On today’s episode of “This shouldn’t be legal”…
Source: https://twitter.com/A_Seagull/status/1789468582281400792
No way they can enforce that. I hope nobody is going to intimidated by this.
This isn’t a “we’ll sue you” clause, it’s a “we’ll never do business with you again” clause
Which is usually unwritten but understood. It’s wild that they put it in writing.
Well normally they just tell you you aren’t allowed to talk about the game period. This is a slightly relaxed position from that stance.
Yes but it still looks bad because it’s saying “you can talk about it, but only if you say nice things”. A full embargo would’ve made more sense and wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows. This current contract leads me to believe it’s a shit game.
Embargoes do get a bit of backlash sometimes, but not nearly enough.
When I am aware they are a huge red flag for me in any case.
these ass hats know what they are risking. they just plan for a “sorry we got caught” apology ready if needed in the hopes that they get away with it.
You might be right. This might not have been a mistake. Some creators in the Twitter thread said that they brought it up ahead of time but the company sent those agreements out as is anyway.
Thanks for the link, just posted it.
It doesn’t feel practical to enforce, save in so far as it lets them put you on a list of people not to extend future early-release games to. But you have to assume they were already doing that, as any marketing department worth its salt is going to have a boutique set of insider streamers who are effectively just contracted media flaks plugging your product.
On today’s episode of “This shouldn’t be legal”…
Think about it this way. The same guys who stream video game reviews to make money are paid by the advertisers who sponsor their streams. And the sponsor won’t pay for a stream if its disparaging of their content. So the streamer is being paid to cut an ad.
Imagine if you hired someone to go door-to-door selling people your sandwiches. And in the middle of each sales call the guys you hired would take a big bite, spit out the sandwich, and say “This is awful! I hate it!” What are you paying these asshole for?
Just stop pretending streamers are these independent objective observers and recognize them for what they are - online door-to-door sales guys. These early releases are just their sales kits. And why am I going to extend a sales kit to a guy who isn’t going to sell my shit?
My first thought is: This is probably a shitty game because if it was good, they wouldn’t be worried.
They are probably concerned because management has decided that the game should be shown off even though it’s probably not ready. This is that kind of clouged together solution.
As per usual it just seems to have blown up in their gormless faces.
It did say “subjective negative reviews”. I would take that to mean that strictly objective negative reviews are perfectly acceptable.
This is so stupid. Isn’t this a free-to-play game? With one-time-purchase games you can try to fool people, then take your money and leave while people complain about the game behind you.
But this is a free-to-play game, they intend to make money by gradual ongoing revenue from in-game purchases, etc. You can’t fool people who are actively playing the game.
The contract hurts their image, and prevents them from receiving critical feedback.
Does the contract also require a review to be made at all?
This is market manipulation at its best. The whole board should be jailed for it.
This is market manipulation at its best.
yes
The whole board should be jailed for it.
no
no
Yes
No
Maybe
so
“I signed a contract that forbids me from saying anything negative about this game. I am therefore contractually obligated to say nothing”
This game doesn’t ruin your entire day by playing it for even a second.
Not bootlicking, just reading the letter of the law. I read this more as “don’t be a total dick about it” so I’d love to hear a contract attorney’s take on this.
I sort of saw it that way, but the last bit about “subjective negative reviews” seems unusual even for contracts.
There’s enough lazy rage bait “Turns out X is DOGSHIT?!?” videos out there that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to put some terms in expecting some professional effort. But disallowing even polite criticisms definitely seems too far.
The opinion of what is and isnt “subjective” is up for a lot of debate even if you dont personally have a major stake in a videogame’s marketing campaign (such as the authors and enforcers of these contracts).
??? There’s nothing in this wording that implies anything more than “don’t negatively review us”
There’s nothing in this wording that implies anything more than “don’t negatively review us”
It’s says subjective negative reviews. it seems if you say “It kept crashing” or “this feature wasn’t working” or “this feature was super bugged” those aren’t subjective.
All reviews are subjective by definition. Your examples are observations, not reviews. A review is my opinion of the product based on my experience. Like honestly, if you ever wrote a review about anything on Steam, or IMDB, or GoodReads or whatever, go find it and remove everything that’s subjective and see what you’ll end up with. Not like you’d be able to post it, because they require you give a score, which is inherently subjective.
There’s nothing in the definition of review that requires it to be subjective. It’s shocking that you didn’t even stop to look it up to first figure out if this is accurate.
I did and it does. For example the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary defines review as:
a critical evaluation
Whereas evaluation is defined as:
determination of the value, nature, character, or quality of something or someone
It’s subtle, but it’s in there. The examples you gave don’t fall under this definition, as they don’t determine anything, they’re just statements of facts. However the statement “this game is shit” is a determination of quality and thus a review. If you just stop for a moment and think about it, you’ll realise that it is impossible to determine the quality of a video game in a purely objective way.
The content creator agrees not to make public comments that are detrimental to the reputation of the game
Sounds pretty clear-cut, if you say anything bad about the game regardless of if it’s true or not then you’re in violation of this contract. That’s ridiculous.
They’re are actually saying you can’t criticize the game. Now, you tell me who is the arbiter of what is and isn’t “criticism”, because it never says constructive criticism isn’t criticism so presumably is also not allowed.
They saw what MKBHD’s honest reviews did to Fisker and Humane and said “can we stop that from happening?”
I’m assuming it’s with regards to the Play Test which is in very early stages and shouldn’t be judged as completed. Seems fair enough if it’s nowhere near complete
This is being blown out of proportion. These sorts of terms are pretty standard for a closed playtest, as it doesn’t represent the final product and the developers don’t want reviews to be published criticising things that will likely be fixed for the release version.
I hope there is a bunch of really sarcastic positive reviews, listing everything they hate about the game as if it’s what they really love about the game.
It’s a mobile game from NetEase. I think it’s a excellent opportunity to be a madlad and review it like that because fuck them.
Aww boo hoo I can’t review any more of their shitty gacha games?
The ToS forbids satirical reviews. I’d start a review by reading out this portion of the ToS and then make a list of things I hate, just saying I’m not allowed to talk about this aspect of the game, or this aspect of the game, etc, etc.
Judges are smarter than that. So are juries.
A judge would probably throw this out long before it went to a jury.
It must be a REALLY good game. Only the best games that were already going to get high reviews would ever resort to such a policy
