Giant Bomb’s associate producer Abby Russell, and longtime reviewer Jeff Gerstmann, commented on why they decided not to cover Warhorse Studios’ Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

In a forum thread under the Giant Beastcast for episode 144 on February 23rd, 2018 Russell made comments about why she wasn’t going to be playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance and it was because Daniel Vavra, the creative director, supported #GamerGate, writing…

“I can’t speak for the rest of the crew, but I personally have no interest in any way covering or giving further attention to a game made by someone who loudly and openly supports gamergate.”

Giant Bomb founder, Jeff Gerstmann, also gave his two cents on the “Jeff Zone” back on February 21st, 2018, where some eager fans of Giant Bomb asked if they would be covering Warhorse Studios’ Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which sold over a million copies in one week.

Gerstmann explained…

“It didn’t come up during the call-in show yesterday. Saw a few people talking about this off-site and thought it might come in the chat room. “Anyway, a couple of us looked at it around the time it came out and didn’t find it interesting enough to pursue. The head guy’s shitty views certainly don’t help, but I doubt we’d have covered it either way.”

It seems odd that a game, which has collectively generated at least 8% of all the views on this very site over the last 27 days wasn’t “interesting enough” for Giant Bomb.

There’s significant interest and engagement from the community, with the Steam Charts showing that the game peaked at 95,863 users playing consecutively and now averages around 25,000 players a day since its release.

This is quite bizarre given that even during the very busy late summer, early fall rush of AAA games, Giant Bomb had time to review Volition Software’s uninspired Agents of Mayhem on August 22nd, 2017.

What’s the significance of this? Well,The game also only ever peaked at 3,665 players even during its launch, according to Steam Charts.

Agents of Mayhem sold so poorly that Volition was forced to layoff staff.

The game also launched in a month that saw the release of Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, Uncharted: Lost Legacy, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Pillars of Eternity and Sonic Mania just to name a few.

Giant Bomb prioritized an absolute sales dud during a month with major releases back in August of 2017, but had no interest in Kingdom Come: Deliverance even though the only notable new games to come out in February has been Dynasty Warriors 9, EA Sports UFC 3, Shadow of the Colossus Remake and Metal Gear Survive. Most of everything else is either an indie game, a mid-budget title, or a re-release.

Yet despite Kingdom Come: Deliverance being the standout game of February both in terms of sales and user engagement, Giant Bomb still decided to pass it up, ignoring Warhorse Studios’ new IP that was borne from crowdfunding.

Giant Bomb isn’t alone in boycotting proper coverage of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Waypoint also opted to avoid reviewing the game and even made an article, a forum thread and a podcast about why they wouldn’t be giving the game a proper review.

Other sites decided to use their platforms to make a political statement, giving Kingdom Come: Deliverance a low score for being racist.

All of this stems from the fact that Daniel Vavra, the creative director at Warhorse Studios, wanted better ethics in video game journalism and felt that games journalists have been hurting the gaming industry with needless politicking, as pointed out in an interview he had with Techraptor back in 2014.