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.
Why should a full embargo get backlash? They are trying to get input for an understanding, controlled population before unleashing it on a wider public. The whole idea is that the preview is not representative enough to start setting expectations for everyone. But it is far enough along to get the general idea and get feedback to address.
I am constantly testing pretty well known products in advance of their release and they are frequently crap. Like one thing I’m working on hasn’t been able to work at all for a week due to some bugs that something I did triggered and they haven’t provided an update yet. However when they actually are available to the general customers, they are pretty much always solid and get good reviews. If I publicly reviewed it, it could tank this product even though no one could possibly hit most of the stuff that I hit.
A full embargo seems fair. The selective embargo seems like an unfair idea, but also is a bad idea. If everyone knows they are allowed to talk about it, but only the good parts, then people will be speculating on what is not said. One product I tested had someone fanboying so hard about it they were begging the product team to lift the embargo so they could share their enthusiasm. They said no, they didn’t want partially informed internet speculation running until they could address all aspects of the product publicly, and frankly there was too much crappy parts even if he was over the moon over the product and didn’t really use the bad parts.
I suppose I could see being uncomfortable with the “testers” also being the likely “reviewers”, because your are developing to the tastes of specific reviewers and tailoring for a good review in the end even if those reviewers aren’t fully representative of the general population. It’s easier to get a few dozen key influencers happy by catering to them/making them feel special, than releasing a product and hoping you hit their sensibilities.
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.
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.
I actually looked into the game because I didn’t know anything about it and figured I should inform myself a bit.
What makes this whole overreacting raging we are seeing here even more funny and ridiculous is that the game is going to be FTP. So basically, once released, anyone can go and try it out, for free, to see whether or not it’s worth any investment by them.
So, yeah, if someone is offering you to pre-order this game, I definitely suggest you not buy it because they are trying to scam you.
I saw that line and immediately thought “oh ho ho, we have a loophole. This wasn’t a subjective review, it was entirely objective. The game is objectively shit.”
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
Hmm… A perfectly neutral review with a share of the wording from the contract is nothing but factual, and I believe could be argued to be non disparaging?
No, disparaging is disparaging, even if it’s warranted. But, if I were a small streamer who got a key, I would just repeat the non-disparagement clause any time I saw something obviously broken.
They can stop me saying anything negative but that doesn’t cover body language (they might try to sue but they wouldn’t ever be able to prove it to the degree required unless I had posted something like this explanation, and even then it’s dicey), and I don’t see anything in there about a minimum number of positive sentences of words to hit. God help these chucklefucks if they ever run into a Djinni or a cursed monkey’s paw.
It’s one of the reasons that nobody says anything bad about the product that their sponsor provided to them. Either that or people don’t want to ruin their relationship with their sponsors so they will talk highly of a product even if it isn’t good.
The developers of the game had zero input on this. They’re developers; this is a contract which would be written by lawyers, directed by management. The same management who force crunch on the devs you want to blame. Learn to recognise the enemy, please and thanks.
I was in his stream when people sent him the contract they signed just to get the key. Wild. The game is janky looking as fuck so they definitely know how bad it is.
Could be wrong but this does not sound sound outlandish for a alpha. There should be no point to ruin a name/brand before it is out. You should not leave a “review” of a unfinished product.
If the product is unfinished, why is it being released to the public, in any capacity?
If they want to playtest and find bugs in their unfinished product, they should do that. By paying a QA team and playtesters, not by trying to dupe streamers into generating free advertisement.
You have never played an early alpha of a game and signed a NDA to not disclose it I did this with many games the finals, th division heatland, x defient, arc raiders etc. although in this case since there are yt videos and streams seems a little weird. I was uneducated the games I am talking about when I played had watermarks on them and were made for testing etc had no idea the game was like viewable. In this case it looks more like if tarkov or an EA game said you can’t leave reviews.
To clarify yes I fully agree that not ok and didn’t know the full facts.
The Closed Alpha playtest isn’t an invitation to publicly review, it’s an invitation to playtest. They’re trying to gather data and feedback on an inherently feature-incomplete and unpolished game to help with development. There are going to be private channels for feedback and the playtest data itself is like feedback so public channels are redundant. Obviously Marvel is also just trying to dodge criticism, but that’s not a mutually exclusive reason.
Yeah this seems to be something people are missing. These tests sometimes prohibit all reviewing and commenting in their NDAs (including positive ones). It’s a playtest, not a beta, review copy or pre-release.
“Good game, but the company behind it is shit and required me to sign this contract. <Insert contract clause>. Remember this whenever your reading the totally honest reviews about how good the game is.”
When they reach the aspects of the game that they didn’t like they can just say “let’s skip this next part about CTF mode, because I signed a contract” and let the viewers deduce what they deduce.
I think the difference is that those play tests we are thinking of are for lack of other terms locked down. Playtests I have done were not able to be recorded, streamed and had water markers all over the place. In this case people are playing and streaming making videos at that point you should be able to give opinions on the game.
Saying nothing at all is better than only being allowed to say good things and none of the bad. The former doesnt shift opinions in either direction but the latter introduces a pro-buying bias to reviews. Good for the publisher and no one else.
Playtest results inhibit you from disclosing things because they are subject to change. They take gamers’feedback, decide if they want to act on it, and at the end of the day the finished product may look different so it makes no sense for people to loudly state “they have feature X, and they don’t have feature Y” because by release it may be the other way around.
Whereas this type of contract says “idgaf what’s bad about the game, you can only sing its praises online”.
If it’s actually a closed beta then it shouldn’t be open to streamers at all. If are going to allow stream is to play it then it’s not really a closed beta. It’s a marketing gimmick.
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