Guise of the Wolf Dev Takes Down Negative YouTube Review - Update 2

[ChildofGallifrey]

Stuff like this is why I like the idea of the Steam Tags. GotW is tagged with everything from "Don't Buy", "Shovelware", and "Buggy" to "False Advertising", "Scam" and "dishonest developer".

Of course, one of the tags is "A better love story than twilight", so I suppose the system ain't perfect yet.

 

[K12]

Just floating another idea out there. Does anyone think that Valve deserves some of the blame for this?

The fact that Steam doesn't have a decent level of quality control for its games means that terrible games like this will be produced fairly often.

TB, as a reviewer, will feel professionally (and morally) obligated to protect consumers from shoving $15 up their own dick holes, buying this thing.

The talentless, and apparently completely childish and delusional, developers then copyright strike him for it.

Obviously Valve's blame is well down the list after "Fun"Creator and Youtube but they still contribute in some way to the environment where this kind of shit happens.

Valve has pretty much acknowledged the uselessness of the Greenlight system to begin with, and have fortified that point by allowing hundreds of games in at a time rather regularly. They don't really care what comes through now. Valve only allowed the game in through there, so while there is some level of responsibility on their part, this has become less of a "shitty game being allowed on steam" and more of a "Shitty dev throwing shitty tantrum and crapping all over their own foot".

I don't think there's much doubt that this game wouldn't have got anywhere without Steam. It wouldn't have been on the radar or be worth reviewing so the situation wouldn't have arisen.

Valve's blame is a very distant third behind the game's developers and Youtube's policies but the question "why the fuck is this game on sale in the first place" is relevant.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Welp, these devs are fucked ... pretty much guarantee no ones gonna touch these fuckers after this.

I pray that they tear down TB, his terrible videos and anything else that mouth-breather has put on the internet.

Only thing that we need is his poorly written article on somethingawful.

Oh?

So ... your fine with a company abusing 'copyright' to censor negative reviews then? Even when they have no legal right to do so? Your perfectly fine with gutting every reviewers right to review a product, just because YOU don't like this one?

Because that's what this is, case you missed it, censorship. TB said something they didn't like about their shitty little game and they're getting all pissy about it.

And your ok with this? Just because you dislike TB, your going to be complacent while a dev tries to remove your right to know about what weather the product your getting is actually worth your money or not?

Just know, that if this is allowed to slide it will only get worse.

'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' seems the most fitting thing to end with.

 

[gigastar]

Just floating another idea out there. Does anyone think that Valve deserves some of the blame for this?

Guise of the Wolf made it through Greenlight apparently, so i dont think theyre that much to blame.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Of course, one of the tags is "A better love story than twilight", so I suppose the system ain't perfect yet.

Oh come now - that tag could be on everything by default and not be out of place.

 

[Nihlus2]

Snip

You don't have to prove to Google that you're innocent as much as treadwater for a few months until the burden of proof gets shifted back to the people making the claim.

Those guidelines are interesting, but they either mean that Total Biscuit definitely doesn't have a strike against his account or that Youtube have made some kind of exception for him. Because according to the guidelines not being in good standing prevents you from uploading videos more than 15 minutes long and he's definitely not being restricted by that.

It might be a multi-channel network thing protects people from those kind of consequences. YourMovieSucks is another channel that's constantly receiving strikes and they're not having those priviledges restricted either. I wouldn't be surprised if Google were doing it to force people to sign up to networks

Yeah, true on that, but the convoluted level it is on, is downright mind boggling.

And concerning the whole 15 min thing, there are some exceptions and workarounds if you are associated with a network, most of the heavy things are on 2 strikes (and even then it is not outright damning for partners, but close to!), for now I believe it is mostly restricted to not being able to post private videos (probably why he had to have his PR/Art guy post a none-monetized, private video about the whole email debacle of this).

I posted it more as an idea of what is at stake and not sacred, rather than a cut-and-clean "these benefits are lost when x amount of claims are applied to the channel". So my bad for being vague and not posting it properly.

Long story short: This is a whole lot more series than ID Claim, as those are limited to the video in question, whereas these copyright claims affect the entirety of the channel and how it will function.

 

[AngloDoom]

If anything I'm glad this happened - the damage that FUN studios can do to TotalBiscuit's side is absolutely minimal, but it has further reinforced a point already made about copyright on Youtube. Prior to this incident I had no idea about the ways Youtube handled copyrighting and now I find myself in a thread with several shining examples of it.

Bravo, FUN. You've cut your own leg off just to throw it at someone.

 

[VoidWanderer]

I remember watching that video when it came out, and TB mentioned that he and his wife played it on a research stream as the game was so poorly made he needed help getting through it.

While I do find the situation incredibly funny, this is underlying a hidden issue. Because YouTube is a human-driven forum of free ideas and free speech, you need a level of awareness when adjudicating it. Automatic programs WILL NOT HELP and have caused far more trouble because of Google's laziness. As most people online are probably aware that Google's unofficial motto is "Don't be evil". Is their official motto "Be like EA"?

 

[loa]

Oh boy, TB said he'd have a field day with those fuckers if they tried to pull that and here we go.

 

[TristanBelmont]

This is such a weird story. What are these developers trying to accomplish? Commit the ultimate career suicide?

No, they're trying to get noticed. They made a game no-one on the face of the Earth has heard of and realized that THE channel for getting indie stuff noticed had actually put their name out there....to burn and get crushed into the dust. To them, this is all publicity.

 

[oldtaku]

0.8 on metacritic! I don't think I've ever seen that low before.

 

[gigastar]

This is such a weird story. What are these developers trying to accomplish? Commit the ultimate career suicide?

No, they're trying to get noticed. They made a game no-one on the face of the Earth has heard of and realized that THE channel for getting indie stuff noticed had actually put their name out there....to burn and get crushed into the dust. To them, this is all publicity.

As pointed out in another post earlier in the thread, the last time this happened with the Day One: Garrys Incident Incident, the game in question received no boost in sales. There isnt concrete proof of this, however that the game has been steadily falling off in hours played with no noticeable spike during the incident, its safe to assume that few, if any, bought it afterwards.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Valve's blame is a very distant third behind the game's developers and Youtube's policies but the question "why the fuck is this game on sale in the first place" is relevant.

The short relevant answer is: "Because free market."

Spoiler: The long relevant answer

If you want variety and opportunity, you have to accept the responsibility for making better informed choices as a consumer and not just blindly buying into everything on a whim.

By asking Supply to proactively define what to sell in a given market is akin to asking them to define the market's likes.
That's a controlled market, and it has actually precedence in the video game industry.
See also: Nintendo in the 80s and early 90s.
Back then, Nintendo had a monopoly on the mainstream game market. They were the first company to legally dictate what could be published on their systems. While we saw a number of quality games, they still allowed a ton of shovelware and half-finished crap onto the system so they could make a quick buck.

A Free Market, on the other hand, forces Supply to respond to Demand in a reactive, not proactive, manner.
Consumers, not retailers, place the limits on what's acceptable and what isn't: That's what "Vote with your Wallet" means. Not by asking retailers to be your market nanny and blaming them for not cleaning up the mess others make.

 

[RedBackDragon]

I remember total biscuit saying during his review that this could happen and that if it did he was gona have a field day... heh should be fun.

 

[GAunderrated]

I can't believe we are seeing stupid developer so soon after Gary's incident. I almost believe that these small developers are too close to their work that they cannot step back and accept any criticism.

I hate to say this because I am rooting for TB but I really hope this goes to court. There needs to be legal precedence against developers pulling shit like this.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Why would you use photoshop to doctor an email when any basic text edit program will do the job better? I suspect the developers of this game are either really thick, really young, or both.

 

[Mersadeon]

I've heard that thanks to YouTube's lazy copyright strike system, one more strike against TB means his channel goes down[footnote]I could be wrong here, but if it keeps going down and having to be reinstated over things like this, I can imagine him and others giving up on YouTube because of the hassle of the system, which is a concern.[/footnote]. I've no idea whether it would be reinstated because of his popularity. Companies just seem to be doing this whenever they can get away with it now. According to Jim's latest video, seen here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMidHqWGQAM], Square Enix has been throwing strikes out willy-nilly for things like the Final Fantasy games. The video mentions they have taken down a lot of AngryJoe's videos, although I don't know how long ago that happened, since I don't follow his channel.

It's load of shit, really, innit?

I know there's two pages between this quote and my answer, but just to be precise - the strike system actually doesn't concern him the way normal channels are concerned. He is part of Polaris (formerly known as The Games Station), which protects him from the strike-rule. In his video on the matter (back when he was talking more generally about the strike system) he says he finds it incredibly unfair that your legitimate content can be purged just because you don't have a large, money-making network to vouch for you.

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

Oh! And here!
http://i.imgur.com/w1iLIhi.png

"delete your channel"
wow... that takes it lot of fucking audacity to send a message like. It's almost like a 12 year old or someone with the maturity of a 12 year old is handling the PR for FUN.
I have zero sympathy for FUN.

catcha-Skynet Knows
no comment

 

[major_chaos]

Oh dear, as of one hour ago DERP (the troll scrip kiddies who took down LoL not that long ago) tweeted at FUN threatening them and now they are promising a huge DDOS https://twitter.com/DerpTroolling . this could get interesting, but the more FUN suffers the better.

 

[AlexanderPeregrine]

What really got me laughing hard out of this whole thing is that on the email the company threatened to send their lawyers over to the UK, I guess they're going on vacation then, since TB moved to the US a long time ago.

Send lawyers to the UK? Why? So that they can call TB over the phone in the US? Good luck with that extradition hearing.

Also, fuck you, "Fun Creator".

They're admitting that they're going forum shopping [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_shoping], which is where you file a lawsuit in whatever court you think will give you the result you want. I don't know about copyright law, but the United Kingdom is certainly the go-to place for defamation lawsuits because the odds are really lopsided in the plaintiff's favor. As far as if they're even able to file a suit in the UK, I have no idea.

EDIT: They're probably also hoping that TotalBiscuit's personal lawyer can't act over there, thus forcing him to hire somebody else and making this a more expensive ordeal that it's worth. In other words, a classic Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP].