Gaming Blog Rails Against The Man, Succumbs to Legal Threats

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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Gaming Blog Rails Against The Man, Succumbs to Legal Threats



When game journalists bicker over the injustice of "exclusive" screenshots, who wins?

Here's the story so far: PC gaming-centric blog his post read [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/05/tomb-raider-screenshots-hidden-in-a-cupboard/]. After presumably realizing that he was threatening legal action against a reader and not an actual representative of RPS, Reiner contacted RPS privately and John Walker pulled the images and replaced them with pictures from the freely distributed WikiCommons while further railing against the "idiocy" of the current system of publishers doling out such exclusive assets.

"Games aren't a special secret, they're a commercial product," wrote Walker in the original post [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/05/tomb-raider-screenshots-hidden-in-a-cupboard/]. "So why on Earth would you then attempt to inhibit that information by distributing it through one (albeit splendid) source, who can watermark everything and then justifiably get narked off when other sites/mags nick all their information uncredited."

I contacted Walker and he had some more choice words to say on the subject. "It troubles me how deeply embedded the ridiculous system of online exclusives has become," he wrote me in an email. "It's like trying to claim a section of the sea is yours, and then complaining when your bits of water start sloshing outside of it. Or heaven forbid someone else dare to swim in your claimed bit of ocean."

Walker realizes that it's a bad thing to take images without linking the source, but he points out that his post was one big advertisement for Game Informer. "We all operate within certain unofficially agreed acts of courtesy. If one site is the only place to have some information, or some screenshots, you credit them and you link back to them. It's a douchy thing to take all their stuff and post it as your own. But it's perfectly reasonable to use it to illustrate a piece that links back to the source," Walker said.

"But really, the idiocy of publishers giving out adverts for their games like precious, secret jewels has got to end. It's self-defeating, and it's deeply tedious for the readers of every other site/mag in the world who want to know about a game they may want to play."

Personally, I think that both parties were wrong and right at the same time. I agree with Walker that the system is screwed, but writing about that while simultaneously stealing someone's copyrighted material is not only illegal but also a huge professional discourtesy. I don't know what deal Game Informer had in place with Eidos for those Tomb Raider shots but they are "paying" for them somehow and to rip them off was just wrong.

On the other hand, Reiner wasn't exactly being a PR genius for publicly demanding that the pictures be removed in a forum as public and transparent as Twitter. It all could have been handled behind the scenes and not doing so cost him and his publication much of the prestige it would have gained from owning the exclusive in the first place.

While the internet is all atwitter with the current controversy, it will surely die down soon. But I'm sure that this isn't the last that we'll hear about the seedy underbelly of the tenuous publisher-developer-journalist relationship.

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Colonel Alzheimer's

New member
Jan 3, 2010
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Personally, I find it pretty difficult to get an idea of what a game is going to be like unless some kind of pictures are involved, so I agree with Walker about how ridiculous it is to not be able to use the best images available. However, what is so bad about giving credit to the people who first put them out? If people are already reading your article, why would they leave to go to the place where they were first published? It seems like extra work to see information that is already right in front of you and is (presumably) written by a source that you like.
 

Sixcess

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Feb 27, 2010
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RPS needs to spend less time whining about exclusivity and more time nurturing their own relationship with developers and publishers. If they don't have one then they just have to admit they're a little fish and stop pestering the bigger fish.

Giving exclusive access for publicity = okay. Giving exclusive access in return for a biased review down the line = not okay.
 

BabyRaptor

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Dec 17, 2010
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He didn't exactly rip them off. You said yourself that he gave ample credit for who owned them and where they came from. He didn't try to claim they were his.
 

Wicky_42

New member
Sep 15, 2008
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As soon as you release something on the interwebs, it's up for grabs - you've made it public, it's effectively public domain, anyone can see it, what are you moaning about? Heck, the guy was even nice enough to give credit and link to the source; isn't that how journalism works?! I don't get what they were on about - copyright needs an update for the digital internet age...
 

Piflik

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Feb 25, 2010
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Ever heard of the term 'Fair Use'...not sure if it is applicable here, but but always screaming COPYRIGHT! is certainly not the best PR...
 

teh_gunslinger

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. did it better.
Dec 6, 2007
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Cameron Wright said:
I knew there was a reason I don't visit sites like RPS.
Then you're missing out on one of the best, if not the best gaming related sites on the tubes.

The writing is glorious, the honour is spot on and the community is able to write coherent punctuated posts.

Unlike The Escapist they do tend to have an actual opinion at times. And they don't score their Wot I Thinks.
 

GiantRedButton

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Mar 30, 2009
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Rps is my favorite gaming site :D
Sixcess said:
RPS needs to spend less time whining about exclusivity and more time nurturing their own relationship with developers and publishers
I would rather have some sites that are independent from publishers.
A lot of old media magazines (Print) for example keep to embargos, meaning that they aren't allowed to talk about a game until the publisher tells them too.
All american print magazines do that for example.
And the escapist rips news and screenshots from sites all the time and give them credit like rps.
They even posted the gameinformer screenshot in this very article.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/05/tomb-raider-screenshots-hidden-in-a-cupboard/
They also linked to a bunch of sites who did the same, but are bigger so its ok.
 

Snow Fire

Fluffy Neko Kemono
Jan 19, 2009
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Fair Use Exception, a magical thing, pretty easily applied here considering it was used for comment among other things.

I mean, this is the equivalent of posting a giant poster on Main Street, and then suing someone for taking a picture of it. The similarities between the internet and Main Street being they are public places that anyone can go to.
 

BloodRed Pixel

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Jul 16, 2009
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it´s all about the "clicks from the users" you get paid for from your customers ads on you website.
If there is exclusive content on your site YOU get all the click from readers looking for info.
And get paid from you customers in turn for the better exposure of their ads.

So who want´s to to let go of that, so easily?
 

John Walker

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Dec 31, 1969
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I'd like to stress that I in no way "stole" copyrighted images.

I cropped four of their many screenshots down to very small RPS-style letterboxes (which loses the watermarks, as very many other sites have done), explaining in the post that the fullsize versions, along with many more, are available on their site. I placed two links in the article to the source (which I've removed since, because, well, there's nothing left in the post to credit), and made it extremely clear who "owned" the images, with no intent to claim them as our own. They simply served to illustrate a post that, while railing against the ludicrous nature of online exclusives of adverts, was essentially saying: Visit GI for all the Tomb Raider information.

I made some jokes in the piece that I was cropping off the watermarks as an act of rebellion. Clearly this was intended as a joke. Were I attempting to steal anything I'd have hosted the full size images with the bottom few pixels removed. Instead I posted thin highlights from four pictures, explaining where they came from. This is in direct contrast to a number of major gaming sites who posted the entire collection of screenshots, fullsize, in their own galleries. Something I would think would be a violation of the copyright. I note that these sites are still hosting the images, and so presumably have not been sent legal notices. That seems extremely strange to me.

I strongly contest that there was any professional discourtesy. I called their site "splendid", and stated that I understood the frustration of having your work copied uncredited - something I absolutely did not do.

The images were removed from our site at the request of the magazine, and as far as I'm concerned at that point the matter is closed. It's long since time for this individual squabble to be forgotten, and the larger issue to be given more thought.

Equally wrong is all the daft speculation in various comments threads that Game Informer must have committed some sort of immoral act, or "sold out", to get the exclusive. They sell more copies than any other gaming mag in the world, with direct access to gamers since the magazine is owned by Gamestop. They're an obvious place to take your exclusive to a huge audience in the US in return for large amounts of detailed coverage. I may believe this practice to be daft, but it doesn't make it suspicious, and suggesting otherwise without evidence is pretty libellous.
 

FieryTrainwreck

New member
Apr 16, 2010
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Game Informer paid for those screens with their integrity. If you want that kind of access, you need to sell out, too.

Same as anyone trying to get a story out of the Whitehouse.
 

Dorian Cornelius Jasper

Space Robot From Outer Space
Apr 8, 2008
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teh_gunslinger said:
Cameron Wright said:
I knew there was a reason I don't visit sites like RPS.
Then you're missing out on one of the best, if not the best gaming related sites on the tubes.

The writing is glorious, the honour is spot on and the community is able to write coherent punctuated posts.
Hear hear! RPS and The Escapist are the only two gaming-related websites I check with any frequency. Even if I don't necessarily agree with half the things said on either site, I like that there's actual, honest-to-god thoughtful criticism about videogames on the internet somewhere.