It was a prominent part of the debate when the first YouTuber payola stories broke last year over Battlefield 4.
Aszurom
2895
Any idea how far back I have to go to see it? This thread?
I was debating with my wife if it was legit payola since youtube isn’t a limited number of channels that broadcast, so it doesn’t prevent competition. However, since I just found that FTC makes it abundantly and specifically clear about “amature endorsement” then I think any argument about “I’m not a journalist, so that doesn’t apply to me” about payola is straight out the window.
I went hunting after she and I went around about it over dinner, and that was the result. So, does that mean if pewdiepie or totalbiscuit or whoever takes cash for prioritization of broadcasting a certain product and doesn’t clearly announce “I got paid to stream this sooner” that they’re subject to FTC complaint and investigation?
Additionally, does this mean that every blogger should say “I got this game sent to me” or “I bought it with my own money” on every preview/review? Sure seems so to me.
Saying how you got a game for review is good practice in general. If you receive any financial compensation from a publisher or developer that should be disclosed when covering their game no matter what it is supposedly “for”. And not just a tiny note at the end of the YouTube video description that is hidden unless the user clicks the link to expand it. I don’t remember if the topic got it’s own thread, but you could try looking in the 2013 journalism thread.
Has this ever been done in the history of games journalism? I think everyone knows reviewers get the games for free.
Junkets and sketchy paid-promo videos are another story.
Yes. Lots of reviews have a note at the end saying if the game was sent by the publisher or purchased outright.
From the end of Polygon’s CoD:AW review this week:
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was reviewed in part at an event held by Activision in Sausalito, California, from Oct. 20-22, using debug Xbox One consoles and pre-release code, as well as a retail Xbox One copy provided later by Activision. You can find additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.
From the end of Joystiq’s CoD:AW review:
This review is primarily based on the retail Xbox One version of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, provided by Activision. The multiplayer portion of this review was conducted at a multi-day review event, held by Activision at Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, California. Joystiq paid for its own travel to the event daily in order to play multiplayer. Joystiq did not make use of the hotel rooms provided to other reviewers for lodging and to evaluate the single-player game. The review author completed the single-player campaign at home and tested multiplayer connectivity on regular servers.
Aszurom
2899
Interestingly…
Shovel Knight was reviewed using code provided by Yacht Club Games. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
That’s from back in June… way pre-GG, so it’s not just a post-GG reaction from them. Which is comforting.
es. Lots of reviews have a note at the end saying if the game was sent by the publisher or purchased outright.
It’s much more common in cases where the review was done under special circumstances, like at a publisher event, or on special pre-release servers. You do see it some places simply when they’ve been given a press copy for free, but it’s much less common.
Also, I’d like to point out that the FTC code quoted above isn’t entirely on point when it comes to actual Youtuber payola, though arguably it is part of the same spectrum of behaviour. The point of the FTC rules is to put bloggers on a similar ethical/legal playing field to traditional reviewers, where there’s an expectation of review copies/items being given by publishers/manufacturers. Nobody expects Top Gear to buy all the cars it reviews, say. With blogs in particular, that’s often not so clear (obviously it depends on the particular blog - the audience of ones that specialise in movie or game reviews probably do expect that the blogger hasn’t paid). The rules came about because of numerous instances where the bloggers had posted covert reviews for products given to them without any disclosure as if they were just ordinary posts about a product they’d stumbled upon. I’d argue that the likes of Total Biscuit or Pewdiepie are far closer to the traditional reviewers, in terms of audience expectations around review copies, than they are to some random blogger who also reviews games given to her for free. Arguably the professional Youtubers don’t need (in the FTC’s eyes) to disclose free review copies.
There’s a huge difference between that and actual payola (or other conditionality) around favourable reviews. That’s clearly unethical and in many cases quite possibly illegal, If for some reason you do it, it should always be clearly disclosed up front, no matter who you are.
Aleck
2902
Legally binding? No. Pointing out something that’s been pooh poohed by the ethics in journalism youtubers? Yes.
Although, to be fair, most of the print/web/non-video game reviewer types don’t seem to disclose that they get copies of the games they review for free, either.
You could look at military training? They use ‘software’ these days also.
Also, note that the example given in the FTC bit is for a free game system, which “given the value” of the system may be construed by the audience as having influenced the blogger’s review. We all remember the “Everyone here is getting a new Xbox 360!” moment at E3 2010.
LMN8R
2905
Polygon’s ethics policy has been in place since the site first launched more than two years ago. It’s available here:
To be fair, it was updated when it came out that one of their writers did actually share an apartment with a game dev that she wrote about in multiple articles. It was also updated to address Patreon contributions that some of their staff were making to indie devs as well.
Personally, I don’t think there was much issue with both instances… Well, okay the writer living with the subject wasn’t great, but compared to payola for coverage, it’s a molehill.
The Giant Bomb podcast actually had a lengthy segment on this for their Tuesday (11/4) edition. Basically, what they concluded with was that same-day reviews were generally best for both the publishers and the review sites… and probably the consumers as well:
It’s good for the review sites because the vast majority of their hits on the reviews came from people on Day 1 or 2 trying to decide whether to buy the game now that it’s released (this was regardless of how long the review had been up previously). Additionally, “forcing” the review site to wait until the day-of or day-before release tended to give them time to more properly review/test the multiplayer components, since those aren’t set up beforehand.
It’s good for the publisher/developer because if they allow the release of the reviews (say) a week earlier, then the hype tends to die down and the reviews will fall off the sites’ front pages. Which would be bad for them. And as noted above, the early reviewers will tend to have to hand-wave at stuff like multiplayer… and if your main draw is multiplayer, you certainly don’t want that.
The Giant Bomb guys also poo-pooed the idea that enforcing an embargo was a sign that a publisher wanted to suppress bad reviews. They essentially said that’s the case ONLY if the publisher never sends out review copies beforehand at all.
From the publisher standpoint, reviews hitting before your game is available in a territory sucks because you want people who read the review to be able to go buy the game right away. Introducing any sort of time delay lowers the number of sales you get out of it.
From the journo standpoint, I’ve been there. As soon as reviews are out, all you’re doing is losing views if some weird AU/NZ/JP/RU/KR site has their review up and you don’t.
prolix
2909
Unbelievably, this thread is actually about ethics in game journalism. Good work everyone.
I literally LOL’d. Well done.
LMN8R
2911
Sure, but if the complaint is about disclosing review events and paying for games, that’s been there all along.
Rev3 Games ist kaput.
http://revision3.com/games
Once Sessler left, it was inevitable.
Alstein
2913
Do good reviews lead to sales, or do bad reviews lead to lower sales, or both?
I know in my case, reviews are something I generally try to get from forums instead of reviewers, since I just don’t trust game reviewers at all- outside of folks like Tom who are fully independent, and even in Tom’s case- I know what to trust him on, and what his opinions won’t agree with mine on at all.
For the stuff I am most enthusiastic about, it’s game forums- hardcore fans will have a closer opinion to mine than some game reviewer who isn’t a big fan or decent player of the genre.
For stuff that I’m not a big fan of, I’m not looking to buy it anyways, I have enough stuff.
I do think this is one trigger for the shitstorm of the past month, I think the gaming public in general has a low opinion of the value of professional game reviews due to a combination of suspected payola and the fact they just don’t provide much value to many gamers anymore.
One area where reviews can come in handy, is on specific game features if someone is worried about those. For example: strategy gamers always seem to worry about the AI, and fighting gamers worry about the netcode. The problem there is such problems aren’t often visible day 1, especially to non-hardcore players.
