EA Rep May Have Influenced Reddit Mods To Censor Battlefront Critics

[Fanghawk]

EA Rep May Have Influenced Reddit Mods To Censor Battlefront Critics

A Reddit ex-moderator is claiming EA offered Star Wars Battlefront alpha access and other paraphernalia in exchange for deleting negative posts.

Many Star Wars fans are <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/14778-How-Star-Wars-Battlefront-2015-is-Faithful-to-the-Movie-Lore>incredibly excited for next week's Battlefront release, but a major disturbance in the Force might sour the mood. A Reddit admin is claiming an EA rep bribed moderators to remove negative Battlefront posts. According to the allegations, moderators gained access to Battlefront's closed alpha for suppressing game criticism, while another user received tickets to the Star Wars festival and various other perks.

This information started coming to light a few days ago thanks to this call for new moderators following a Reddit user agreement breach. "There was a representative from EA directing moderators to remove posts and prevent certain links from being posted," Reddit admin Sporkicide explained. "In exchange, moderators were given perks including alpha access. This had been going on for a while and is completely unacceptable, whether you were personally the moderator to yank the post or not. It appears to have been clear to all moderators what was being asked and what was being provided in return."

Outside of these allegations, few specifics were offered in the initial post. But more recently, one of these ex-moderators - Unwanted_Commentary - has begun offering details of his own. Unwanted claims he was actually the one reporting on his peers, but was demodded for the trouble and has since received attacks on his character.

I'm the ex-moderator that finally found the time to report them for all of the shady shit they have been doing over the course of the last year. They originally demodded me due to my suspicion that the subreddit was filled with paid reputation management accounts. Since this has gone down, these accounts have been assaulting my character nonstop, trying to drag my name through the mud. Here's the basic rundown regarding the moderators:

1. They accepted favors in return for moderator actions.
2. They farmed the subreddit nonstop for YouTube revenue by stickying videos made by the moderators and adding referral links in the sidebar.
3. They tried to cover up the bribery by banning users who tried to expose them
4. They willingly suppressed criticism of the game through moderator action
5. They turned a blind eye to the massive astroturfing operation that is underway in the subreddit.
6. They exposed personal details about users that were confided in private.

Unwanted later updated this post with screenshots and additional info, including <a href=https://i.imgur.com/0yztmIY.png>deleted posts from the head moderator's alternate account and <a href=https://i.imgur.com/nBJfiOs.png>messages that may contain moderation suggestions from EA employees.

Obviously more context on this evidence is required. For example, the only moderator who allegedly received festival tickets and Star Wars paraphernalia? He has a separate relationship with EA through his YouTube channel, which means those benefits likely have nothing to do with Reddit. That aside, some of these allegations are deeply disappointing if there's any truth to them.

We've reached out to EA for a statement, and will update this post with more information as it develops.

Source: <a href=https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3siy7r/battlefront_sub_mods_there_was_a_representative/cwxngdk>Reddit, via <a href=http://www.craveonline.ca/culture/923399-ea-told-star-wars-battlefront-reddit-mods-remove-negative-posts-exchange-early-alpha-access>Crave

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[Fappy]

Just when EA was starting to get positive PR too. What a clown show.

 

[thewatergamer]

Not quite enough evidence to prove it, but at this point I wouldn't be fucking surprised, it's EA and the lengths they will go to scrape up a few extra dollars knows no bounds...Oh well consider this reason #14 on why I'm never buying this game

 

[ShakerSilver]

Sadly this sort of shilling and censorship isn't uncommon on Reddit and isn't exposed enough as it should be. The fact that EA is involved in it is equally unsurprising.

 

[Rednog]

Had to actually go look up what subreddit this was. This would be a huge deal if it was something like r/Games, but being the battlefront subreddit this really isn't that surprising. The problem with subreddits is that they're pretty much run by people who are fanatical about the sub to begin with. And it isn't surprising that since reddit is the go to site for a lot of people that developers will try to form relationships with moderators.

I'm sure many subreddits astroturf the posts in one way or another. We've seen it during the Payday shitstorm, the League of Legends subreddit has been accused of it on a couple occasions.
This is just another example of what happens when you have normal unpaid people have power, eventually someone somewhere will get greedy and bend too far.

 

[dyre]

The first image seems fairly innocuous...if someone signs an NDA in return for early access, then certainly the NDA should be enforced if possible. I'd like to see the rest of the conversation for the second image - it definitely looks suspicious but context is important.

The astroturfing examples on the actual reddit post do look pretty suspicious.

 

[plus2exp]

It looks to me like people were breaking the NDA. It doesn't really matter if their posts were being critical of the game, or praising it. Your posts deserve to be deleted and your account banned if you break a NDA.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Wouldn't shock me, all told. After the beta Battlefront has been getting a lot of criticism, which might make EA nervous considering it's their big holiday game. I can imagine that not only would entities in EA be pissed if the game failed to live up to expectations either critically or commercially (seriously, aren't their predictions around ten million or so?) but also Disney also being pissed because the game is clearly being used to hype up the new movie. It's one of those things where I can see EA doing this because they don't have anything else this holiday and that could have serious consequences. Shows what happens when you put your eggs all in one basket.

 

[MiskWisk]

Many Star Wars are <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/14778-How-Star-Wars-Battlefront-2015-is-Faithful-to-the-Movie-Lore>incredibly excited for next week's Battlefront release

I'm assuming that is meant to be Star Wars fans. I highly doubt there are a series of wars in the stars that are excited about this.

OT: As pretty much everyone else has said, this isn't surprising. There isn't much evidence and it isn't exactly difficult to fabricate this sort of evidence either but at this point EA is so synonymous with bad decisions it is perfectly plausible for them.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Holy fuck, i understand that this sort of thing is common in business with more money than sense, but i expect humans to have some standards at least. This guy looks sincere enough in his attempts here. Star wars is too much of a big name for EA to take the chance, they will alwaya be EA. But these mods have a responsibility, yet they squander it, with no desire to inform, purely self-serving and poisonous. Go and work for the sun or the daily mail newspapers so we can at least pidgeon-hole these kids. Although, perhaps they shouldn't start confiding with each other, who knows what tripe can be brought up then. Ugh...humans!

 

[CaitSeith]

I sense a disturbance in the force. Like tens of thousands voices screaming in outrage at the same time, and never shutting up...

 

[fix-the-spade]

The first image seems fairly innocuous...if someone signs an NDA in return for early access, then certainly the NDA should be enforced if possible.

Indeed, but it should only be enforced by the people who gave out the contract. Getting other people to enforce it unofficially on the sly is beyond shady. It's doubly shady when they're enforcing a NDA they signed against other people who didn't sign one.

I'm pretty sure EA could give free ice cream to all the world's orphans and still find a way to disgust everybody with how they did it.

 

[Xan Krieger]

Delete negative comments about a game that came out over a decade ago? Now that's shocking. Surprised they didn't do the same for this game's sequel.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

And the amount of sales this will prevent remains negligible because gamers have got no spine.

 

[Josh123914]

If this game is as good as everyone says its gonna be, why do they even need to do this? Especially when reddit fan subreddits are massive fan circlejerks anyway!

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

When will publishers learn that the fallout from being caught doing this shit is FAR more toxic than a handful of random people slagging off their game on the internet will ever be?

 

[Callate]

IF this is true-

And before you respond, please notice that IF;

(someone always seems to miss the "if"...)

I'm not so much surprised to find that this has happened so much as disgusted that someone's integrity could be bought so damn cheap.

 

[GoGoFrenzy]

Why am I not surprised about any bs that EA pulls?

 

[LordLundar]

I'm not so much surprised to find that this has happened so much as disgusted that someone's integrity could be bought so damn cheap.

Given how some sub-reddit mod's behave, this is nothing. A good number of times all they need is an excuse, if that.