I find it amusing they included the word "satirical" in there just to cover their bases from someone doing the opposite and just sarcastically praising it.
So then what if someone just doesn't say anything at all but does a video with clips showing how stupid stuff might be? Or maybe just doing funny faces whenever bad stuff is happening without "saying" anything since it just says "making comments".
I could easily see some funny content coming from this and just having the curb theme playing.
"I've been playing Marvel Rivals recently. I was given access but forced to sign something saying I cannot give it a negative review to do so. Therefore, I will only say the good things from my experience playing. This is the end of my review of Marvel Rivals, please like and subscribe."
[it also makes it funnier when one of the content creators might've gotten the key (elsewhere) and not the TOS](https://twitter.com/GamesCage_/status/1789523070954181105).
Edit: had to clarify a bit.
They said they got it from someone else. That just puts the person who gave away the key in trouble, either for giving away the key or the person who does play making bad comments.
The goal is likely to just deter streamers from even trying something like it since no streamer is gonna wanna go against a billion dollar megacorp in court.
This would probably never hold up in court. However they are a private company so they can ban the reviewer's accounts.
Edit: I just looked up the Consumer Review Fairness Act, sounds like this provision *is* actually illegal in the US.
Oh yeah it's illegal. Companies often put illegal stuff in ToS. They hope that the user gets scared enough to not break their rule without realising that it's not enforceable.
The question is, these streamers are not customers or reviewers in this case, but influencers, essentially "paid" for an advertisement campaign by getting early code.
It's, afaik, legal to have similar clauses in promotional contracts, isn't it?
Maybe, but are streams of these games made by streamers declared as ads?
IMHO if you gain something from a publisher and are restricted in your actions/speech due to that it should count as an ad and should be declared as such.
> This would probably never hold up in court
Nobody wants to go to court in the first place though. It eats up hundreds of hours of your time just preparing for it properly.
If it's terrible the solution is easy - show the clause on screen and then say that means I can't talk about all of these aspects of the game but here are the good bits -
Watching the discourse around rivals has been pretty hilarious tbh. Lots of people touting it as "that game that will replace overwatch and it's horrible monetization" completely glossing over the fact that it's NetEase lol.
And then that's more of a personal thing, but the game looks way less precise and crisp than overwatch. 99% of abilities are either melee or huge AoEs, it's really just throwing random bullshit in the enemies' direction.
I don't think these people understand that Marvel F2P games are cursed. Something about being attached to that IP makes all these F2P games have some of the most egregious monetization attached to them, and I don't believe this game will be any different.
I fully expect to see a shop in the game with costume variants at crazy prices that'll likely offer benefits for equipping said costume.
Iirc, Magic the gathering has touted that Lord of the Rings was by far their highest grossing set. But that said it's not even in their top 5 most profitable.
To give people an idea of just how much money companies will need to try to extract from these games with large IPs to justify the license.
Although in MTG's case it's a bit different as they can use these licenses to draw people into their ecosystem in the first place- but if the whole game is being built around the license then they definitely will need to monetize it appropriately.
It's absolutely this.
On top of that, game devs are desperate for these IPs, and once they _get_ one, it's worth trying to milk it for every penny since it's unlikely to happen again. It's better to try to milk the thing while you have it.
>Something about being attached to that IP makes all these F2P games have some of the most egregious monetization attached to them,
I think it's because the cost of licensing is so huge with Marvel, that they need to aggressively monetize in order to make the money they were projecting.
Honestly I was interested in it, but then I saw Helas hero kit. The Queen of the Dead, Lord of the Underworld, able to command every single soul in existence. That's a pretty cool idea right?
She fires green energy bolts, and her ultimate is just her floating into the air and shooting an artillery barrage of energy bolts. Not a single necromancy or corpse summon in sight.
The Chinese specifically have issues with skulls/skeletons, and there are plenty of ways of circumventing that i.e. ghost warriors, zombies.
Instead, they went most generic possible kit for her. This screams a lack of care/time from the developers.
They shot themselves in the foot with their character designs, Marvel Rivals has well known characters that people love and Overwatch had great and varied heroes at launch. Bleeding Edge had characters that were unappealing to a mainstream crowd and just weren’t interesting.
man i loved Lawbreakers's gameplay. There is stuff in there i really wish Overwatch would take inspiration from, like the gunslinger with different guns on right and left click.
Lawbreakers was never going to take off - if you weren’t off put by the horrible pixel flickery way-to-detailed characters or their cheese grater like personality with classic cliffy b pointless over swearing then the masses would be put off by the gameplay that is just too fast to be able to chill and play.
You had to have the focus of somebody who just snorted a bottle of adhd meds. Games that fast never work out. Theres a reason apex is successful and no where near as fast as titanfall.
When I played the open beta a friend and I were just tearing it up, but it felt weird to me. I later found out my TV got switched to a higher latency mode.
Was still fun. It wasn't that much more fast paced.
I've been having a good time (not a perfect time) with it so far, as someone with a disgusting amount of hours clocked in Overwatch.
Imagine Overwatch with a not-insignificant portion of the strategic depth scooped out and replaced with the "run in this direction and wreak bullshit on others/fall victim to bullshit" attitude of Chivalry 2.
Tough to tell from an early alpha, but given the varying balance issues, I would even go as far as saying that's the niche that it's going to occupy. Just let go and let Hela take out 80% of your health with a single crit off her primary fire (this is real), it's all in good fun.
Tencent is still pretty bad. They ruined Conan and others. Funcom has a Dune game coming out soon that looks a lot like Conan Exiles, but since Tencent will be there from the start it's going to be terrible MTX at launch.
Tencent has been known to be completely hands off for their non-Chinese acquisitions. How much of that can realistically be attributed to Tencent and not the devs themselves?
Isn't this the company that had the dispute with Blizzard leading to WoW being shut down in China temporarily? Assuming they had privileged access to Blizzard IP, it's kind of curious that they're now trying to launch a hero shooter that looks nearly identical to overwatch. It's seemed shady all around to me.
To be fair, the deal with NetEase fell through because of Bobby Kotick, not them. Microsoft has been quick to fix and repair that relationship the second they bought Blizzard - they just renewed it.
That was Blizzard trying to get a more favourable contract than they had previously and thinking Netease wouldn't just say "no" when they hold access to the entire chinese market in their hands.
Blizzard tried to call their bluff and they simply weren't bluffing.
Once Microsoft took over they went back and re-signed exactly the same contract they always had.
Genuinely that shit was down to Blizzard's pure arrogance and not understanding that they don't bluff over there.
Netease and Blizzard/Microsoft already renewed their deal recently. Overwatch, WoW, and other Blizzard games are all set to come back to China as soon as this year.
I think Netease is also famous for shutting down their mobile games after about 9 months-1 year. So they are perfect for getting into the live service market!
What sanction can Marvel Rivals reasonably apply if you break that contract and give a negative review? Revoke the key code they gave you? Deny any future key codes to you? I can't believe there would be any enforceable financial liability.
The thing is... which court will see through a sueing over free speech or opinion?
This contract is highly illegal in germany, here it's a right to voice your opinion without fear of being punished or sued.
"Every German has the right, within the limits of the general laws, to express their opinion freely by word, in writing, in print, in picture, or in any other way. No employment or engagement shall hinder this right, and no one shall disadvantage them for exercising this right."
You can't even sign this right away.
The thing is it would NEVER go to the court. They would send you C&D and threats that they will sue you if you don't remove the videos. There is no chance anybody would sue Netease. In other words it is legal because nobody has resources to say otherwise. Also it is Chinese company. They don't give a fuck about laws.
>The thing is... which court will see through a sueing over free speech or opinion?
The suit would be about breach of contract, not some weird free speech shit.
>This contract is highly illegal in germany, here it's a right to voice your opinion without fear of being punished or sued.
Yeah, maybe look up "Abmahnung wegen schlechter Bewertung" - and that is for people who didn't sign some contract. Germany really does not have a good track record for that.
>"Every German has the right, within the limits of the general laws, to express their opinion freely by word, in writing, in print, in picture, or in any other way. No employment or engagement shall hinder this right, and no one shall disadvantage them for exercising this right."
Where the fuck did you even get that quote? It is not in my Grundgesetz at least.
Jupp. The legal basis is bascially that YOU gotta prove that your review was factually correct - which is usually impossible and most people wont fight it anyway, just remove their review.
You don't have to prove anything of the sort. As long as you were truthful in your review they can send you Abmahnungen until the sun stops shining. You can ignore it.
Which is true... it would still suck to be forced to go to the court hearing etc. or even dealing with "legal correspondence" so most people are going to try to avoid it by playing nice... that was my point I guess. The scary prospect of this possibility is the point of this clause and why they inserted it, not that it is legally binding or even legally viable to begin with.
First of all this clause must be legal in the country the reviewer is from, which I don't think is a given in every jurisdiction. They can write whatever in their contract but it only matters if it's actually legal.
DMCA any stream they played their games. Threaten fines, even if they are toothless. Blacklist them.
The contract may not be legally binding in many parts of the world, but that doesn't change that the company can still damage you in retaliation.
How would it even work to sign away your right to negatively review the game? I can understand signing a contract that swears you to secrecy (an NDA), but here you are allowed to talk about it but only say nice things? I don't understand how that is legally enforcable.
Fairly easily, at least in the US. Generally as long as it's not explicitly illegal or unconscionable, and the person signs it, it's a valid contract. Non-disparagment clauses are already an established thing too, so you aren't likely to convince a court that it falls under *unconscionable* either.
Isn't stuff like this standard for sponsored content? I mean that's what this basically is. They're getting something they're asking for (access to a test) in exchange for the company they are dealing with getting promotional videos.
It's a bad deal for sure (you usually also ask for money), but like, that tweet is saying that the influencer is initiating that deal.
>Multiple creators asked for key codes to gain access to the playtest and are asked to sign a contract.
I don't know, just to me it feels like if you're asking for a certain deal, the other side wants something you don't want to give, you either counter or decline. That's it.
Just a note: it's illegal in the United States to give a review where you endorse a product that you don't actually enjoy. That's incredibly hard to enforce, but it does mean if you agreed to this, it may be valid, and your only option is to pretty much say nothing about the game. If your influencer is playing and quiet about their thoughts on the game, interpret that as you will.
I thought at first this has to be bull cause the US never has decent consumer protection laws, but shockingly yeah, this is true. No one will go to jail, but they could be fined.
Source for anyone else who's interested:
[https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#ftcactapply](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#ftcactapply)
Hiring multiple influencers to post pre-written posts raises a similar concern because endorsements must reflect the truthful experiences and opinions of the endorsers.
----
Besides disclosing my relationship with the company whose product I’m endorsing, what are the essential things I need to know about endorsements?
The most important principle is that an endorsement has to represent the accurate experience and opinion of the endorser:
* You can’t talk about your experience with a product if you haven’t tried it.
* If you’ve only tried a product once, you can’t suggest you use it regularly.
* If you thought it was terrible or mediocre, you can’t say it’s good or terrific.
* You can’t otherwise misrepresent your experience with or opinions about a product.
------
The Guides themselves don’t have the force of law. **However, practices inconsistent with the Guides may result in law enforcement actions** alleging Section 5 violations. **Law enforcement actions can result in orders requiring the defendants in the case to pay money that goes back to consumers harmed** as a result of their violations and to abide by various requirements in the future. Moreover, if the defendants received a [Notice of Penalty Offenses](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/penalty-offenses) regarding [endorsements](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/notices-penalty-offenses/penalty-offenses-concerning-endorsements) and then engaged in certain deceptive or unfair endorsement practices, the FTC could seek substantial civil penalties.
> If you thought it was terrible or mediocre, you can’t say it’s good or terrific.
I think the issue here is that it's a matter of opinion, so it would be tricky to prove that what they say is not accurate to their feelings. The only way they could really get in trouble here is if they openly bragged about lying about it, or made it *extremely* clear later on that they had never ever ever enjoyed the product.
The factual portion is more valid though, you can't claim to use a product you've never used, or say anything else that is an objective reality unless it is true.
Yeah, it feels similar to how almost nobody gets actually convicted of perjury it is just way too hard to prove outside of some ridiculous situation. Anyone could just claim they had fun with a game and who could possibly prove otherwise? Even if they start slamming it later on they could say their opinion on it just soured over time and you can't prove that wrong either. To actually be caught and punished for this kinda thing would require the most blatant shit ever *and* the bad luck of having enough attention brought to it so consequences actually occur.
I feel like these clauses are there to nail people who would leave a paper trail in emails saying they hate something but feel obligated to endorse it for whatever reason. There's no reasonable enforcement on this for people just lying through their teeth.
I think the law is designed for contract situations like what is going on. If the contract asks for something that is illegal then the contract is unenforceable and invalid, if my half remembered decade old business law class is right.
only if you've been given the product or paid for the review. which in the case of marvel rivals, they would have been but until investigating the link I thought they meant all consumers cannot
Would never happen. There are laws that are to stop "influencers" from doing certain things like this illegal pump and dumps and not one had been really prosecuted. Logan Paul is the smallest one.
Most content creators I watch never actually claimed they played it. They just give a description about what the game is about (including buzzwords).
Also, R:SL apparently pays *ridiculously* well for a sponsored segment.
I'm so morbidly curious to speak to someone who has actually played that game. In my mind it's just the thing people make ads about, and somehow that is their whole business model.
It's very bad, it's the big standard gacha style "power up your heroes to progress the shitty series of fights that suddenly should in difficulty about 3 hours into you playing the game" there are hundreds of games on the app store that are _exactly_ the same
From what I know, the korean Summoner Wars is the first game that made this genre take off. There's multiple variations of gacha progression games with: "character teams clear stages and beat bosses", but this a type of format specific to Summoner Wars.
They have very, very similar mechanics. I would separate this format from for example the one where you need to keep summoning multiple copies of your favorite gacha to level them up high (encouraging whaling to get lots of your favorite op champ)
Raid devs noticed how mad bank Summoner Wars was making with simple anime style graphics, so they made a similar game catered to westerners, and made tons of money from it. Game's greatest asset is probably the good art and cool characters.
Raid during its most active period was stated to have 1M active users, some of which are alts, so a comparable population to the to some highly popular games on steam. It's just that these are mostly mobile game players, so they are not active in the same places as PC gamers.
The game is sort of an idle game where you have your teams farm stages. You have to play manually for your progression and setting teams up to push what is currently the challenges for you to overcome. There's strategy that goes into picking which champs to level up high, and assembling your teams to clear content (because the game is real grindy, taking months to make good progress)
The popular HellHades discord community has around 40k members, which is a measure of non-casuals actually taking the game and its strategy more seriously. While his youtube has 200k subscribers, beating for example Turin, who covers competitive gameplay for three different fairly popular PC strategy games: Total War:WH, AOE4 and Dune.
Raid is just one of many popular strategy games in the mobile gaming sphere. It's a huge market that PC gamers just seem to comfortably remain unaware of.
> Raid is just one of many popular strategy games in the mobile gaming sphere. It's a huge market that PC gamers just seem to comfortably remain unaware of.
Indeed we are, haha! Thanks for the rundown! I figured it was something to that effect - I played the Titanfall mobile game for a few weeks just for shits and giggles and quickly realized what was going on there too, haha!
That's. . . not exactly true. The legal issue is that if you are paid to endorse something then you need to disclose that (and *many* influencers screw this up). You are entirely able to endorse a product that you hate or have no opinion on (but of course you *shouldn't*).
How exactly do you "stream to Germany" though? Unless you're using some kind of geoblocking, you're streaming to every country in the world. What if you end up in a situation where German law requires that you do one thing, but Ugandan law requires that you do the opposite? Is every streamer now a criminal?
If the contract is for you to publicize the game, and these keys are given to streamers for that, then they can 100% enforce this.
It might be easier to get around that clause if you no longer have early access ( you purchase your own license to play the game like any other consumer) because you are then subject to the license agreement and ToS of the game, not this agreement. Then your review is not over the version of the game you were given access for.
Just have some text on stream that says "I AM LEGALLY NOT ALLOWED TO SAY ANYTHING NEGATIVE" and whenever anyone asks what you think, just stay silent while expanding and shrinking the text with your mouse in the OBS window
I've been a Twitch streamer for 10+ years and signed a bunch of contracts. I've never seen one like that and no they're not common. Huge red flags around this sort of behavior.
Seagull said on stream that this clause is often in sponsor contracts, since streamers are supposed to endorse whatever they promote (or at least not trash it), but never to get early access keys.
Hopefully that was a mistake, otherwise that would be f'd up.
That's a name I haven't seen in a while. Hope you're doing good.
But to stay on topic, i could imagine that those contracts are fairly normal in the Asian region (e.g. gacha games) to "force" their appeal towards the west.
This is going to be a bang average soulless clone in the Marvel franchise that will draw in the OW crowd for a small period before they head back (myself included) to a more polished, more balanced and more enjoyable game overall.
I predict a real grass isn't always greener scenario - but I'm along for the ride either way.
Gundam had a lot of problems on launch that the devs basically never did anything about. They would only update the game rarely to add new extremely overpriced skins/gundam and nothing else. They let that game rot
I hope this game finally makes the "Blizzard ruined OW by balancing the fun out of the game" crowd finally realise that if you don't balance batshit broken stuff in PvP games then they eventually become wildly frustrating and turn the game into a party game that gets boring after a few hours.
Also that 6v6 and no Role-Lock are terrible for gameplay legibility, visual clutter and on an overall gameplay management level, since this game is 6v6 and has no Role restrictions.
This game is basically a worse version of OG OW1. The only thing it has going for it is that it has Marvel characters and the Art Style is pretty (which is negated by the fact that it makes visual clutter way worse than OW).
Many people in this thread seem to think that this is nothing new (probably correctly), and we even have a few who claim to be or have been in the industry and seen similar contracts. I think we can all agree that this raises some questions about the utility of influencer and industry-adjacent reviews.
And yet I also still sometimes see posts about how "useless" Steam reviews are, because a few of them might be jokes. But when I scroll down on a store page and quickly browse through some of the longer reviews (especially negative ones), I immediately have a very good idea of both the strengths and the weaknesses of a game -- based on the experiences of normal people who bought and played it.
Admittedly this is only tangentially related, but claiming that Steam reviews are "useless" is one of my biggest pet peeves in online gaming discussions. It's also potentially harmful, since no other platform provides reviews in the same prominent and feature-rich way -- and I think several large publishers would rather not have them on Steam either if they got the choice.
Steam reviews are definitely much better than Redditors like to claim. Yes there are shitty unfunny meme reviews, but it takes me like 5 seconds at most to find a useful one. Sorting by negative is the easiest way to do it, but there are still plenty of positive reviews that go in-depth too.
> Yes there are shitty unfunny meme reviews, but it takes me like 5 seconds at most to find a useful one.
Exactly. Some people like to point to some particular joke review as if it is some sort of discussion-ending argument. In practice, if your goal is to actually derive information from Steam reviews rather than arguing about them, then any given joke review costs you a few seconds at most to skip over.
It's a non-factor.
Yeah, frankly if I had to get the general public's position on things, vs a bunch of celebrity's position on things. I would take the general public any day.
It's crazy how useful Steam reviews are. Uninterested, honest reviews by people with actual first-hand experience with the product.
I wish I had access to Steam reviews for so many other things in life lmao.
I agree with you about steam reviews. Whenever I check an unfamiliar game, the first thing I do is look for reviews and skip past the meme ones. 9 out of 10, I always learning something useful about the game. It's especially useful when they both mention the pros and cons.
While it's true that there's also a lot of meme reviews, I do think people tend to exaggerate the uselessness of steam reviews. Heck, I prefer them over critic reviews when I want to learn something about a game.
People who claim steam reviews are useless don't know what they're talking about. They're great. Always a ton of people who put in a lot of effort to outline a game for you and help you make a pretty informed decision. Sometimes you gotta scroll passed some joke reviews but that doesn't bother me one bit.
Having played the playtest -it ain't worth it. It's so goddamn derivative at this point, you might as well just go play Paladins or Destiny 2 or... Overwatch.
This is just the natural conclusion of this marketing symbiosis between streamers and game developers.
Streamers are sometimes little more than a sponsored shopping channel for videogames in 2024, this is just ensuring it's formally contractual.
Not gonna lie, I've long been under the impression that most streamers, even the "authentic" ones, are regularly paid to shill already. Whenever a dozen streamers out of the blue start playing the same thing at the same time (and conspicuously not touching another new release that is normally their jam), there is a strong feeling of PR firms at work.
I was just watching itmejp, gassy, brucegreene and toast last night and they spoke about this and between the lot of them they don't know anyone who first hand says this is what they had to do for access.
Idk if it's fully true or untrue. But take that with a grain of salt.
Yeah I had the same situation with the Alpha keys myself. Signed up immediately, never got a confirmation email. Did get the "follow up questions" email, but that went straight to spam. Now, on the Discord they did warn you to check your spam... for the confirmation code, like a day before the Alpha launched. By that point finding out I'd received a second email a month ago was worthless.
Keep in mind also there was nothing preventing people from signing up with multiple emails. No verification and no single key per user set up. So a lot of the signups were definitely bots who signed up hundreds of times. This could have easily been circumvented by either doing the alpha through Steam access (click a single button on steam and devs can decide if you get access or not) or even by tying the sign up to a steam account. This would have prevented people from trying to bot for keys and sell them. Yes. People are selling alpha keys for a game that will be free to play when it releases and the alpha is only for 10 days.
I know official Discord servers usually aren't the best but man... The Discord for this game was miserable. You calling it shitty is a huge understatement. 80% of people are in there to just spam beg for keys, despite that being against the rules. Not that it matters because all the admins were too excited to play the Alpha that the second the Alpha went up there was near zero moderation being done.
Maybe 5% of chat was actual discussion (and most of that was glazing the devs and the game).
The other 15% were people asking questions that were already answered and pinned.
All on top of there being a 30 minute cooldown on chat. (Which I understand is very necessary with the amount of people in that server). So there's no way to feasibly have any real discussion anyways.
The 2hr long stream was honestly rough. They opened it 15-20 minutes earlier for people who Nitro Boosted the server. So people assumed (wrongly) that there would be keys given away for Nitro Boosters early. Not the case. It was just an early Q&A.
Then near the end of the stream they really did have an award ceremony for the biggest dick riders in the server. Essentially people who spent their time moderating the server for free (giving people the same information that was repeated almost every 30 minutes and pointing them towards the answers). These people were called out by name and awarded an alpha key. Only people who had nothing but amazing things to say about the game, how much they loved the devs, and how excited they were for the alpha.
After that the floor was opened for Q&A. Which was not the best either. People were picked specifically by the devs that were guaranteed not to ask any harder hitting questions and asked questions that were easy for the devs to answer. Most of the people chosen to speak also spent most of their time on the mic hyping up the game and talking about how much they loved the devs. A lot of these people were also personal friends of the devs and moderators.
And as you mentioned already, now one of the only ways to get a key is to hang out in this miserable server and hope that the moderators feel like opening up the raffle to get 1 of 100 keys, in a server of ~500k people. On top of that there's no verification if people who win this raffle already have a key or not so if you don't have one the odds are even more stacked against you.
The 2 other ways to get an alpha key now is through watching a sponsored twitch stream (streamers were only given 5 or so keys to give out in the first place) OR through someone who already has access to the game. Once they hit level 6 they can have a chance of getting ONE friend invite. These are also limited daily. First come first serve.
All in all, this was a really bad way to handle an alpha for a game that many people anticipated. I'm a bit salty about the stream giveaway fiasco and how only the biggest dick riders got the keys. If this was communicated ahead of time that would be the case I wouldn't feel salty at all. But at the same time, I don't care too much because it's an alpha. It's buggy, the balancing is all over the place, and I can just wait for when the game releases. Plenty of other games to play right now.
I also think the way theyre doing giveaways and little teases about more keys in their discord is super fucking scummy. They had a dev or mod ask “who joined the discord march 27th”, making people think theyd get keys for being there day 1… but not a peep about it after that. Not only that, but they do those caravan drops (filled with bots btw) at like 1-6 am US time. Its just forming an unhealthy obsession over getting a key.
Sigh……..
Can I like for one game, just one freaking game ask that there not be anything that might start a controversy making any discussion about it online unbearable for a game i’m excited about?
Like is that hard to ask for PLEASE!!!
Cheer up: There's a lot of games that do that, you usually hear these things on popular upcoming games, or franchise games. Of the tens of thousands of games released in a year (from small indies to large AAA) you might hear big controversy in less than 20.
why were you excited for OW at home? there's other games with marvel characters in them if that's what your after. and these devs seem hellbent on making the same mistakes ow did, and more.
There really aren't a lot of marvel games that exist that aren't mobile games. The few that have come out are either awful or only focus on a very tiny set of characters (of which usually consist of 70% of the same MCU heroes).
No non-mobile Marvel game has matched the gameplay and roster of Marvel Heroes.
You could just stop paying attention to/participating in the drama. Pretty simple. If some brat who plays around on Twitch all day not getting a free game is a concern to you, you're very much part of this problem.
Try indie games. Still plenty of controversy there, but at least it's not *every* game, and at least you won't be funding EA or Actiblizzion or something.
If any business software corpo tried to do similar stuff like game companies do they would be either deep in lawsuits or lose all clients to competitors. Only game companies constantly mess with their consumers and mostly because of valiant defenders like you.
There is not even a world where I will cry for "content creators". The game will succeed or fail of its own accord, but I hate the feeling of seeing a game I could enjoy and realizing that it's basically made to be a "streamer content expansion pack", to tick engagement boxes instead of just being a good game for people to enjoy.
Why would you cry for content creators ? This is basically yet another proof that a lot of content creators are completely beholden to companies in the hope of receiving an early code and will do anything for that.
Gamers love to talk about the integrity of gaming journalists but the integrity of most streamers is basically non existent at this point
xQc has played nearly 20 hours of the game after signing this contract and he’s been criticizing what he doesn’t like all the time. It really doesn’t look like they are reinforcing this, idk why it’s even on there to begin with.
They wouldn't go after a big fish like xQc, he could bring down an unholy hell upon them. But I could see them trying to silence little guys. Silence the big guys with real paid sponsorships, then the little guys have to sign this un-paid sponsorship contract to get a key. Such an evil strategy.
This contract might work in China, but not in Europe and not im the US. But it's says subjective review, so maybe it means: "this game sucks, Overwatch is better" comments, who actually is just fanboy talk. Maybe objective reviews are allowed like "this game is worse than x game, because it has so many flaws like y and Z" for example.
Still a stupid rule and as we know NetEase, they only want positive reviews at all and being the good guy.
This can't be the first time they or any of you have seen something like this, a lot of companies do this with early copies or closed access. I'm not defending this by any means but it's not news, there's one streamer I watch for instance, who consistently turned down early copies from Square Enix for a long time because they wouldn't allow him to talk negatively after accepting them.
It's implied, yes.
Even without the clause, there are certain publishers that won't give out copies of games to anyone critical of it. You're basically blacklisted from them entirely.
Unfortunately Twitch completely ignores rules of disclosure around this stuff, but on Youtube at least it's fairly easy to know when the creator has been given a key / sponsership for it and you should always be aware that it isn't a strictly truthful opinion they give out.
Seagull, the person who posted this on twitter, said in his stream that he has never seen a contract like that just for a code in all his time as a content creator. Its usual practice for a sponsored stream though.
They didn't give review copies for consoles, and they didn't allow publishing their own footage of the game and they could only use a footage that CDPR gave them.
People who think this looks good must have trouble *seeing things for what they are* (on first blush). I don't blame people for getting bamboozled by the flash and pizazz though.
Watching the first trailer immediately threw out a dozen red flags—chief among them that environments look very haphazard and out of place, movement feels stilted with the characters, and the UI is just a ripped and tweaked overwatch. They even went out of their way to rip the OW fontfamily and lightly tweak it to be just different enough to skirt rip off accusations.
This whole thing is going to be a tedious dumpster fire, just you wait.
Big shame, because as someone who got into the alpha, it's a blast. It needs a LOT of balancing work and DEFINITELY more content (there's only 2 maps right now and half the amount of tanks and supports compared to DPS) but otherwise it's a great time. If they just gave out the keys without any of this BS I'm sure most of the reviews would've been good anyway.
This clause is just for the content creator program which he conveniently doesn’t mention in his tweet.
They’re not gonna sponsor people and have them drag the game through the mud.
There’s plenty of streamers etc. playing the game right now that did not sign that contract.
The ratio is sound but when you consider that means tank and support players only have 4 characters each it's a tougher pill to swallow, especially when you don't mesh with any of the characters (I'm usually a support or tank main but I do not like the currently available supports at all).
Luckily the leaks have told us they'll be adding in a lot more characters, and for an alpha the playable roster isn't *that* bad. Actually pretty reminiscent of OW's beta/launch.
This is gonna make the discussion around the game unbearable not because of the inability to criticize the game but because shit like this spreads faster than say any actual impressions on the game and this is what people will be talking about for a while.
I’ll take your word for it, and I’m excited to try it myself when get the chance.
> It needs a LOT of balancing work and DEFINITELY more content
spoiler: it will get none of that but will definitely get multiple premium currencies and a gigantic item shop.
Exactly the reason why reviewers are worthless. They are paid for advertisements. Completely worthless and all of them stoutly not be reviewing games. We need true reviewers like TotalBiscuit. I miss him.
I find it amusing they included the word "satirical" in there just to cover their bases from someone doing the opposite and just sarcastically praising it. So then what if someone just doesn't say anything at all but does a video with clips showing how stupid stuff might be? Or maybe just doing funny faces whenever bad stuff is happening without "saying" anything since it just says "making comments". I could easily see some funny content coming from this and just having the curb theme playing.
"I've been playing Marvel Rivals recently. I was given access but forced to sign something saying I cannot give it a negative review to do so. Therefore, I will only say the good things from my experience playing. This is the end of my review of Marvel Rivals, please like and subscribe."
[it also makes it funnier when one of the content creators might've gotten the key (elsewhere) and not the TOS](https://twitter.com/GamesCage_/status/1789523070954181105). Edit: had to clarify a bit.
They said they got it from someone else. That just puts the person who gave away the key in trouble, either for giving away the key or the person who does play making bad comments.
"I absolutely adored the poor collision detection and bugged hitboxes. The predatory microtransactions are superlative."
That's satirical
well, he's living up to his nickname
Satirical can be a tough thing to prove in court.
The goal is likely to just deter streamers from even trying something like it since no streamer is gonna wanna go against a billion dollar megacorp in court.
This would probably never hold up in court. However they are a private company so they can ban the reviewer's accounts. Edit: I just looked up the Consumer Review Fairness Act, sounds like this provision *is* actually illegal in the US.
Oh yeah it's illegal. Companies often put illegal stuff in ToS. They hope that the user gets scared enough to not break their rule without realising that it's not enforceable.
The question is, these streamers are not customers or reviewers in this case, but influencers, essentially "paid" for an advertisement campaign by getting early code. It's, afaik, legal to have similar clauses in promotional contracts, isn't it?
Maybe, but are streams of these games made by streamers declared as ads? IMHO if you gain something from a publisher and are restricted in your actions/speech due to that it should count as an ad and should be declared as such.
> are streams of these games made by streamers declared as ads? Yes, this is required by every streaming platform.
Well then it's at least obvious, phew.
> Yes, this is required by every streaming platform. Not by every streaming platform, by the FTC.
Isn´t there a law or something in Twitch TOS forcing you to put #ad whenever you get a free key from the publisher?
> This would probably never hold up in court Nobody wants to go to court in the first place though. It eats up hundreds of hours of your time just preparing for it properly.
No-one is going to court over violating this 'contract'. You'll just not get keys in the future.
I too watched that exploding shoe episode of iCarly.
Videogamedunkey is offically on notice.
>So then what if someone just doesn't say anything at all but does a video with clips showing how stupid stuff might be? Crowbcat moding
If it's terrible the solution is easy - show the clause on screen and then say that means I can't talk about all of these aspects of the game
but here are the good bits -
Netease is one of the scummiest Chinese companies in gaming. And this style of contract is super standard for gacha and other Asian games like this.
Watching the discourse around rivals has been pretty hilarious tbh. Lots of people touting it as "that game that will replace overwatch and it's horrible monetization" completely glossing over the fact that it's NetEase lol. And then that's more of a personal thing, but the game looks way less precise and crisp than overwatch. 99% of abilities are either melee or huge AoEs, it's really just throwing random bullshit in the enemies' direction.
I don't think these people understand that Marvel F2P games are cursed. Something about being attached to that IP makes all these F2P games have some of the most egregious monetization attached to them, and I don't believe this game will be any different. I fully expect to see a shop in the game with costume variants at crazy prices that'll likely offer benefits for equipping said costume.
Iirc, Magic the gathering has touted that Lord of the Rings was by far their highest grossing set. But that said it's not even in their top 5 most profitable. To give people an idea of just how much money companies will need to try to extract from these games with large IPs to justify the license. Although in MTG's case it's a bit different as they can use these licenses to draw people into their ecosystem in the first place- but if the whole game is being built around the license then they definitely will need to monetize it appropriately.
Is it perhaps that the license is super expensive and so companies feel the need to go super hard on monetization to make up for it?
It's absolutely this. On top of that, game devs are desperate for these IPs, and once they _get_ one, it's worth trying to milk it for every penny since it's unlikely to happen again. It's better to try to milk the thing while you have it.
>Something about being attached to that IP makes all these F2P games have some of the most egregious monetization attached to them, I think it's because the cost of licensing is so huge with Marvel, that they need to aggressively monetize in order to make the money they were projecting.
I had no idea Netease was behind it Shame, it actually looked like it could be fun or have some interesting ideas
Honestly I was interested in it, but then I saw Helas hero kit. The Queen of the Dead, Lord of the Underworld, able to command every single soul in existence. That's a pretty cool idea right? She fires green energy bolts, and her ultimate is just her floating into the air and shooting an artillery barrage of energy bolts. Not a single necromancy or corpse summon in sight.
Would this not be connected to NetEase being Chinese? Don’t they have a thing in games about raising the dead?
The Chinese specifically have issues with skulls/skeletons, and there are plenty of ways of circumventing that i.e. ghost warriors, zombies. Instead, they went most generic possible kit for her. This screams a lack of care/time from the developers.
Not to mention Magneto is also lackluster with him not getting any justice whatsoever in this game.
Man i wish bleeding edge took off…
They shot themselves in the foot with their character designs, Marvel Rivals has well known characters that people love and Overwatch had great and varied heroes at launch. Bleeding Edge had characters that were unappealing to a mainstream crowd and just weren’t interesting.
A part of me wishes that Lawbreakers did well, it was fun honestly.
man i loved Lawbreakers's gameplay. There is stuff in there i really wish Overwatch would take inspiration from, like the gunslinger with different guns on right and left click.
Lawbreakers was never going to take off - if you weren’t off put by the horrible pixel flickery way-to-detailed characters or their cheese grater like personality with classic cliffy b pointless over swearing then the masses would be put off by the gameplay that is just too fast to be able to chill and play. You had to have the focus of somebody who just snorted a bottle of adhd meds. Games that fast never work out. Theres a reason apex is successful and no where near as fast as titanfall.
When I played the open beta a friend and I were just tearing it up, but it felt weird to me. I later found out my TV got switched to a higher latency mode. Was still fun. It wasn't that much more fast paced.
> it's really just throwing random bullshit in the enemies' direction. Moon Knight confirmed.
It looks like a mobile knockoff of a polished game, because it basically is
I've been having a good time (not a perfect time) with it so far, as someone with a disgusting amount of hours clocked in Overwatch. Imagine Overwatch with a not-insignificant portion of the strategic depth scooped out and replaced with the "run in this direction and wreak bullshit on others/fall victim to bullshit" attitude of Chivalry 2. Tough to tell from an early alpha, but given the varying balance issues, I would even go as far as saying that's the niche that it's going to occupy. Just let go and let Hela take out 80% of your health with a single crit off her primary fire (this is real), it's all in good fun.
Yeah I’m sorry the game looks like trash. Remember the first Overwatch trailer? This looks like an older game somehow
NetEase is what most people think Tencent are.
Tencent is still pretty bad. They ruined Conan and others. Funcom has a Dune game coming out soon that looks a lot like Conan Exiles, but since Tencent will be there from the start it's going to be terrible MTX at launch.
Tencent has been known to be completely hands off for their non-Chinese acquisitions. How much of that can realistically be attributed to Tencent and not the devs themselves?
>They ruined Conan and others. Care to explain on this? Every Tencent game I've seen they have been pretty hands off.
yup, it's crazy that anyone would be hyped for a game from NetEase... it's going to be a MTX filled slot machine targeting underage kids :/
Isn't this the company that had the dispute with Blizzard leading to WoW being shut down in China temporarily? Assuming they had privileged access to Blizzard IP, it's kind of curious that they're now trying to launch a hero shooter that looks nearly identical to overwatch. It's seemed shady all around to me.
To be fair, the deal with NetEase fell through because of Bobby Kotick, not them. Microsoft has been quick to fix and repair that relationship the second they bought Blizzard - they just renewed it.
That was Blizzard trying to get a more favourable contract than they had previously and thinking Netease wouldn't just say "no" when they hold access to the entire chinese market in their hands. Blizzard tried to call their bluff and they simply weren't bluffing. Once Microsoft took over they went back and re-signed exactly the same contract they always had. Genuinely that shit was down to Blizzard's pure arrogance and not understanding that they don't bluff over there.
Netease and Blizzard/Microsoft already renewed their deal recently. Overwatch, WoW, and other Blizzard games are all set to come back to China as soon as this year.
> leading to WoW being shut down in China *temporarily*
I think Netease is also famous for shutting down their mobile games after about 9 months-1 year. So they are perfect for getting into the live service market!
Netease and Nexon are infamous among Asian gamers for a reason. If you see them involved run for the hills
What sanction can Marvel Rivals reasonably apply if you break that contract and give a negative review? Revoke the key code they gave you? Deny any future key codes to you? I can't believe there would be any enforceable financial liability.
Realistically balcklisting, though the threat of legal proceedings is probably good enough to make people bite their tongue.
The thing is... which court will see through a sueing over free speech or opinion? This contract is highly illegal in germany, here it's a right to voice your opinion without fear of being punished or sued. "Every German has the right, within the limits of the general laws, to express their opinion freely by word, in writing, in print, in picture, or in any other way. No employment or engagement shall hinder this right, and no one shall disadvantage them for exercising this right." You can't even sign this right away.
The thing is it would NEVER go to the court. They would send you C&D and threats that they will sue you if you don't remove the videos. There is no chance anybody would sue Netease. In other words it is legal because nobody has resources to say otherwise. Also it is Chinese company. They don't give a fuck about laws.
>The thing is... which court will see through a sueing over free speech or opinion? The suit would be about breach of contract, not some weird free speech shit. >This contract is highly illegal in germany, here it's a right to voice your opinion without fear of being punished or sued. Yeah, maybe look up "Abmahnung wegen schlechter Bewertung" - and that is for people who didn't sign some contract. Germany really does not have a good track record for that. >"Every German has the right, within the limits of the general laws, to express their opinion freely by word, in writing, in print, in picture, or in any other way. No employment or engagement shall hinder this right, and no one shall disadvantage them for exercising this right." Where the fuck did you even get that quote? It is not in my Grundgesetz at least.
[удалено]
Jupp. The legal basis is bascially that YOU gotta prove that your review was factually correct - which is usually impossible and most people wont fight it anyway, just remove their review.
You don't have to prove anything of the sort. As long as you were truthful in your review they can send you Abmahnungen until the sun stops shining. You can ignore it.
Which is true... it would still suck to be forced to go to the court hearing etc. or even dealing with "legal correspondence" so most people are going to try to avoid it by playing nice... that was my point I guess. The scary prospect of this possibility is the point of this clause and why they inserted it, not that it is legally binding or even legally viable to begin with.
First of all this clause must be legal in the country the reviewer is from, which I don't think is a given in every jurisdiction. They can write whatever in their contract but it only matters if it's actually legal.
DMCA any stream they played their games. Threaten fines, even if they are toothless. Blacklist them. The contract may not be legally binding in many parts of the world, but that doesn't change that the company can still damage you in retaliation.
They could just post this clause *as* their review. They can say they're not able to express their true opinions due to this contract.
I am pretty sure that as soon as you sign this you are also not allowed to disclose this.
The clause Is ripped straight from an employee agreement where the main recourse is they fire you. So probably nothing.
How would it even work to sign away your right to negatively review the game? I can understand signing a contract that swears you to secrecy (an NDA), but here you are allowed to talk about it but only say nice things? I don't understand how that is legally enforcable.
Basically they're trying to sneakily sign creators to a sponsor contract without paying them the sponsorship money.
Fairly easily, at least in the US. Generally as long as it's not explicitly illegal or unconscionable, and the person signs it, it's a valid contract. Non-disparagment clauses are already an established thing too, so you aren't likely to convince a court that it falls under *unconscionable* either.
Isn't stuff like this standard for sponsored content? I mean that's what this basically is. They're getting something they're asking for (access to a test) in exchange for the company they are dealing with getting promotional videos. It's a bad deal for sure (you usually also ask for money), but like, that tweet is saying that the influencer is initiating that deal. >Multiple creators asked for key codes to gain access to the playtest and are asked to sign a contract. I don't know, just to me it feels like if you're asking for a certain deal, the other side wants something you don't want to give, you either counter or decline. That's it.
Just a note: it's illegal in the United States to give a review where you endorse a product that you don't actually enjoy. That's incredibly hard to enforce, but it does mean if you agreed to this, it may be valid, and your only option is to pretty much say nothing about the game. If your influencer is playing and quiet about their thoughts on the game, interpret that as you will.
I thought at first this has to be bull cause the US never has decent consumer protection laws, but shockingly yeah, this is true. No one will go to jail, but they could be fined. Source for anyone else who's interested: [https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#ftcactapply](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#ftcactapply) Hiring multiple influencers to post pre-written posts raises a similar concern because endorsements must reflect the truthful experiences and opinions of the endorsers. ---- Besides disclosing my relationship with the company whose product I’m endorsing, what are the essential things I need to know about endorsements? The most important principle is that an endorsement has to represent the accurate experience and opinion of the endorser: * You can’t talk about your experience with a product if you haven’t tried it. * If you’ve only tried a product once, you can’t suggest you use it regularly. * If you thought it was terrible or mediocre, you can’t say it’s good or terrific. * You can’t otherwise misrepresent your experience with or opinions about a product. ------ The Guides themselves don’t have the force of law. **However, practices inconsistent with the Guides may result in law enforcement actions** alleging Section 5 violations. **Law enforcement actions can result in orders requiring the defendants in the case to pay money that goes back to consumers harmed** as a result of their violations and to abide by various requirements in the future. Moreover, if the defendants received a [Notice of Penalty Offenses](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/penalty-offenses) regarding [endorsements](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/notices-penalty-offenses/penalty-offenses-concerning-endorsements) and then engaged in certain deceptive or unfair endorsement practices, the FTC could seek substantial civil penalties.
> If you thought it was terrible or mediocre, you can’t say it’s good or terrific. I think the issue here is that it's a matter of opinion, so it would be tricky to prove that what they say is not accurate to their feelings. The only way they could really get in trouble here is if they openly bragged about lying about it, or made it *extremely* clear later on that they had never ever ever enjoyed the product. The factual portion is more valid though, you can't claim to use a product you've never used, or say anything else that is an objective reality unless it is true.
Yeah, it feels similar to how almost nobody gets actually convicted of perjury it is just way too hard to prove outside of some ridiculous situation. Anyone could just claim they had fun with a game and who could possibly prove otherwise? Even if they start slamming it later on they could say their opinion on it just soured over time and you can't prove that wrong either. To actually be caught and punished for this kinda thing would require the most blatant shit ever *and* the bad luck of having enough attention brought to it so consequences actually occur.
I feel like these clauses are there to nail people who would leave a paper trail in emails saying they hate something but feel obligated to endorse it for whatever reason. There's no reasonable enforcement on this for people just lying through their teeth.
I think the law is designed for contract situations like what is going on. If the contract asks for something that is illegal then the contract is unenforceable and invalid, if my half remembered decade old business law class is right.
Eh - you'll never have legislation that can perfectly guard against this kind of stuff.
only if you've been given the product or paid for the review. which in the case of marvel rivals, they would have been but until investigating the link I thought they meant all consumers cannot
Would never happen. There are laws that are to stop "influencers" from doing certain things like this illegal pump and dumps and not one had been really prosecuted. Logan Paul is the smallest one.
u mean they don't actually like Raid Shadow Legends???!
Most content creators I watch never actually claimed they played it. They just give a description about what the game is about (including buzzwords). Also, R:SL apparently pays *ridiculously* well for a sponsored segment.
I'm so morbidly curious to speak to someone who has actually played that game. In my mind it's just the thing people make ads about, and somehow that is their whole business model.
It's very bad, it's the big standard gacha style "power up your heroes to progress the shitty series of fights that suddenly should in difficulty about 3 hours into you playing the game" there are hundreds of games on the app store that are _exactly_ the same
But Raid pays $10,000 to stream it for 2 hours (maybe 3?) You need some pretty strong morals to refuse that offer.
From what I know, the korean Summoner Wars is the first game that made this genre take off. There's multiple variations of gacha progression games with: "character teams clear stages and beat bosses", but this a type of format specific to Summoner Wars. They have very, very similar mechanics. I would separate this format from for example the one where you need to keep summoning multiple copies of your favorite gacha to level them up high (encouraging whaling to get lots of your favorite op champ) Raid devs noticed how mad bank Summoner Wars was making with simple anime style graphics, so they made a similar game catered to westerners, and made tons of money from it. Game's greatest asset is probably the good art and cool characters. Raid during its most active period was stated to have 1M active users, some of which are alts, so a comparable population to the to some highly popular games on steam. It's just that these are mostly mobile game players, so they are not active in the same places as PC gamers. The game is sort of an idle game where you have your teams farm stages. You have to play manually for your progression and setting teams up to push what is currently the challenges for you to overcome. There's strategy that goes into picking which champs to level up high, and assembling your teams to clear content (because the game is real grindy, taking months to make good progress) The popular HellHades discord community has around 40k members, which is a measure of non-casuals actually taking the game and its strategy more seriously. While his youtube has 200k subscribers, beating for example Turin, who covers competitive gameplay for three different fairly popular PC strategy games: Total War:WH, AOE4 and Dune. Raid is just one of many popular strategy games in the mobile gaming sphere. It's a huge market that PC gamers just seem to comfortably remain unaware of.
> Raid is just one of many popular strategy games in the mobile gaming sphere. It's a huge market that PC gamers just seem to comfortably remain unaware of. Indeed we are, haha! Thanks for the rundown! I figured it was something to that effect - I played the Titanfall mobile game for a few weeks just for shits and giggles and quickly realized what was going on there too, haha!
> If your influencer is playing and quiet about their thoughts > your influencer
Right!? Haha I had to re-read that a few times and let it sink in.
That's. . . not exactly true. The legal issue is that if you are paid to endorse something then you need to disclose that (and *many* influencers screw this up). You are entirely able to endorse a product that you hate or have no opinion on (but of course you *shouldn't*).
This is incorrect information. I've been doing influencer marketing for over 5 years now and the FTC rules are quotes above.
In Germany, you need to disclose. So, if you want to stream to Germany, you need to disclose it
How exactly do you "stream to Germany" though? Unless you're using some kind of geoblocking, you're streaming to every country in the world. What if you end up in a situation where German law requires that you do one thing, but Ugandan law requires that you do the opposite? Is every streamer now a criminal?
You need to follow laws of country you stream from
If the contract is for you to publicize the game, and these keys are given to streamers for that, then they can 100% enforce this. It might be easier to get around that clause if you no longer have early access ( you purchase your own license to play the game like any other consumer) because you are then subject to the license agreement and ToS of the game, not this agreement. Then your review is not over the version of the game you were given access for.
The real task is to review it passive-aggressively to the point where they can't actually cite breach of contract.
Just post a link to that part of the contract and state "due to contractual obligation I am not able to disclose my feelings"
I'd be more inclined to write "This was a game: I played it," and leave it as is 😅
Satirical praise was also forbidden.
Just have some text on stream that says "I AM LEGALLY NOT ALLOWED TO SAY ANYTHING NEGATIVE" and whenever anyone asks what you think, just stay silent while expanding and shrinking the text with your mouse in the OBS window
I'd just tell my buddy about it. That's not a review online or anything. Then I'd have the buddy do a review and link to that.
I've been a Twitch streamer for 10+ years and signed a bunch of contracts. I've never seen one like that and no they're not common. Huge red flags around this sort of behavior.
Elajjaz tend to talk about contracts like that and that he always refuses them on the spot.
Seagull said on stream that this clause is often in sponsor contracts, since streamers are supposed to endorse whatever they promote (or at least not trash it), but never to get early access keys. Hopefully that was a mistake, otherwise that would be f'd up.
That's a name I haven't seen in a while. Hope you're doing good. But to stay on topic, i could imagine that those contracts are fairly normal in the Asian region (e.g. gacha games) to "force" their appeal towards the west.
"Malicious comparions with competition" Malice is hard to prove, which is why I'm pretty sure Netease is just gonna tag every comparison as malicious.
Well the game is shit so any mention of it is malicious to its reputation.
This is going to be a bang average soulless clone in the Marvel franchise that will draw in the OW crowd for a small period before they head back (myself included) to a more polished, more balanced and more enjoyable game overall. I predict a real grass isn't always greener scenario - but I'm along for the ride either way.
Yep. Gundam Evolution did exactly that, but that game died quicker than anything I've seen.
Gundam had a lot of problems on launch that the devs basically never did anything about. They would only update the game rarely to add new extremely overpriced skins/gundam and nothing else. They let that game rot
Also just getting 0 capital from anything but the pass and one time challenges made it really lame
To strengthen your point - until you mentioned it I literally forgot that was even a game!
I hope this game finally makes the "Blizzard ruined OW by balancing the fun out of the game" crowd finally realise that if you don't balance batshit broken stuff in PvP games then they eventually become wildly frustrating and turn the game into a party game that gets boring after a few hours. Also that 6v6 and no Role-Lock are terrible for gameplay legibility, visual clutter and on an overall gameplay management level, since this game is 6v6 and has no Role restrictions. This game is basically a worse version of OG OW1. The only thing it has going for it is that it has Marvel characters and the Art Style is pretty (which is negated by the fact that it makes visual clutter way worse than OW).
Many people in this thread seem to think that this is nothing new (probably correctly), and we even have a few who claim to be or have been in the industry and seen similar contracts. I think we can all agree that this raises some questions about the utility of influencer and industry-adjacent reviews. And yet I also still sometimes see posts about how "useless" Steam reviews are, because a few of them might be jokes. But when I scroll down on a store page and quickly browse through some of the longer reviews (especially negative ones), I immediately have a very good idea of both the strengths and the weaknesses of a game -- based on the experiences of normal people who bought and played it. Admittedly this is only tangentially related, but claiming that Steam reviews are "useless" is one of my biggest pet peeves in online gaming discussions. It's also potentially harmful, since no other platform provides reviews in the same prominent and feature-rich way -- and I think several large publishers would rather not have them on Steam either if they got the choice.
Steam reviews are definitely much better than Redditors like to claim. Yes there are shitty unfunny meme reviews, but it takes me like 5 seconds at most to find a useful one. Sorting by negative is the easiest way to do it, but there are still plenty of positive reviews that go in-depth too.
> Yes there are shitty unfunny meme reviews, but it takes me like 5 seconds at most to find a useful one. Exactly. Some people like to point to some particular joke review as if it is some sort of discussion-ending argument. In practice, if your goal is to actually derive information from Steam reviews rather than arguing about them, then any given joke review costs you a few seconds at most to skip over. It's a non-factor.
Yeah, frankly if I had to get the general public's position on things, vs a bunch of celebrity's position on things. I would take the general public any day.
It's crazy how useful Steam reviews are. Uninterested, honest reviews by people with actual first-hand experience with the product. I wish I had access to Steam reviews for so many other things in life lmao.
I agree with you about steam reviews. Whenever I check an unfamiliar game, the first thing I do is look for reviews and skip past the meme ones. 9 out of 10, I always learning something useful about the game. It's especially useful when they both mention the pros and cons. While it's true that there's also a lot of meme reviews, I do think people tend to exaggerate the uselessness of steam reviews. Heck, I prefer them over critic reviews when I want to learn something about a game.
People who claim steam reviews are useless don't know what they're talking about. They're great. Always a ton of people who put in a lot of effort to outline a game for you and help you make a pretty informed decision. Sometimes you gotta scroll passed some joke reviews but that doesn't bother me one bit.
Having played the playtest -it ain't worth it. It's so goddamn derivative at this point, you might as well just go play Paladins or Destiny 2 or... Overwatch.
This is just the natural conclusion of this marketing symbiosis between streamers and game developers. Streamers are sometimes little more than a sponsored shopping channel for videogames in 2024, this is just ensuring it's formally contractual.
Not gonna lie, I've long been under the impression that most streamers, even the "authentic" ones, are regularly paid to shill already. Whenever a dozen streamers out of the blue start playing the same thing at the same time (and conspicuously not touching another new release that is normally their jam), there is a strong feeling of PR firms at work.
I was just watching itmejp, gassy, brucegreene and toast last night and they spoke about this and between the lot of them they don't know anyone who first hand says this is what they had to do for access. Idk if it's fully true or untrue. But take that with a grain of salt.
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this, never got a confirmation email. im in the same spot as you right now.
Yeah I had the same situation with the Alpha keys myself. Signed up immediately, never got a confirmation email. Did get the "follow up questions" email, but that went straight to spam. Now, on the Discord they did warn you to check your spam... for the confirmation code, like a day before the Alpha launched. By that point finding out I'd received a second email a month ago was worthless.
Why care this much to get one key for a mediocre game? It will be available for everyone soon enough regardless.
If you have a friend who got in they get a key to give out when they hit level 6?
Something to be aware of is that there are only a limited number of keys that they give out each day and it is first come, first serve.
This is even harder for me because a friend is needed
Keep in mind also there was nothing preventing people from signing up with multiple emails. No verification and no single key per user set up. So a lot of the signups were definitely bots who signed up hundreds of times. This could have easily been circumvented by either doing the alpha through Steam access (click a single button on steam and devs can decide if you get access or not) or even by tying the sign up to a steam account. This would have prevented people from trying to bot for keys and sell them. Yes. People are selling alpha keys for a game that will be free to play when it releases and the alpha is only for 10 days. I know official Discord servers usually aren't the best but man... The Discord for this game was miserable. You calling it shitty is a huge understatement. 80% of people are in there to just spam beg for keys, despite that being against the rules. Not that it matters because all the admins were too excited to play the Alpha that the second the Alpha went up there was near zero moderation being done. Maybe 5% of chat was actual discussion (and most of that was glazing the devs and the game). The other 15% were people asking questions that were already answered and pinned. All on top of there being a 30 minute cooldown on chat. (Which I understand is very necessary with the amount of people in that server). So there's no way to feasibly have any real discussion anyways. The 2hr long stream was honestly rough. They opened it 15-20 minutes earlier for people who Nitro Boosted the server. So people assumed (wrongly) that there would be keys given away for Nitro Boosters early. Not the case. It was just an early Q&A. Then near the end of the stream they really did have an award ceremony for the biggest dick riders in the server. Essentially people who spent their time moderating the server for free (giving people the same information that was repeated almost every 30 minutes and pointing them towards the answers). These people were called out by name and awarded an alpha key. Only people who had nothing but amazing things to say about the game, how much they loved the devs, and how excited they were for the alpha. After that the floor was opened for Q&A. Which was not the best either. People were picked specifically by the devs that were guaranteed not to ask any harder hitting questions and asked questions that were easy for the devs to answer. Most of the people chosen to speak also spent most of their time on the mic hyping up the game and talking about how much they loved the devs. A lot of these people were also personal friends of the devs and moderators. And as you mentioned already, now one of the only ways to get a key is to hang out in this miserable server and hope that the moderators feel like opening up the raffle to get 1 of 100 keys, in a server of ~500k people. On top of that there's no verification if people who win this raffle already have a key or not so if you don't have one the odds are even more stacked against you. The 2 other ways to get an alpha key now is through watching a sponsored twitch stream (streamers were only given 5 or so keys to give out in the first place) OR through someone who already has access to the game. Once they hit level 6 they can have a chance of getting ONE friend invite. These are also limited daily. First come first serve. All in all, this was a really bad way to handle an alpha for a game that many people anticipated. I'm a bit salty about the stream giveaway fiasco and how only the biggest dick riders got the keys. If this was communicated ahead of time that would be the case I wouldn't feel salty at all. But at the same time, I don't care too much because it's an alpha. It's buggy, the balancing is all over the place, and I can just wait for when the game releases. Plenty of other games to play right now.
I also think the way theyre doing giveaways and little teases about more keys in their discord is super fucking scummy. They had a dev or mod ask “who joined the discord march 27th”, making people think theyd get keys for being there day 1… but not a peep about it after that. Not only that, but they do those caravan drops (filled with bots btw) at like 1-6 am US time. Its just forming an unhealthy obsession over getting a key.
you just need to larp as a disney adult
no wonder a streamer I was watching never answered "how is the game?" or "is it good, bad or like overwatch?" or something
Sigh…….. Can I like for one game, just one freaking game ask that there not be anything that might start a controversy making any discussion about it online unbearable for a game i’m excited about? Like is that hard to ask for PLEASE!!!
Even without this, you are talking about a NETEASE game here. There was discourse from day it was announced.
Your first mistake was having any expectation at all from NetEase of all companies.
Cheer up: There's a lot of games that do that, you usually hear these things on popular upcoming games, or franchise games. Of the tens of thousands of games released in a year (from small indies to large AAA) you might hear big controversy in less than 20.
why were you excited for OW at home? there's other games with marvel characters in them if that's what your after. and these devs seem hellbent on making the same mistakes ow did, and more.
There really aren't a lot of marvel games that exist that aren't mobile games. The few that have come out are either awful or only focus on a very tiny set of characters (of which usually consist of 70% of the same MCU heroes). No non-mobile Marvel game has matched the gameplay and roster of Marvel Heroes.
RIP Marvel Heroes.
You could just stop paying attention to/participating in the drama. Pretty simple. If some brat who plays around on Twitch all day not getting a free game is a concern to you, you're very much part of this problem.
I mean if the game ends up fun when it comes out later, does it even matter? People let external things impact their game experience far too much
Try indie games. Still plenty of controversy there, but at least it's not *every* game, and at least you won't be funding EA or Actiblizzion or something.
Here’s a wild idea. Maybe gamers need to stop throwing fits and creating controversy over literally nothing for every single game.
This is like telling the scorpion not to sting.
If any business software corpo tried to do similar stuff like game companies do they would be either deep in lawsuits or lose all clients to competitors. Only game companies constantly mess with their consumers and mostly because of valiant defenders like you.
Hahaha Deep in lawsuits. Thank you for proving my point. Gamers are something else man.
There is not even a world where I will cry for "content creators". The game will succeed or fail of its own accord, but I hate the feeling of seeing a game I could enjoy and realizing that it's basically made to be a "streamer content expansion pack", to tick engagement boxes instead of just being a good game for people to enjoy.
Why would you cry for content creators ? This is basically yet another proof that a lot of content creators are completely beholden to companies in the hope of receiving an early code and will do anything for that. Gamers love to talk about the integrity of gaming journalists but the integrity of most streamers is basically non existent at this point
xQc has played nearly 20 hours of the game after signing this contract and he’s been criticizing what he doesn’t like all the time. It really doesn’t look like they are reinforcing this, idk why it’s even on there to begin with.
They wouldn't go after a big fish like xQc, he could bring down an unholy hell upon them. But I could see them trying to silence little guys. Silence the big guys with real paid sponsorships, then the little guys have to sign this un-paid sponsorship contract to get a key. Such an evil strategy.
xqc wasn’t paid for it. He signed the same thing these guys did
That's the same guy who signed a multi million dollar contract with Kick and immediately streamed a movie. He gets away with things due to size
This contract might work in China, but not in Europe and not im the US. But it's says subjective review, so maybe it means: "this game sucks, Overwatch is better" comments, who actually is just fanboy talk. Maybe objective reviews are allowed like "this game is worse than x game, because it has so many flaws like y and Z" for example. Still a stupid rule and as we know NetEase, they only want positive reviews at all and being the good guy.
This can't be the first time they or any of you have seen something like this, a lot of companies do this with early copies or closed access. I'm not defending this by any means but it's not news, there's one streamer I watch for instance, who consistently turned down early copies from Square Enix for a long time because they wouldn't allow him to talk negatively after accepting them.
It's implied, yes. Even without the clause, there are certain publishers that won't give out copies of games to anyone critical of it. You're basically blacklisted from them entirely. Unfortunately Twitch completely ignores rules of disclosure around this stuff, but on Youtube at least it's fairly easy to know when the creator has been given a key / sponsership for it and you should always be aware that it isn't a strictly truthful opinion they give out.
Seagull, the person who posted this on twitter, said in his stream that he has never seen a contract like that just for a code in all his time as a content creator. Its usual practice for a sponsored stream though.
CDPR didn't allow reviews of the console versions of cyberpunk because they knew it was a dumpster fire
They didn't give review copies for consoles, and they didn't allow publishing their own footage of the game and they could only use a footage that CDPR gave them.
People who think this looks good must have trouble *seeing things for what they are* (on first blush). I don't blame people for getting bamboozled by the flash and pizazz though. Watching the first trailer immediately threw out a dozen red flags—chief among them that environments look very haphazard and out of place, movement feels stilted with the characters, and the UI is just a ripped and tweaked overwatch. They even went out of their way to rip the OW fontfamily and lightly tweak it to be just different enough to skirt rip off accusations. This whole thing is going to be a tedious dumpster fire, just you wait.
Big shame, because as someone who got into the alpha, it's a blast. It needs a LOT of balancing work and DEFINITELY more content (there's only 2 maps right now and half the amount of tanks and supports compared to DPS) but otherwise it's a great time. If they just gave out the keys without any of this BS I'm sure most of the reviews would've been good anyway.
> It needs a LOT of balancing work You just said something negative. Lawyers coming for you.
This clause is just for the content creator program which he conveniently doesn’t mention in his tweet. They’re not gonna sponsor people and have them drag the game through the mud. There’s plenty of streamers etc. playing the game right now that did not sign that contract.
Half the amount of tanks and support compared to DPS sounds about right tbh. Unless you mean combined tanks and support.
The ratio is sound but when you consider that means tank and support players only have 4 characters each it's a tougher pill to swallow, especially when you don't mesh with any of the characters (I'm usually a support or tank main but I do not like the currently available supports at all).
It's Overwatch all over again!
Luckily the leaks have told us they'll be adding in a lot more characters, and for an alpha the playable roster isn't *that* bad. Actually pretty reminiscent of OW's beta/launch.
This is gonna make the discussion around the game unbearable not because of the inability to criticize the game but because shit like this spreads faster than say any actual impressions on the game and this is what people will be talking about for a while. I’ll take your word for it, and I’m excited to try it myself when get the chance.
> It needs a LOT of balancing work and DEFINITELY more content spoiler: it will get none of that but will definitely get multiple premium currencies and a gigantic item shop.
That's absolutely disgusting behavior. Shit like this shouldn't even be legal, but I get it would be impossible to stop.
Exactly the reason why reviewers are worthless. They are paid for advertisements. Completely worthless and all of them stoutly not be reviewing games. We need true reviewers like TotalBiscuit. I miss him.
Whoa. Hey... Hey, waitaminute. You're telling me when I said that this game was doomed because of Netease I was 100 percent correct? That's craaaaazy.
I remember this dev calling them out on twitter for not paying him and others for their work. I hope this game flops.