Tag: Bad Press

Bad Press: The Internet Falls For Another Con Artist [Fortnite Edition]


The internet has a such a vibrant imagination.

For those of you healthy adults who don’t follow Fortnite news, Epic yesterday was accused of stealing artwork and using it as a cosmetic costume in their battle royale shooter. The tweet highlighting the claim showcased a Deviant Art user’s creation submitted September 2018 compared to the Fortnite model released in November of the same year. Taken at face value, the models look very similar, almost too similar to not be a coincidence.

Here at MMO Fallout, I pride myself very highly on my BS detector. It came at a very high price, my eternal soul which upon my death will be stored in a garage in Buffalo. Not all too different from my living soul. This gift has come in very handy as in MMO Fallout’s nine years of existence, I have had to correct perhaps one or two pieces in total while breaking some stories that were later confirmed by third parties as genuine and preliminarily offering my doubts to numerous other stories that turned out to be fake.

So when yesterday’s story started hitting that Epic Games was being accused of plagiarism of a Deviant Art…artist, my detector shattered six coffee mugs and bolted down the street singing Queen. Maybe it’s the difficult task of taking seriously a person whose username comes from a television show for toddlers. Maybe it’s because Deviant Art is a bastion of plagiarism under the guise of “this is my OC character, plz donut steal.” Perhaps I just found it very hard to believe that an Epic Games artist would look at this drawing and think “I need to rush this into production yesterday,” funneling the skin from original post to seeing it to designing a knockoff to modeling to testing to release all within two months. That’s an artist with pull.

That could be it. It could also be that I’m aware of Deviant Art allowing people to change photos without altering the “user submitted” date. Such as with this 2009 creation.

The story didn’t fool many people outside of the reactionary Youtube news vlogger circuit, but it did manage to snag the attention and coverage of none other than Forbes Magazine. And why not? Their coverage of the faux-controversy has gathered nearly 140,000 views as of this publishing, far more than discussion of The Walking Dead, Fear The Walking Dead, and the Epic Chinese Avengers poster. Web hosting doesn’t come cheap, folks, and clickbait doesn’t have time for verifying your facts. If you think about it, the fact that the accusation happened is news in and of itself. Basic investigative skills are for nerds like Twitter user Ding Dong who decided to check the website’s cached version and found that the art was swapped. Maybe Forbes should hire Ding Dong instead.

Perhaps the other side of this coin is the general habit of the public to immediately believe anything bad about an individual/entity that they don’t personally like. This claim was instantly believed by large swaths of the internet because Epic did a thing and made a game they wanted exclusive, so why wouldn’t this no-good scumbag literally-Hitler company steal artwork from an innocent 13 year old? It boggles the mind to think that a company you don’t personally care for wouldn’t be guilty of every half-baked accusation that gets laid out over Twitter.

But of course that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Bad Press: No, NDTV, Civilization VI Isn’t Milking Its Users For Data


Civilization VI has become the latest Steam title to play victim to review bombing, and players are incredibly unhappy about recent changes to the game’s End User Licence Agreement. But are they correct in their conclusions? It doesn’t seem so.

The gist of the controversy seems to be coming from this particular extension of the EULA:

“The information we collect may include personal information such as your first and/or last name, e-mail address, phone number, photo, mailing address, geolocation, or payment information. In addition, we may collect your age, gender, date of birth, zip code, hardware configuration, console ID, software products played, survey data, purchases, IP address and the systems you have played on. We may combine the information with your personal information and across other computers or devices that you may use.”

It sounds bad, even disturbing if you’re Rishi Alwani writing for NDTV without doing the bare minimum research. You might for instance find out that the quote above doesn’t appear anywhere in Civilization VI’s EULA which Alwani has presumably not even bothered to read or cross-check for accuracy, because if he did he would have found that it doesn’t exist. He might also have found that the last update for the End User License Agreement he is quoting a false version of, was in January 2018. The quote he’s taking as proof of the EULA is citing an old review from last year as well.

It might also have stopped Alwani from making the embarrassingly reckless if not slanderous claim linking the “new” (January 2018) EULA to the notion that Take Two is “milk[ing] its existing user base,” and that this deplorable action is somehow turning Civ VI into spyware to collect on some investments. I’ll throw some calendar knowledge down on Rishi; January 2018 is in fact not one week after February 2019.

“With its earnings call taking place last week before the change to Civilization VI’s EULA, it is possible that its below expectations performance has resulted in a move to milk its existing user base as much as possible. That said, it is deplorable that despite shifting over 17 million units of Red Dead Redemption 2 in under weeks, Take Two still thinks it’s not making enough to keep it or its investors happy, perhaps playing a part in turning Civilization VI into spyware.”

In short, Alwani didn’t bother (1) fact checking anything and (2) didn’t even verify the date of the post he was quoting as though it was official. Don’t quit your day job, Rishi, unless this is your day job in which case you might want to read up about how defamation covers statements made with reckless disregard for facts.

“[r]eads the new EULA for Civilization VI.” No it doesn’t. There is no new EULA. This article falls over itself so hard to try and create a controversy that I thought it worth calling out directly. Where the text does appear is the Take Two privacy policy, and Alwani’s posting of the text leaves out a very important preface that this information corresponds to data gathered through voluntary activity. (click on photo to enlarge)

The personal information that is collected by this policy is in reference to voluntary acts. When you sign up for services, websites, jobs, purchase DLC, post on the forums, respond to surveys, request technical support, download demos, etc, you’re going to voluntarily give information along the lines of your contact info, games you play, your purchases, your PC specs, mailing address, etc, and various other personal information. While playing the games themselves, they are also aggregating information like your achievements, scores, performance, etc. Very basic info.

By the way, the privacy policy was last updated in May 2018, so Alwani is lying both on where the text comes from and when it was added.

Ultimately it’s not some clandestine intelligence gathering operation that you’re agreeing to, nor is it Firaxis or Take Two digging their greedy little hands into your computer to try and find some personal data to sell. Steam user Panic Fire does a great job of explaining why the blowback is undeserved (full text here):

“The “EULA” everyone keeps posting is actually Take 2’s privacy policy and not actually found in the EULA for this game. (Crazy I know) And take 2’s privacy policy covers everything take2 does from Running a forum, technical support, selling products (aka games to you), and all sorts of other things. The points to take home is that all the information gatherd by Take2 in this case are things you directly tell them or that they use to facilitate a direct service to you. (EX giving them your name and credit card information to facilitate an online purchase) Edit: The Privacy policy hasn’t changed since last May and the EULA since Last January.”

You can find Take Two’s EULA here, including all of the details you need to know about what personal information is collected and how. If you don’t want Take Two to get their mitts on your information, your best method is not filling out surveys for their products. If you want to read the actual facts, I suggest avoiding Rishi Alwani’s coverage.

Bad Press: The Curious Case Of Anthem And Stream Bans


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox_jqLsH8g8

For today’s bad press, I’m going to single out a certain Youtuber who goes by The Quartering even though he isn’t the only offender here.

In case you haven’t been paying attention to Youtube drama news over the past couple of days, an incident occurred last week after a user began streaming alpha footage of Anthem, the upcoming game by Electronic Arts. Anthem is still under a nondisclosure agreement, meaning anyone playing it is not allowed to talk about it or show it to the general public. These NDAs are very common in the gaming industry both for official testers and members of the press. I am personally under at least one NDA at any given time, usually in regards to timed press releases.

In this specific case, a number of Twitch users clipped a stream in which the user is booted from Anthem only to find that not only has EA revoked his copy of Anthem, but that his entire library is just gone. More interesting, it didn’t seem that the user’s account was banned, but just that his library was emptied by EA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tLaf-SjpeA

Cue the outrage, dial up the EA hate squad, and tell my wife I won’t be coming home for dinner. An unknown user has posted video of an unverified story with unfounded accusations and generally no real evidence to back up the claim. When has anyone ever lied on the internet? Why wouldn’t it make sense for EA to just wipe an account with no warning or notification, instead of simply banning the player? Did anyone receive confirmation that the guy even owned any games on the account? Did anyone follow up with the streamer? Did anyone follow up with Electronic Arts? Did anyone do any critical thinking or investigation whatsoever?

But the pesky concept of facts and evidence didn’t stop Youtube channels like The Quartering and the internet’s dramasphere from jumping on the drama with an overblown and arguably reckless disregard for the truth, with the headline “EA STEALS Players Entire Collection Over Anthem Alpha Stream!” What games did the user lose? I’m sure Jeremy can’t tell you and hasn’t performed any actual research outside of reading an article he found online. He even reads in the video that it is possible that Anthem was the sole item in the user’s library but continues regardless with the baseless accusation that EA STOLE from him.

I’m singling out The Quartering mostly because of Jeremy’s consistent advertisement of an Indiegogo campaign for Exclusively Games, a service that he is launching in order to get the politics out of games and focus on the games journalism. The campaign claims to be tired of “the same BS Hot Takes from our existing options in terms of video game news,” and yet here’s Jeremy. Making BS Hot Takes, putting out conclusive headlines with no real evidence. Imagine if he had, say, checked the user’s stream and was able to find a clip where it showed prior to entering the game that there were no games in the user’s account?

None of this changes the fact that EA would be within their rights to ban the user’s account for violating the nondisclosure agreement, and that an account ban would be the least of the person’s worries depending on the terms of the contract. But hey, everyone hates EA right now. Why bother putting in the basic amount of research or verifying the facts when few people are going to come to their defense?

Is this the kind of integrity that $68 grand buys?

Bad Press: Disappointed With Diablo? You Are Toxic and Hate Women


The next Diablo game has been announced and this is only the second time that Blizzard is playing damage control. Yesterday at BlizzCon, Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal, a mobile spinoff set in the franchise universe between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. The game will be coming to Android and iOS devices, with pre-registration already open as of this article’s publishing.

Needless to say, the crowd was not amused after Blizzard revealed the title, and it looks like the developer was caught heavily off guard by the overwhelmingly negative response. The BlizzCon announcement was met with heavy booing from the crowd, several sarcastic questions during the Q&A (“Is this an April Fool’s joke?”), with Blizzard’s reps eventually shouting at the crowd. The Youtube videos have been heavily downvoted with the cinematic trailer sitting at 227k downvotes to 7.6k upvotes, and Blizzard went as far as to reupload the trailer in an apparent effort to reset the like/dislike ratio.

But this wouldn’t be a Bad Press article without examining how certain members of the games media have used this as an excuse to show their contempt for gamers, like Gamespot’s Mike Mahardy who in response to the April Fool’s joke stated:

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Don’t be too harsh on Mike, his company has bills to pay and the Blizzard advertising coffers are enormous. Madeleine Rose over at J!nx, where you can buy hundreds of Blizzard-branded products at a fantastic markup ($70 for a Diablo III hoodie), was astonished and grossed by the “entitlement” of the community.

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IGN’s Sean Finnegan went on the offensive, calling gamers the “most cynical, toxic, and entitled fandom in all of entertainment.” Sean fights for the users, just not the ones who don’t like the products made by the guys who advertise for the website he gets a paycheck from.

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Over at Mashable, the website for superfans and not for the casually curious, Adam Rosenberg penned the Op-Ed “Diablo Immortal controversy is really just entitled gamers shouting,” where he proceeds to call gamers assholes for not responding positively to the announcement. (Archived link to article)

“A segment of the Blizzard fan community is mad because of some stupid bullshit they’ve manufactured entirely out of their own ignorance. That “April Fool’s joke” guy was an asshole for asking that question. And if you’re holding that guy up as some kind of a hero, or even just attacking Blizzard for making something you’re not into, you’re an asshole too.”

Mashable’s Kellen Beck responded to a self-described tantrum by throwing a tantrum with an op-ed titled “Diablo Immortal is actually fun, you entitled babies.”

“From what I saw and played, Diablo Immortal is a fun, quality Diablo game that retains that special something that makes the franchise so special. You don’t have to play it, but whining online makes you sound like a literal infant.”

Professional public relations account director Will Powers (formerly DeepSilver and Playstation)

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Thankfully there are plenty of members of the press taking a level headed approach and actually discussing the game itself. Polygon’s Ryan Gilliam wrote “Diablo: Immortal feels like a Diablo game, just not one that’s for me.” Owen S. Good of the same Polygon wrote a piece noting concern that the game is being developed by NetEase and looks a lot like a reskin of another one of NetEase’s mobile titles. James over at IGN posted a hands-on noting that the controls are intuitive, the dungeons are impressive with more complicated bosses, however characters do not show armor changes in this development build and there is no resource pool.

A number of photos have circulated of the Diablo: Immortal booth at BlizzCon being virtually disregarded with hardly anyone in line or using the demo units.

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Of course, this is just a small snippet of what can be found on the web. It’s always good to have a reminder of how quickly some people in the press get angry when customers don’t just shut up and get excited about products.