Company gets account banned from beta.
If I published a Bad Press article every time the gaming press did something stupid, I’d have no time to write about anything else here. Today’s piece comes to us from The Verge who have probably just gotten themselves blacklisted by at least a couple of publishers.
Sean Hollister published a review of Valve’s upcoming shooter Deadlock. If you don’t know about Deadlock, it’s a game that Valve has yet to officially recognize exists despite tens of thousands of people playing it in the beta at any given time. The beta itself is under a sort of NDA, in that the game says “do not share anything with the game about anyone” when you boot it up for the first time.
In their review of Deadlock, the author spends time somewhat gleefully pointing out that they probably aren’t breaking an NDA because instead of clicking okay they just hit the escape key.
Valve evidently disagreed because Sean’s account was banned shortly after the article was posted.
Did The Verge violate a legal NDA? Probably not. But it’s a sad display of unprofessionalism for Sean to parade about in the article itself about how he’s not technically violating an NDA.
The Verge’s senior editor Tom Warren has been reposting comments on Twitter all day doubling down on supporting the outlet’s lack of professional conduct. Interestingly Warren has decided to disable replies on these posts, almost as if he doesn’t have the strength of his own conviction against pretty heavy disagreement.
Warren (or someone else at The Verge) also spent a good deal of time between Monday and Tuesday hiding replies simply pointing out that their manner of handling the NDA was unprofessional.
Also points to Wardens Rising for using this as an opportunity to advertise their game.
Whatever the consequences of Sean’s unprofessional article and Tom’s eagerness to defend it (with the comments turned off of course), The Verge seems happy to accept them. Unless it’s criticism on Twitter, in which case Tom will go out of his way to block and hide it.
In an era where the games press are getting laid off in massive numbers and longstanding outlets are closing down, with trust in the games press being at an all time low, the decision to publish this article and the following combativeness with critics seems like a stupid idea. But what do I know.
Until next time.
MMO Fallout 