For you gamers out there reading our blog who don’t also visit Kotaku.com regularly, you should! These guys have shown themselves to have real journalistic/bloggeristic integrity this week. For those of you that missed out, here’s a blow-by-blow account of what will one day doubtlessly be known as “The Playstation Home Fiasco”

For a few weeks, Phil Harrison had been talking about how the PS3 news to be presented at the GDC would make gamers “very happy”. Around this time, Kotaku starts hearing from “sources” rumors that Phil’s big announcement will be Playstation Home, described as fellows:

Basically, you get to make an avatar for your console (like a Mii) and this avatar has a room. As you play games and accomplish certain tasks, you will receive items with which to adorn the room that are specific to the game (achievements). The kicker is that this is going to be a new requirement for every PS3 game.

Before posting this story, Kotaku asked Sony if they had any comment. Instead of just replying with a standard, coy “Sony does not comment on rumors and speculation”, the reply this time was “post that story and you won’t enjoy the consequences”. So, being the good journalists that they are, Kotaku ran the story.

Well, this evidently went and made some folks at Sony very mad (thus only adding to the veracity of the rumor), and Sony decided that they would no longer deal with Kotaku. In fact, Sony dis-invited Kotaku from all future exclusive events, and asked for their PS3 dev kit back. Then the uproar REALLY began. Joystiq, noting that this meant the rumors were obviously true, reported on how Sony was blackballing Kotaku, a story that got some serious diggs.

In the end, Kotaku and Sony kissed and made-up, but I think Sony learned a valuable lesson about treating their bloggers right. Next time, let’s just keep people salivating with a standard “we don’t comment on rumors” reply, OK Sony? It’ll save everyone a lot of grief.