Konami Shuns Kotaku Japan Over Corruption Comments

[sneakypenguin]

He's not off base here. It's Kotaku Japan who's blackballed here. And Famitsu as well as Konami are Japanese companies. The laws there are different. You can't spread defamatory accusations in Japan like you can in the States.

In other words using the U.S. first amendment right as a comparison has no effect here.

But it's a US company(or branch of it) that wrote the article so the libel laws here would apply to them. I still think that to call the article libel,(to the point where action needed to be taken against it) is a bit of a stretch.(even if under japanese law)

 

[TheRocketeer]

Absolutely agreed. One of my fondest memories is of when I picked up my first copy of 'Hyper' (which I believe Yahtzee wrote for at one point, correct me if I'm wrong), and about four pages into the reviews there was a game called 'Tactical Ops: Assault On Terror', with an accompanying headline "Dan Toose stopped retching just in time to write this review." The guy gave the game a mere twenty five percent and called it out for being a blatant attempt to cash in on the events of 9/11. I laughed 'til I couldn't feel my sides anymore. We need to bring these good old days back.

.. games that received fairly harsh criticisms in the body of the review would still end up with superb scores.

Nice to see this mentioned as I feel exactly the same way. Whether I agree with the review or not, the review needs to actually support the score given. I may think Game X is the worst thing I've ever played, but if you can support your 9/10 score for it with a quality text review then I'm happy either way. Nothing smells worse than an obviously negative text review that ends with a high numeric score.

It's like some sort of screwed-up existential crisis. There are a lot of smaller gaming publications struggling to stay afloat, with review staffs that are, to a man, cantankerous industry outsiders to whom duplicity never occurs because they have neither fans nor connections to lose, who use their hard-bought page space to shoot the breeze about an earnest passion of theirs with openness and excitement.

But every person that seeks out and endorses one of these mavericks for their small but unbridled contribution to games journalism is one more reason for them to abandon the good fight and play the God-damned game.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

He's not off base here. It's Kotaku Japan who's blackballed here. And Famitsu as well as Konami are Japanese companies. The laws there are different. You can't spread defamatory accusations in Japan like you can in the States.

In other words using the U.S. first amendment right as a comparison has no effect here.

But it's a US company(or branch of it) that wrote the article so the libel laws here would apply to them. I still think that to call the article libel,(to the point where action needed to be taken against it) is a bit of a stretch.(even if under japanese law)

Even though it's a U.S. company, for one it's international law that we're dealing with if Konami/Famitsu decides to sue the whole of Kotaku and not just Kotaku Japan.

Two, the article above clearly states that it was Kotaku Japan who published it. So regardless of who wrote the statement, it was a Japanese publication that published words defaming another Japanese company.

Three libel is essentially the written defaming of one party by another. By claiming without proof that Konami bought it's score from Famitsu is a defamatory remark. It hurts the reputation of both companies and was done so with no proof what so ever. If Konami/Famitsu wanted to, they could sue Kotaku Japan for libel, or at least public demafing. It's not like Kotaku hasn't done this before, and it's not like it's the first time Kotaku has been blackballed from gaming events for what they've said.

 

[Tharticus]

You think that Famitsu hasn't been done like this before? You should see other corruptions by Gamespot "Gerstmann Gate" and Dan Hsu being the former editor in chief of EGM and his article of "Editorial Integrity". To me, I'm not surprised. Then again, everyone has opinions. Even if it is a magazine editorial.

Remember folks, a good video game score doesn't mean the sales of video game will rocket.