This past August throughout the shutting down of the forums and all the chaos surrounding the purging of the old audience from Destructoid, the gaming website has done something that many people probably didn’t see coming: they updated their ethics policy… again.

Within the past week review editor Chris Carter made an amendment to Destructoid’s clear-as-day ethics policy [backup] that was originally put into place last year on September 4th, 2014 by former editor-in-chief Dale North. As some of you may know, North resigned last October after the allegations surfaced of an attempted blacklist of former games journalist Allistar Pinsof.

In the ethics policy update that was put into place August 5th, 2015, Chris Carter writes…

“[…] we’ve also made an effort to retroactively pursue disclosures, as is the case with this review of Oddworld after learning that a staff member, who was hired after we reviewed the game, was involved with the production as a voice”

The Oddworld review that Carter is referring to was originally published on July 21st, 2014 [backup]. It was written by Chris Carter, however they note in the disclosure that Destructoid staff member Zack Furniss had contributed a voice to the game, as indicated in the image below.

The new policy from Destructoid to retroactively make disclosures means that gamers know exactly who was involved with a game’s production and who was involved with someone on a personal level regarding the development studio or the publisher.

The ethics policy update comes just ahead of the August 15th, Society of Professional Journalists AirPlay event (Disclosure: I was on the committee to help organize the panelists), which will deal with some of the most egregious ethical violations that have been committed by games journalists throughout the years.

While Destructoid seems to be going through some very serious growing pains, they at least appear to be making changes to appease the crowd who feels as if gaming websites should be more accountable in the way they handle disclosure, working relationships and transparency.

Destructoid isn’t alone in this evolutionary step in ethical behavior. Hardcore Gaming 101 [backup] also recently added a disclosure to their The Consuming Shadow review, where they reveal that one of the producers of the game also contributed to Patreon of the reviewer. That move garnered them some kudos from the #GamerGate watchdog hub, Kotaku In Action.

The media can falsely scream about #GamerGate being a harassment campaign all day long but at the end of the day it’s the ethics policies and disclosures that will win back the hearts and minds of hardcore gamers and the denizens of #GamerGate.

[Thanks anon, for the tip]