Bethesda blacklisted Kotaku back in 2015 after they leaked a lot of stuff about their games in the past, including spoiling some of Fallout 4’s story many, many months before its release, as reported by Forbes.

Recently, during the rounds of sending out invites for a preview press event for Prey, a third-party PR firm working for Bethesda mistakenly sent out invitations to Kotaku’s staff, including editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo. When Totilo responded back to confirm a date for the team, they let him know that there were no slots available for Kotaku staff, which seems to fit in line with Bethesda’s continued blackout on providing Kotaku with press privileges.

Huh. Third-party PR invites us to Bethesda game event for Prey last Thursday. I RSVP on Friday. Turns out, no slots available. Go figure. — Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) April 17, 2017

This wasn't for a review event. Just a preview thing, which we wouldn't normally do this close to launch, but were curious about the game. — Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) April 17, 2017

Over on TheGG, they provide a bit more of an in-depth analysis on Totilo’s tweets, as well as the possibility of whether or not Bethesda even sent them invites in the first place.

Even still, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier attempted to laugh it off, re-sharing the tweet with his social media underlings.

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/854091483862978560

Beneath the haughty exterior and jocular manner in which this tweet was made, there appeared to be something broken and longing within Schreier…

Little did he know that Kotaku’s day would become much, much worse.

Polygon’s Ben Kuchera made a sloppy attempt to defend Kotaku after developers began mocking the outlet, but he ended up putting them into the public cross-hairs of further scorn. By proxy, he made Jason Schreier a victim of ridicule. It was almost equivalent to the failed chivalry Jon Lovitz’ character from High-School High attempted in order to save Tia Carrere.

It was in that moment that Jason Schreier realized his pride had been sodomized… by the haphazard writing of Ben Kuchera.

Schreier took to NeoGaf to complain about the Kuchera incident, where he felt as if the Polygon writer had thrown Kotaku under the bus after developers began mocking Schreier and Kotaku. Meanwhile, the gaming social media metaverse chalked it up to another instance of drama that spawned laughs at the expense of both Kotaku and Polygon.

In the end, though, Kotaku suffered a major PR snafu, especially with Polygon throwing them under the bus and then Bethesda seductively teasing them with a PR invite, only for them to then pull the “nope” rug out from underneath them.

The staff at Kotaku probably felt as forlorn as that pitiful high school virgin who gets called over to the house of the really hot cheerleader, only for the cheerleader to tell that said virgin face-to-face… that she’s friendzoning him.

(Thanks for the news tip Senator Armstrong)