Tag: Press

Activision Lawsuit Spurs Press Boycott


Several outlets have already announced ending coverage.

Continue reading “Activision Lawsuit Spurs Press Boycott”

Bad Press: Saudi Arabia Did Not Ban 47 Games Over Child Suicides


If you’ve been reading the news this week, you may have come across a story that the Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media has banned a list of 47 video games following the suicide deaths of a 13-year old girl and 12-year old boy. You might be more confused by the fact that the two were playing the “Blue Whale” social media game and not a video game at all, let alone one on the list of banned titles. The news piece caught me by surprise as I was fairly certain that I had read about games like Yo Kai Watch and Okami being banned in Saudi Arabia years ago.

Your confusion would be well founded, because much like the Blue Whale game itself, this appears to be a case of fake news with patient zero as none other than the Associated Press. Other than the AP’s claim that the ban list was associated with the Blue Whale Game, there has been no confirmation and the AP article even admits that the agency did not specify a connection. If you try to check local Saudi news on a new video game ban wave, you won’t find anything.

Thankfully the crack investigative team at MMO Fallout was able to get their hands on a list of prohibited games dating back to June 2017, showing that not only is the AP report incorrect, but that the conclusion it leads to is rather easily fact checked. Through the power of the Web Archive (please excuse the slow servers), you can view the list of prohibited titles published in June 2017. The list includes numerous titles that are on the current list: Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6, Yo Kai Watch, God of War, Assassin’s Creed, etc.

Unfortunately the web archive only goes back to 2017 for the Saudi website, but it is evidence enough that the AP’s report on the General Commission is inaccurate. MMO Fallout is not the first to bring this to light, as Ubisoft’s head of communications and localization for the Middle East took to Twitter to call out the Associated Press and request a retraction on the article. The AP report is still up as of this publishing, as are most of the websites that source their news stories from the AP.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Among the press that carried this coverage, Nick Santangelo over at IGN pointed out that there are no secondary sources for the AP’s claim. Games Industry has fully retracted their article. None of the other press websites at this time appear to have altered or retracted their coverage.

[Column] Mobile Legends Threatens The Press, Good Luck With That


Riot Games is currently suing Moonton over alleged copyright infringement in regards to their game Mobile Legends. I’m going to reiterate that last statement because Moonton apparently doesn’t want me to tell you this: Moonton is currently being sued in court over alleged copyright infringement regarding Mobile Legends allegedly ripping off League of Legends. Those of you who are interested in reading up on the lawsuit, filed in California, can do so here. If you don’t feel like sifting through 44 pages of legal documents, I’ll be running an In Plain English article summarizing the charges. There are plenty of photos comparing the two games to gawk at, so I recommend taking a look.

The part of this lawsuit that caught my eye is that Moonton needs to read up on the free press and the definition of slander, because the company has posted a threat to the media reporting on this lawsuit: Stop, or potentially face intimidation through legal threats. Moonton posted the below statement on their Facebook page calling the stories “unreal,” and “rumors,” albeit refusing to go into detail on either aspect. For their part, Moonton has explicitly denied all claims of infringement, which can also be read in the statement below. The lawsuit is real, for a case that will occur in a real court in the real state of California.

The lawsuit notes that Riot Games had initially gone through Google and Apple to remove the app from both stores, alleging that Moonton simply changed its name, made minor changes, and put the game back on the store.

Most notably, after Riot discovered Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA and notified Google that the game was infringing, Moonton purported to remove the game from the Google Play store. But that was simply a subterfuge. Immediately after removing Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA, Moonton (without notifying Riot or Google) released a “new” game, Mobile Legends: Bang bang. However, Mobile Legends: Bang bang was not a new game at all, but in fact was the exact same game as Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA, with some modest changes. This ploy of “hide the ball” was part of Moonton’s deliberate business strategy, designed to hamper Riot’s ability to protect its intellectual property.

Winning a defamation lawsuit in the United States would be incredibly difficult. It requires that the plaintiff prove that the allegations are false (a nonstarter in this case, as the lawsuit is very real) and that the author knew that the statements were false and can prove material damage related to said statements. In cases of lawsuits, the press can’t be sued for writing about a lawsuit, provided the author isn’t making their own conclusions, and represents the allegations as just that (charges, not convictions). Moonton can’t sue the press for reporting on the allegations made by Riot Games and win, not in the states anyway.

More on this lawsuit to come.

Nexon Acquires Unannounced Game


Nexon has acquired the worldwide publishing rights for the first born video game of First Strike, which may lead to some MMO Fallout readers asking “well what’s the game?” Patience, my children, as the game hasn’t been announced yet. Formed last year, First Strike is a new on the scene developer composed of developers from 343 Industries, EA, and more.

More details will be announced later this year.

“We are super focused on competitive multiplayer games at First Strike,” said Kevin Franklin, CEO, First Strike Games.  “In Nexon, we found a partner who has truly understood the gameplay we are exploring, has embraced our company vision and has contributed great ideas and expertise. We are looking forward to making amazing games together.”

(Source: Nexon press release)