The vast majority of the ‘gaming journalism’ exist primarily as functionally but not technically subcontracted PR outlets for major gaming companies.
It ‘works’ because there are a bunch of them, and well, they couldn’t all be like that, right?
They all know they are almost entirely replaceable by AI… when was the last time you read any of these kinds of articles, and were truly impressed by the actual writing?
When was the last time any of them did anything approaching investigative journalism? Almost never, instead they just sqwuak and have opinions about when somebody else does that.
… they’re beholden to their ultimate paymasters, and their paymasters are downsizing.
Thus, they all shape up, real fast, to pushing narratives that will aggrandize them to whom they depend on.
It’s basically ‘Yellow Journalism 2.0’… everything is for sale, integrity doesn’t exist, being professionally exasperated and feigning ignorance is a reputational defense mechanism.
(Also, for the etymylogically challenged, no, ‘Yellow Journalism’ is not primarily a racist term, it derives from a time where the concepts of duplicity and cowardice were strongly associated with the color yellow