EA blacklists youtuber from Game Changers program for negative Anthem review - Sensationalist Headlines

As far as I'm aware, LGR had a similar issue. He used to receive early Sims 4 expansion copies, and after a negative review (I forgot which one) he stopped receiving complimentary early copies.

This is nothing new, game journalists for years have had to walk an atom-thick line between delivering honest valuable reviews to their audience and not burning fragile bridges with capricious publishers who hold early game access hostage for favourable reviews. It really was about ethics in games journalism Remember Kane and Lynch causing Jeff Gerstmann to be flat out FIRED for giving a sponsored shitty game the shitty review it deserved? This shit is as old as publishing. Product reviewers are trapped in an abusive relationship with the producers of the products they review unless they can operate their business without any special access. The consumer review industry as a whole should be considered ethically challenged; not every single reviewer everywhere is a shill, but they're the diamond in the sludge of shillviewers. I don't trust early reviews anymore. The only time I trust enough to preorder is when the devs pull what Colossal Order did with Cities Skylines: they gave advance copies to a whole bunch of steamers and YouTubers and encouraged them to play the game without NDA and to just play the game. Anyone looking for a preview of Cities saw the release build being played by people who were tasked with playing the game instead of craftily editing out all the shit and only showing cherry picked highlights to please a corporate overlord. I pre-ordered that shit so hard after seeing it being actually played instead of carefully curated trailers showing only hints of gameplay like the usual marketing shit.

Every time TV Tropes is linked to me, I remember exactly why I like to forget it. I've now spent 30 minutes on the website without realizing it.

Probably the missing game changers logo that you are required to show for a set period of time to disclose you're a gamechanger.. I was shortly part of that program in 2016 for BF1 and they're very strict about legally disclosing that stuff. That + there's plenty of critics in the BF5 community who are still gamechangers.

And apparently Apex Legends doesn't suck a big fat turd is because Respawn made it without EA's influence.

excuse me its pronounced Shillmanlives had no idea this made the news, holy shit I hope people see through EA's bulshit and give him more publicity. Despite ragging on too much about reuben's sandwiches once upon a time, he and Mandalore are some of my goto reviewers.

So there's something I need to explain. When you see some hit game like Battlefield 5 making a fraction of a mil less than it's projections then that's actually bad news for the publisher (and possibly the developers depending on how much the publisher holds them at fault). You see, the idea is that it'll make it past the expected revenue, and as such a lot of the potential sale profits are earmarked for the next product. This isn't exclusive to games, by the way. Movies (and I imagine a lot of other industries) work the same way - it's why you'll sometimes see sequels teased pre-launch on films that end up being a bit shitty. With this said, I was actually crossing my fingers on this game being floppish. Much like Microsoft, it's likely that EA will have to look into re-examing its stratagies - maybe it'll even come out less mindlessly corporate and robotic and more human as more and more the sizable minority of people sick of their shit becomes too much of a majority to ignore as their profits and stock keep leaping into freefall. I see two distinct possibilities: They do this and slowly gain good will that they've lost in 30 years of mindlessly mistreating properties and consumers or *failures* like Anthem and BF5 will keep happening. Oh sure, their sports games will keep them afloat some but it's not enough for a company to be floating - in order to attract investors, it must be growing and ahhhhh it's not doing that right nowww...

I think he showed the logo in the beginning of the video + verbally stated he was part of the program tho

One good game after years of overhype and under-delivering does not a recovery make. A broken clock is still right twice a day

So wait, he really is blacklisted? That rep's just talking out of his ass in regards of "be honest and criticize our games"?

Apparently it was the wrong logo

Two completely different developers. EA supposedly didn't have much control over Apex Legends, but EA might have had more control over Anthem (or Bioware is to blame for the fuck-ups).

This is either damage control bullshit or I can't even begin to imagine how poorly worded the email they sent out must have been

Streisand effect is happening now. I never intended to watch this video but... here I am!

I mean there's literally no positive outcome where someone with 200k subs has his negative review taken down/where it would benefit them, and they have a really big and strict legal team. Why not take all the negative reviews done while you're at it?

not the first time, you guys know LevelCapGaming, literally the biggest Battlefield Youtuber? He's basically been blacklisted by EA for a while now EA is a terrible company

SkillUp got blacklisted he believes too. Largely because he admitted during his Anthem preview video that he doesn't really care if the AAA industry dies. But that's kind of a shit reason to blacklist somebody.

SkillUp was ranting on Twitter about how bad Anthem is days ago.

Yeah. That's post blacklist though haha. I mean in some ways being blacklisted means he doesn't have to pussyfoot around any more.

To add to this, how Ubisoft blacklisted EGM for giving Assassin's Creed a 5/10 and citing how it got repetitive fast. As opposed to how every other reviews thing gave the 10/10 review they paid for.

there honestly should be a third party non profit company that acts as a mediator in terms of journalistic integrity with games and studios; the studios give to the mediator and the mediator gets to distribute to the reviewers; with the mediator handling any legal matters and challenging the studio in court against any threats

It never ends. Before Internet blogs became the go-to source for """professional""" games media, you bought these dead trees full of advertisements called magazines, and the most important thing in a magazine was the cover, and depending on the magazine the included demo disc. The cover is instrumental to selling the magazine because it's the one chance you have of catching the buyer's eye on the rack. If you didn't suck big game publishers' cocks, not only would you not get advance game copies for review, you wouldn't get permission to feature their hot properties on the cover. I swear I remember hearing this shit happening back when Street Fighter II had less than five subtitles hanging off its ass; no Ryu on your cover because you didn't give Capcom's last game the 7/10 they thought it deserved despite it being a shitty 4/10 at best with no ability to deliver post-launch bugfix patches, or whatever the story actually was. I can't remember which magazine it was, or exactly when, but I know that in one episode of the original Penny Arcade podcast, where the two guys would just turn a microphone on during their writing session, they talked about how some magazine burned bridges with sensitive publishers for not giving them handjobby-enough reviews and was punished by those publishers revoking early-review-copy arrangements. The magazine then went public and said, basically, hey because we review games on their merit and not for the dicks in our mouths any games from the following publishers will not be available before launch because they won't give us copies anymore and then they named names and gave reasons ("they didn't like our reviews" being the general reason for all of them). Video game developers and publishers see game reviewers not as expert critics (lmao) but as marketing extensions and it has always been this way. Game magazines/blogs sell advertising to make money and write editorial/journalism/review articles to give readers like you and me a reason to go anywhere near the ads that pay their bills. Having exclusive access, or at the very least being able to post a detailed review the instant the embargo drops, is an incredibly valuable and critical opportunity for reviewers and the publications they write for. The game publishers know how fragile and corruptible this relationship is, and so buying access is not only commonplace but considered normal by some reviewers who either skipped journalistic ethics class or simply came into the job right off the street. And there has always only been an intermittent counterculture that reminds consumers that the gaming industry is fuckbroken like this, emerging in spurts and starts before going dormant for months/years before the next major scandal breaks. The brief era where Gamergate was actually about ethics in games journalism before it turned into feminists and anti-feminists brawling in the Tweets and calling bomb threats in on the streets was one such burst of counterprogramming against the incestuous cycle between reviewers and the publisher PR staff giving them the carrot and stick.

There are two separate watermarks that are used in these instances. For Game Changers, the watermark says, “Presented by Game Changers.” That’s the watermark Gggmanlives used in the past and old GameDaily was present on his original video (before it was re-uploaded). The other watermark, used when there’s a sponsored content agreement and money changes hands is “Sponsored by EA.” EA has confirmed to GameDaily that it specifically requested that Gggmanlives replace the “Presented by Game Changers” watermark on the video with the one that reflects sponsorship, because that was the relationship for this content. He previously published another video from an event EA hosted in Tokyo with the Game Changers watermark that he says met EA’s approval. In a conversation on Twitter via direct message, Gggmanlives confirmed to me that he did receive compensation for this video. EA: YouTube creator's Anthem video removed for disclosure failur.. So are we just gonna keep beating the "EA BAD" drum, or are we actually going to start critically thinking for a little bit?

How can EA say that Game Changers program doesn't support reviews when a FAQ question literally answers a question about reviews and negative feedback? https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/108621/9acb8b24-8b12-4e37-936f-e366f54fb865/image.png

Sets precedent? Bro, this shit's been going on for decades already. Why do you think the whole 'IGN 7/10' on a bad game meme is so old and stale?

It says on their website that they support reviews and they said in their statement that it doesn't support reviews, so either they are lying in their statement or lying on their site, either way, lying. So, how about that critical thinking? Just because the EA bad drum is often beaten doesn't mean it's incorrect, contrarianism is shitty.

I think you guys are reading too deeply into the wrong word choice by that article, in the sentence "claims it was under the Game Changers program (which EA told GameDaily in a comment earlier does not support review videos)" I think it's supposed to mean sponsor, not support. My evidence: There are two separate watermarks that are used in these instances. For Game Changers, the watermark says, “Presented by Game Changers.” That’s the watermark Gggmanlives used in the past and told GameDaily was present on his original video (before it was re-uploaded). The other watermark, used when there’s a sponsored content agreement and money changes hands is “Sponsored by EA.” You are nitpicking over the dumbest fucking shit. More evidence: “Our Game Changers program is not designed to pay for review con.. Update 2: EA got back to VG247 with the following statement. “Our Game Changers program is not designed to pay for review content. We don’t believe in that,” said an EA spokesperson. “In this case, the conditions for disclosure for this specific video were not met – which is something we adhere very strictly to – so we asked for it to be taken down and corrected. We’ve not asked for the content of the video to be changed, or ‘blacklisted’ the creator. Our full disclosure rules can be found here.” While this explains that disclosure rules weren’t adhered to, it doesn’t explain why the new video – which removed the watermarks – now fits the disclosure rules. After all, if the creator isn’t blacklisted, they’re still a Game Changer. However, EA declined to clarify why that was. EA did say that the creator was never asked to create a different video or change his position, however. ... Speaking to one content creator, they told me the following: “As far as understand it (when EA has asked me to work with them on paid content) they simply want coverage of the game. They’ve never had issues with me giving my full and honest opinion. “In this case, I think the channel in question was sponsored to cover the game, go over the general jist and show gameplay. Think of the Apex Legends Twitch event, where Twitch paid big streamers to play Apex as soon as it went live. They paid them to play the game and I think this deal was that the channel got paid to make a video covering the game.” Yeah EA is shit but come on, this is ridiculous.

Within your own quotes the articles still point out that he was blacklisted and that the watermarks aren't exactly the source of the issue and yet they refuse to clarify or define the line crossed beyond that. Whether he was sponsored or some other means, yeah it's "fine" for sponsors to drop people if they go against their brand but it still shows that EA's on hush-hush damage control mode right now when they refuse to part with a definitive answer. The result is that people are gonna make their own assumptions, and those assumptions are easy to draw towards "He didn't shill our game despite being in our early review program, so fuck 'em."

Every time I post saying that games journalists have direct fiscal incentives to give glowing reviews to expensive games people here call me a nut and say I'm paranoid and then a thousand of these cases come up.

“In this case, the conditions for disclosure for this specific video were not met – which is something we adhere very strictly to – so we asked for it to be taken down and corrected. We’ve not asked for the content of the video to be changed, or ‘blacklisted’ the creator. Our full disclosure rules can be found here.” According to their rules: He needed to verbally state, state in the description, and use the logo of "Sponsored by EA," and verbally state, state in the description, and use the logo of "EA Game Changers." Both sites contain statements that he didn't "adhere to the disclosure guidelines." Do I need to draw you a map of where the logical conclusion is? Clearly at least one of the two weren't met somehow. Nope. Nuh-uh. Nowhere. The closest thing is this: Gggmanlives has also tempered his assertion that EA has definitely blacklisted him. “I assume that relationship is severed now,” he told me. Wow, what a shocker, his tune went from "I'VE BEEN BLACKLISTED" to "well I burned some bridges¯\_(ツ)_/¯" Only other quotes talking about the blacklist: We’ve not asked for the content of the video to be changed, or ‘blacklisted’ the creator. A direct statement to the contrary. ...it doesn’t explain why the new video – which removed the watermarks – now fits the disclosure rules. After all, if the creator isn’t blacklisted, they’re still a Game Changer. However, EA declined to clarify... Speculation as to why the video is okay now that the logo is removed. Neither of these says he was blacklisted. Please point out to me where, within these articles, besides quoting him saying he was blacklisted or saying he alleges he was blacklisted, the articles point out that he was blacklisted. Please do, so I can talk to my optometrist and my neurologist. Maybe because doing otherwise would involve disclosing contract details? But riddle me this: why did gggmanlives decline to provide the copy of his own contracts if he's so in the right?