EA Rep May Have Influenced Reddit Mods To Censor Battlefront Critics

[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.

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.

Hmm actually now that you put it that way, yeah, that's a little shady. Though, I could easily see it as some overenthusiastic reddit mods trying to "do their duty" rather than a malicious conspiracy between them and EA.

Then again, there seems to be a healthy bit of other evidence as well, so I guess we'll see what happens.

 

[Something Amyss]

The important thing is that we start complaining while they are still allegations.

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?

I imagine when it actually starts to impact sales on a routine basis.

I also think this is unlikely to happen.

 

[BeerTent]

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

The important thing is that we start complaining while they are still allegations.

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?

I imagine when it actually starts to impact sales on a routine basis.

I also think this is unlikely to happen.

This. A billion times this.

A lot of gamers dont follow this stuff, so most people are lift in the dark. Not to mention, when something big DOES get exposed, gamers are like, "Raaawwwrrrr!!! ... Eeh, I will buy it anyway." Customers are toothless dogs, and publishers know it. People wonder why we just get walked on, but nobody will even bother to sit up and say, "uhhh... 'Scuse me?"

It really is a mystery why publishers get away with shit like this, eh?

 

[Something Amyss]

This. A billion times this.

A lot of gamers dont follow this stuff, so most people are lift in the dark. Not to mention, when something big DOES get exposed, gamers are like, "Raaawwwrrrr!!! ... Eeh, I will buy it anyway." Customers are toothless dogs, and publishers know it. People wonder why we just get walked on, but nobody will even bother to sit up and say, "uhhh... 'Scuse me?"

It really is a mystery why publishers get away with shit like this, eh?

Well, I'm happy to say excuse me. But then, they were standing on my neck.

la la la la la...

I don't know, as long as everyone's so happy to buy into hype culture that they don't want to hear a bad thing about their game, it's probably not going to matter anyway.

 

[FalloutJack]

Just when EA was starting to get positive PR too.

When?

OT: Shouldn't the thread title just be "Whelp, EA's Acting Like EA Again! Big Surprise!"? Question is...why Reddit? Reddit's less useful than Youtube. And as for deleting negative comments... I wasn't aware Reddit mods had a 'Mass Kill' button.

 

[YodaUnleashed]

This Unwanted is like the Serpico of Reddit, maybe.

 

[Elijin]

My biggest complaint about SW:BF so far is that people only want to play the TDM modes. This was why I quit previous BF games too. All those open maps and vehicles and objectives, and everyone just wants to play CoD.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

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.

The moderators screwed up in either taking bribes or at best not standing in the way of bribery to set subreddit policy, it doesn't really matter if the policy was a good one. They could have made EA's bribery attempt public and still have removed the NDA offending links, that would have been pretty much the only way to remove the conflict of interest at that point.

 

[Something Amyss]

OT: Shouldn't the thread title just be "Whelp, EA's Acting Like EA Again! Big Surprise!"?

While I thoroughly expect it elsewhere, I would honestly hope that news sites would have the basic integrity to not run with statements like that as fact. That would be bad journalism on multiple levels and probably lawsuit fodder.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

Well its not like there is much to criticize. I mean what does it have six maps? and one of those is a horde mode only notable for having Admiral Ackbar in it. Heck I'd imagine if they cut everything down to a "MGS5 Ground Zeroes" sort of level and sold it for 60$ Dice could probably make a not very buggy decent game at launch on the sort of timescale EA expects them to.

 

[FalloutJack]

OT: Shouldn't the thread title just be "Whelp, EA's Acting Like EA Again! Big Surprise!"?

While I thoroughly expect it elsewhere, I would honestly hope that news sites would have the basic integrity to not run with statements like that as fact. That would be bad journalism on multiple levels and probably lawsuit fodder.

Saying EA is acting like itself is not slander, not inaccurate. We're all character witnesses to its behavior.

 

[Nimcha]

Yawn. Reddit being Reddit I suppose. Can we talk about games again?

 

[Something Amyss]

Saying EA is acting like itself is not slander, not inaccurate. We're all character witnesses to its behavior.

Such a headline indicates that there is an unknown truth basis to the claim that they have done something you can't verify.

It would be incredibly bad journalism to go off what you personally think is the base.

 

[Strazdas]

Reddit is a funny place, anyone can be a moderator and as a result most of them are power maniacs that are only being held in check by the fact that once thier shit comes up everyone leaves the sub. mass censorship was always a thing on reddit. i remmeber when anyone mentioning he was a PC gamer would get banned on /r/games because a head moderator was console fanboy. The admins (as in the actual staff of reddit) had to interfere once the mods vs people making accounts and flooding the sub with PC posts started. it was an all out war for a few days.

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.

On the contrary, NDAs deserve to be deleted and legally banned if they disallow criticism.

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.

would be even less surprising if it was /r/Games since they had multiple censorship scandals already....

The important thing is that we start complaining while they are still allegations.

This is sadly the nature of reddit. Its all about making things as secrect and confusing as possible so that people could not spot when the power is being abused. every iteration of reddit got worse and worse there. to the point where mods themselves are complaining about not being able to see what is going on.

 

[Zulnam]

This is why you always buy EA/Activision/Ubisoft games when they're at least 50% off and only from a 3rd party key seller sites.

Also, white ball for the escapist for being the only gaming news website that I follow that covered this piece. The rest seem to be too afraid of their add buyers too much.

 

[Karadalis]

You know earlier this year i was joking about the "shitiest publisher olympics" and how Konami was just dominating this year and wondering if EA could even get back into the race...

Well EA is certainly not going to give up the golden poop medal without a decent fight it seems...

 

[teppic1]

I'm surprised EA would be stupid enough to do something like this when it could so easily be exposed. It's not like they need publicity.

 

[FalloutJack]

Saying EA is acting like itself is not slander, not inaccurate. We're all character witnesses to its behavior.

Such a headline indicates that there is an unknown truth basis to the claim that they have done something you can't verify.

It would be incredibly bad journalism to go off what you personally think is the base.

I don't follow. It IS true, and known. EA is a buncha' dicks.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

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.

You managed to say what i was trying to say with less words. Quoting to further the point I would happily take these people's jobs if it could inspire some standards into these moths! When you see a job done so badly, it is an ethical/moral duty to at least try and halt them, to begin teaching how to act even marginally professional.