Gaming news and PR- can one man run both at the same time? This is a question raised on Ars Technica based on some investigation of gaming site GameCyte by Joystick Division that uncovered what may constitute conflicts of interest. It turns out that GameCyte is owned by the same individual who owns TriplePoint, a public relations firm that works with, yup, the game industry. Former and current employees of the PR side also operate as "journalists" on the gaming site, and their gaming coverage has includes current PR clients like EA and Nyko and former client Telltale Games, a company in which TriplePoint owner Richard Kain is an investor. Joystick Division interviews Kain, who both acknowledges the appearance, and denies the existence, of conflict of interest, defends this situation by citing other cases that could be considered conflicts as well. As a result of these investigations, GameCyte now offers better disclosure of these potential conflicts. The question of how much potential conflict of interest is acceptable in the world of gaming news coverage is an interesting one as more big players get involved, for example, MTV now develops games and has a gaming blog and Fox owns both IGN and GameSpy, two sites that review games that use GameSpy middleware and are sold via IGN's Direct2Drive. This is a serious topic around here: When loonyboi first joined on back in the old days to make this a site with a staff, we established a firm policy prohibiting anyone here from being an investor in any game-related stocks.