Game Grump Vs Kotaku

For those who may be unfamiliar there are a group are Let’s Players called the Game Grumps. They are hilarious in every single one of their videos as they team up in pairs and play a series of video games while commenting on the game, life experiences, and a lot of the time just talking nonsense in the hopes of making their gaming partner laugh.

Although their job may sound like a breeze, they post three videos of content every single day while still attending various events, working on side projects, living their normal life, and having a relationship. To say they are hard workers is a severe understatement as they put every fiber of their being into their brand as a way to keep the lights on and entertain their fans. One grump in particular, Ross O’Donovan, who is both an animator and content creator for Game Grumps snatched Mario Maker, a game that allows you to create your own Mario stages, as soon as it came out and during his free time decided to create levels of his own.

The result were some of the hardest levels the gaming community had ever experienced as they were designed to crush you from the very beginning. In order to publish the stage, the creator must first beat it him/herself. Ross, being the brat we all know and love, kept the levels as difficult as possible while also adding secrets in the stage that allowed him to complete the level without much difficulty. A mix of his fame and the quality of levels caused him to skyrocket through the ranks of Mario Maker and become one of the top five in the entire world.

.@RubberNinja You’re 4th worldwide! Now to get rid of that French guy who only does automatics >_> pic.twitter.com/UOJFzdmkFl — Mattchiavelical (@Boettam) September 22, 2015

Continuing his streak of levels we all love to hate was his ‘You Are A Monster’ stage that required you to let a number of Yoshi’s die in order for your continued survival which taunted you at the end, saying: ‘You Are A Monster’ before exiting the level. One Mario maker player decided that he would not stand for this and used all of his gaming skills to complete the stage without killing a single Yoshi. This incredible feat earned him the front page of Reddit and even a response from Ross himself. This was an awesome achievement that all of us Game Grumps and Mario Maker fans rejoice that someone defied the god of torment.

Then Kotaku decided this would be a good article to write for their website, which is fair because it is a great story. However, they chose to not include Ross by name, nor provide the level code and when Ross attempted to comment on this, their broken commenting system of hidden until approved prevented him from letting others know that he was the creator. He took his frustrations to Twitter:

Kotaku covered @_JayHez‘s no kill vid. Not mentioning me by name, just as Mario Maker Troll http://t.co/rxZT70zaVR pic.twitter.com/xL57HEnBLd — Ross O’Donovan (@RubberNinja) October 5, 2015

I am very doubtful they’ll authorize my comment. GG Kotaku. — Ross O’Donovan (@RubberNinja) October 5, 2015

The real problem here is that they didn’t even post the level code or where to find it. — Ross O’Donovan (@RubberNinja) October 5, 2015

Regardless, I guess the short news is: Gaming Blog Trolls post content they found on reddit without researching the context of the news. — Ross O’Donovan (@RubberNinja) October 5, 2015

Eventually, a Kotaku representative was notified and the article was updated with the correct information.

It seems so odd to me that a major geek website like Kotaku would not take a few extra steps to include Ross’ information and even find the level code when I was able to find it in seconds(Google then twitter). They do address that ‘…the video itself mentioned him numerous times.’ however it’s journalism 101 that you include at least basic information about the people involved in the article so readers are more informed. I believe the author knew exactly what they were doing and assumed that the creator would never see the article. Little did they know it was a Grump and the most outspoken one of them all. Thankfully there seemed to be no bad blood between the two.

My friends refer to Kotaku as the Fox News of the geek world, I didn’t want to believe them but with their commenting policies, deliberate lack of credit, and various other reasons, I am starting to believe my friends are on to something…

Be sure to check out Game Grumps! They are awesome folks! (I personally recommend starting on Dog Island or any of the Steam Trains series!)

Try out Ross’s levels!

You are a monster: 0D6C-0000-0049-8B08

