Kotaku hacked by crypto rug-pullers, but for a second I thought G/O Media was even dumber than previously imagined

In a bizarre turn of events, Kotaku’s X/Twitter page today is filled with advertisements for a new crypto coin named after the site today in what seems like a social media hack, despite the brief possibility of it being another business decision from G/O Media.

The posts bear all the hallmarks of a hack. Essentially all of the account’s posts over the last several weeks have been link posts to stories on Kotaku’s website except for today’s, which started advertising a crypto coin before finally posting a link to said coin. Which… yeah, I’m not clicking on that on my computer. Best of luck to you if you did. The link is now down and off the X page, so don’t bother rooting around for it at this point. A post from Kotaku’s Ethan Gach confirmed the social media account was hacked.

And I was 99 percent certain that it was a hack to begin with. But the fact that there was one percent rattling around in my brain that told me this could be some legitimate business enterprise their parent company was trying to start up really speaks to the previous hits of G/O Media, the makers of zombie Deadspin and other internet graveyards.

The posts advertising the crypto coin are still up at time of writing, so it’s unclear if the account is actually back in proper hands at this point. But the idea to try to sell crypto by hacking Kotaku, of all outlets, is one of the more stupid ones I can think of in recent memory.

The account still currently has the posts promising the crypto coin link active on its timeline, so it seems the rightful owners of the account might not have full ownership of it once again even with the link to the crypto coin taken down. But for a brief second, I did get to imagine an old finance guy standing in an office somewhere saying to himself “crypto… yeah, that’s what the gamers want. That’s what Kotaku needs” with all the forethought of the Hawk Tuah woman.