks to how, those that are left with a piece of the pie on the journalism side have to be more and more personality driven to keep people interested in their work.

Like, just look at your twitter feed (if you have twitter, that is. Don't blame you if you don't...) and see all the people in this industry wishing him luck, from journalists to indie devs to AAA devs to fans.

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Dan_CiTi

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@katygaga: man Peter Brown left? Man GS really is in a tailspin. Also Patrick leaving Kotaku and maybe joining Vice sounds pretty cool! We will see though. It will be nice to get a look at Austin's project reach fruition.

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enemylandlord

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Neat. It would be rad if he did end up going to Vice, an Austin led Klep-cast is something I'd very much like to hear.

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Quarters

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Honestly, for the best. Patrick was too good for Kotaku.

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RVonE

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Didn't Patrick just buy a house in Chicago? I doubt he'll move to NYC.

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pastor_richards

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@devoureroftime: I agree with you, to an extent. People leave sites all the time, it's just the big names that seem to cause a big effect. I just think it's just a weird coincidence, that's all.

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matatat

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That seemed... fast.

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Jonny_Anonymous

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If Patrick joins Austin at Vice I'm leaving with them.

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Gaff

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#44  Edited By Gaff

@rvone: Considering that Vice Gaming's (or soon to be Rival Video Game Website) two fulltime editors are Austin in NY and Mike Diver in the UK (and a host of freelancers all over the place), I think that Patrick could stay in Chicago.

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Lavos

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The post says he was there for 2 years... time sure flies.

@matatat said:

That seemed... fast.

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csl316

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All these people leaving places, are they colluding to start Giant Bomb 2? A subsidiary of Iron Galaxy, I'd guess.

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matatat

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@lavos: Indeed, I feel like it's been a year tops. Two just makes me depressed about life.

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MrWakka

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So, these aren't "big" events. Employees leave and go off to new ventures very regularly. Especially in a small community such as the game industry, trust me. I've been a game dev for a decade now and staying at a company for more then 3 years is considered crazy or unheard of. There is always lots of moving around and getting better opportunities elsewhere. There isn't anything "going on" or any big conspiracy, it's just the nature of the business. And hell, it's not even unheard of in other industries either. It's just a common occurrence that just so happened around the same time. Not a big deal.

For a personality driven site like Giant Bomb it is. People don't come here for the latest in breaking news or hard hitting reviews, they come for the personalities. While Patrick is no longer one of the staff personalities, a continued following of his career is probably to be expected, and combined with the loss of Austin and whatever, if anything, is going on with Dan it isn't surprising this warrants rampant speculation and interest from the community. Let people have their fun being conspiracy theorists if they want to be.

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pastor_richards

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@mrwakka: Oh no no, I'm not relating to anyone leaving the site, I'm just saying multiple people leaving different places at the same time isn't as big or strange as some think.

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OldGuy

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@kasaioni: Good lord that's bizzare!

I'm sure Patrick will wind up somewhere more deserving of his talents... not to say that Kotaku is a wretched hive of scum and villainy - but there is an awful lot of clickbait to wade thru to get to the good stuff...

Or, who knows, maybe he wasn't fully truthful about how much his YouTube empire pulls in...