Epic Considers Banning Those Who Spoiled Gears 3

Mike Kayatta

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Aug 2, 2011
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Epic Considers Banning Those Who Spoiled Gears 3



If you posted a video of the leaked Gears of War 3 single-player campaign, you might not be allowed to play the real thing when it comes out.

After a pre-release version of Gears of War 3 was leaked in July, Epic's Rod Fergusson said that he was saddened [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112039-Epic-Saddened-by-Gears-of-War-3-Leak] by the fact that his game was already appearing on torrent sites and YouTube. The copy that leaked was apparently an early build, and aside from failing to showcase the game's final quality, it also spoiled crucial moments of the story best left for an official play-through. Fergusson might be sad about what's happened, but he and his team aren't just going to curl up in a Snuggie with some tissues and a pint of Ben and Jerry's. According to Epic, those who shared the torrents and videos in question might want to be ready for a gooey slice of vengeance pie when the game hits shelves on September 20th.

While Epic has spent the last few months policing the tubes for leaked videos of its upcoming Gears campaign, they've been keeping the names of those involved with perpetuating the leak on an internal list for what they originally described only as "potential repercussions." Now, in a recent interview with Eurogamer, Fergusson has explained exactly what he meant by that.

"We have a banning system built into our stuff so we can go in and identify certain people," he said. "Some people aren't smart about what they do. They'll be disappointed on 20th September when they can't get in and can't play. They may be banned."

With over a million pre-orders already, there's clearly no shortage of gamers interested in Gears 3. Why some of them would want to spoil the experience by watching a twelve-year-old run through an unfinished version of the story mode is beyond me. Personally, this is one of those situations where I say hooray for the technology allowing Epic's ban hammer to dole out some well-deserved justice. I'm sure many of the hits on those videos came from people looking for legitimate footage or trailers, and it's unfair to them if they accidentally stumbled onto something that might ruin the experience they'll be paying for come September. Fergusson himself put it best when he said later in the same interview, "If you don't value this community, you don't value this experience, then we don't value you. I'd rather pick that one bad apple out of the pool so everybody else can have a better time."

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-15-epic-may-ban-those-who-spoil-gears-3]


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Skalman

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Jul 29, 2008
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How exactly are they going to go about doing this?
Someone can just make an new gamertag and play that way, It's just a minor inconvenience.

EDIT:
But hey, If they find and effective way to do it, more power to them.
 

mjc0961

YOU'RE a pie chart.
Nov 30, 2009
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Haha, now that's awesome. This is how you deal with people pirating your game. So much better (and funnier) than pissing on your customer's rights. I also love seeing jackasses who spoil things get owned as well.
 

Scytail

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Jan 26, 2010
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Skalman said:
How exactly are they going to go about doing this?
Someone can just make an new gamertag and play that way, It's just a minor inconvenience.

EDIT:
But hey, If they find and effective way to do it, more power to them.
You'd also have to cancel your subscription to xboxlive, make a new account, possibly set up a whole new email address. And who's to say that Epic wouldn't continue keeping tabs on the youtube account the offenders post on?
 

Kyle 2175

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Jan 7, 2010
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I can't say I blame them for banning people who spoiled it. Leaking videos of it isn't funny and pirating early versions is just being a dick with no respect for the developer(I must admit to being curious as to how they even got the early version.) And yeah, this is pretty funny, you want a crap version of the game early? Well, you're not getting the good version of it when it comes out.
 

Zhukov

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Dec 29, 2009
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Huh.

Bit of a slippery slope you're looking at there, gents.
 

Rednog

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Nov 3, 2008
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I have a feeling this won't hold water longer than 5 minutes, because if a person buys a product from you, you are essentially under a contract to provide the good that was promised to that person. If you sell a product and the person goes home and finds out that it isn't the product that was promised that person is entitled to their money back and or suing you for fraud. You can hooray them all you want for trying to get back at people who pirated the early copies of the game but the only legal way to do this is by going after them directly for this violation, not by doing another wrong (in this case consumer fraud), like the old saying 2 wrongs don't make a right.
 

RikuoAmero

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Jan 27, 2010
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Yet again where a company is more or less directly assuring that these people will "pirate" the full version. So what if they got an incomplete build? I've gotten an incomplete build myself on two separate games, and both times, I bought it. So, they punish the wrong people and ensure they won't make a sale here. The people to punish are the people who leaked the game in the first place: they would have been Epic's own employees.
I just hope this joker's "great" idea isn't picked up by the movie industry. Ya know, they somehow track down who posts a movie on Youtube, and then somehow they're barred for live from buying the sequel on disc/Netlix/going to the cinema.
If I was an investor in Epic, I would call for Fergusson to be fired. He's more intent on punishing a few leakers, rather than on ensuring more sales.
 

RikuoAmero

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Jan 27, 2010
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Kheapathic said:
Now this is just awesome. I'm hoping there will be at least one clueless twit like there was for the Batman Arkham Asylum leak. I hope there's a lot of hate and "I pre-ordered but I can't play WTF," I hope they try to take Epic to court and I hope Epic mops the floor with them.
This is different to the Batman situation. Then, gamers were using a "pirated" version of the game that was rigged to not work if it detects that it's not a genuine version.
In this case, the guys who put up the videos are now being banned from playing a completely legit version of the game they (more than likely) will buy. If they use an unauthorized version, fine, kick them off Xbox Live. But to kick them off because they put up a video...even if they're running a legit copy...
 

Rednog

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Kheapathic said:
Now this is just awesome. I'm hoping there will be at least one clueless twit like there was for the Batman Arkham Asylum leak. I hope there's a lot of hate and "I pre-ordered but I can't play WTF," I hope they try to take Epic to court and I hope Epic mops the floor with them.
Epic has absolutely nothing to stand on in this case, if anything the people's lawyers would steam roll Epic. I mean what possible argument could Epic have to justify their actions? These guys took our intellectual property and instead of suing them directly which we should have done we're going to scam $60 out of the consumer? You just can't do that. It would be like if someone owed you money and they aren't paying up, so you decide to hotwire their car. That person legally owes you that money but you have no right to commit theft.
 

insanelich

Reportable Offender
Sep 3, 2008
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Zhukov said:
Huh.

Bit of a slippery slope you're looking at there, gents.
A bit of a slippery slope? This is like jumping down a cliff. This is the Ubisoft DRM approach.

Yeah, good luck actually doing a decent job identifying the culprits and not getting false positives. I suppose I'll be adding Epic to the "automatically skip" list. First developer to get there.
 

eximista

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Aug 7, 2011
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how do they wanna ban them? they just have to delete the leaked version... or are they gonna ban them by their youtube name? :)
 

Scytail

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Jan 26, 2010
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Aren't most of you forgetting they had to agree to a NDA before even getting into the beta? And Im pretty sure posting youtube videos of the game is a direct violation of the NDA.
 

GeorgW

ALL GLORY TO ME!
Aug 27, 2010
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They'd have to find them first...
If they manage to pull this off, I'll be impressed. Still, doubt they will.
 

Inkidu

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Mar 25, 2011
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Pirates, ye be warned!

Seriously, more power to them unless I have to be online to play single player. Then I say I didn't like Gears that much anyway or a shorter more compact two-word sentence.

Punish the people on what they did not one what they might do. That's my thoughts on this whole thing.