Valve gives you access to a game and tells you not to spew your mouth off. A gentleman’s agreement if you will.
You spew your mouth off and valve takes access away.
shocked pikachu face
This is a non-issue of you ask me. A person, who happens to be a writer, got access to the game through a steam friend and was asked not to talk about it but thought they could just not agree to a warning and write about it anyway? I got access too and i didnt write about the game. I get to go back and play it today, they cant.
So what. They already have their article and it will be out anyways within like two years latest probably. The value of talking about deadlock is much higher and valve profits from this advertising as well.
The so what is that this writer for the verge will likely never be trusted with NDA type pre-release access for any other games going forward, and this may even impact all of the Verge.
This isn’t just a one and done kind of issue, this will be seen by the entire industry as a “can’t trust that guy with pre-release access”
The Verge isn’t pulling the article and they are currently backing their journo. The whole site is blacklisted at this point.
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They didn’t get an NDA.
Sure they don’t have any trust from the industry anymore.
It doesn’t have to be a legal document for there to be consequences.
The rest of the industry uses embargo agreements with mutual consent if they have private information. This doesn’t change anything for other game companies, unless they also want to do private-but-not-private beta tests.
Except this is a game industry reputation ruined. It isn’t just valve, why would any dev ever give the verge access again knowing that they will not only disrespect your requests but bitch and moan if you hold them to it.
It’s a full rep killer. They will never have early access again for any company.
That’s not how this works. The Verge didn’t break an NDA or embargo because they didn’t get either of those things. Valve allows random people to invite other random people to play, with just a “pretty please don’t talk about this game” warning. There was already people talking about it online and leaked footage.
They didn’t break any laws, they broke trust. Random people can leak all they want, they don’t have institutional standing and respect. If what you said was true then it’d be pretty weird that every other institutional news, even gaming focused ones, have honored that request. Because doing otherwise is a dick move that kills your reputation, and the gaming industry is legendary for blacklisting for far less disrespectful moves. Downright petty with it.
even if it doesn’t, they lose consumer respect as well, I personally won’t engage verge anymore because as someone who wants to go into the development trade, it puts a bad taste of any platform to blatantly disrespect a creators wishes like that.
If Valve wants to be shitty about it, that’s within their right (unless they want to sue, which would be difficult to defend in court without a written legal agreement). It is also true that other outlets are free to do handshake agreements to not cover the game. The Verge didn’t break any rules, and Valve already maintains a minimal relationship with the press, so not talking to The Verge probably wouldn’t change anything.
I see you subscribe to the moral theory of “I didn’t click okay, I hit escape”.
I’m sort of confused about why Valve even care that much. Surely they know that “leaks” are the best way to build hype for a game.
Although Valve are making a game again, so I’m not sure how much hype they really need.
The biggest thing would be that a game under playtest is likely to undergo drastic balance changes and potentially even changes to core gameplay, a review of a game in that early of a state would likely not reflect the finished product, and is unlikely to be updated or taken down when the game is released, this possibly poisoning public opinion with content that doesn’t reflect the actual game.
Closed playtests are usually with very in-development builds. People post the barely functioning game to social media and the game gets bad press. Release day rolls around and no one buys it because “that was that one game that looked bad a while ago”
This seems like a stupid train of thought but a lot of people think like this
Oh you have access? You got any spare referals? Asking for a friend with the friend code 998621885
What a lucky ducking over here bragging about getting to enjoy this game, and the reporter just squander it! You know are people out there who don’t even have access!
I can’t believe their secret game they gave to 10 thousand people got leaked
I think the thing everyone is forgetting is that valve isn’t stupid, there’s no way they didn’t realize you could work around accepting the (legally unenforcable) NDA, and it’s open invite.
Valve 100% knows that keeping it “secret” is good for hype and was expecting this to happen at any time, and the nominal ban was expected, but nobody is gonna get sued either.
More people are talking about Valve’s “secret” new game because of this than would be if they openly announced it.
Yeah exactly. It’s quite likely they didn’t really blacklist The Verge anyways, just won’t send them invites any more for this particular game. Best kind of marketing is hype marketing, and this is how you fuel the hype.
Yep, tech and game companies use invite-only systems to generate hype constantly. Bluesky is another recent example.
As someone whose played it I can say that it has some cool concepts but it’s sorta mid atm. It’s what to be expected for an alpha game though, I just hope they push the aethetic harder and not just use it as set dressing cause so far the aethetic is the most unique part about it. The rest is just overwatch meets leagueDota but slightly jankier (Again, to be expected since it’s alpha.)
What was so secret about it?
So apparently they had a bit asking players to not share info about the game, but you could technically back out of it without agreeing so legally they can post whatever they want. It feels like a case of “this is legal to do but maybe kinda shitty and valve might be upset”. Basically the agreement was informal and not enforceable and the verge just said fuck it. They did get banned afterwards, but I think that and not working with them in the future is all valve can do.
Edit: didn’t even require agreement, so honestly it’s kinda fair game. I was a bit hostile calling it shitty, I felt like it was a loophole or something but it’s more Valve just saying “hey pls don’t” and the verge replying “no thanks”, and eating the game ban since that’s all valve can really do.
There isn’t even an informal agreement. It simply says not to share anything. Not even “by playing this, you agree not to share anything”. It’s just “please don’t share anything” without any action required by your side.
Yeah, gaylord_fartmaster let me know. I thought the message was one of those “scroll down and click agree on this eula” things but its just a pop up box, so it’s def not enforceable.
If 10,000 people are doing something, it is NOT secret, and journalists must report on it for the general benefit of society.
Valve has their head in the clouds if they thought they could keep an informal secret among the population of a small town.
This isn’t some grand conspiracy it’s a closed beta for a video game. It’s pretty normal to have an NDA or embargo agreement to get access. It sounds like valve just goofed the implementation. So yeah it’s totally legal for them to post it, valve just might avoid giving them early copies in the future.
Totally. Verge just lost their access to breaking gaming news. They’ll be blacklisted from now on.
That said, I don’t know anyone who goes to The Verge for breaking news on gaming.
There is no NDA for Deadlock, and anyone in it can invite anyone they want, as often as they want. It’s not like Valve has no idea how to privately test their game. I think they made these decisions deliberately.
A bit of the eula says not to share info about the game, but you can literally back out without accepting the eula, and still play. So I don’t know if I’d call it intentional, but there’s definitely no legal reason they can’t post whatever they want. They just got banned for it and might have damaged their relationship with valve somewhat. Depends on how much valve cares tho.
Edit: it wasnt even a eula apparently, just a “pls dont tell people ok?” Pop up. Thanks to the folks clarifying <3
There’s no EULA just like there’s no NDA. That pop up and a one sentence post about not sharing info about the game on the forum is all there is.
There was no NDA, and the EULA is skippable.
Don’t know why you’re getting crushed for this. It’s not even just about this particular game; one of the major players in the largest entertainment industry on the planet is doing something highly unusual. That’s in the public interest.
Lemmy users should know better, too, as The Verge was one of the leading reporting outlets on what happened on Reddit last year. Adversarial tech journalism is part of what they do.
Yeah that’s a fair point. I was mistaken thinking it was an actual eula they bypassed because valve didn’t make it so you couldn’t just close it, but it’s not in any way legally enforceable. I thought at least it was one of those grey “technically correct but obviously an unintended loophole” kind of things, but they literally just said “pls don’t tell”. I’m mostly thinking that risking the connections you might have to valve aren’t worth a scoop on a game still in what seems to be alpha or closed beta, but if I were valve I really don’t think they can be that mad, everything the verge did was basically fair game if they were fine with a game ban.
I guess when I think of public interest I think of stuff like reddit selling user data without consent, or games using manipulative tactics. It’s hard to feel like it makes sense to be aggressive with something as benign as “game we don’t know much about yet, smells of dota/moba” But then again I’m not a game journalist, and I stand corrected.
Clickbait title. I can’t find any justification for calling a player being banned as The Verge “under fire”.
Decent thing to do would have been ask valve for time when they want the article published
They did ask Valve:
Though Valve didn’t respond to my requests for comment
They have the same attitude I have to tech support tickets.
If I call and the user doesn’t answer then I guess the issue is fixed isn’t it? Ticket closed.
Then don’t post it.
If every news outlet avoided a topic because the company wouldn’t outright confirm its existence, we would never have reporting based on leaks and rumors. That’s dumb and would make journalism worse for everyone.
It wasnt a rumor or hearsay but literally breaking a gentlemans NDA.
I havent played it but as I heard they requested not to show it and the journalist supposedly recorded whole gameplay and wrote about it?
Seems like a clear deal to me to cut of and ban his account for breaking an agreement for early access.Reporting about leaks and rumors is totally fine. But that’s like being the primary reporter of a whistle blower
“Gentleman’s NDA” is not a thing. It’s either a legally-binding NDA or it’s not.
Why wouldn’t they just put journalists they gave access to under embargo?
It’s not clear if he got access from Valve or from a friend or someone else. The article simply states
Earlier today, I received a no-strings-attached invite to play Deadlock on Steam.
Ok - but they all originate from Valve, right? They couldn’t just put it behind a paywall or “NDA”wall?
From my understanding users of the beta can then invite others to join as well, Valve isn’t necessarily directly choosing who has access. So if Valve didn’t send the invite themselves they wouldn’t know to specifically put someone under a more strict NDA or whatnot because they’re a journalist. Could they have done more to restrict all users from sharing information? Yes, since apparently you just have to hit escape to bypass the agreement pop up, and there’s no other sort of NDA or contract or w/e in place upon joining.
That’s all I’m saying. Valve is the gatekeeper and left the gate wide open. They blew it and they’re looking for someone else to blame.
Valve fucked up but the Verge still broke the social contract regardless of whether they’re legally in the clear or not.
Doing something just because “it’s legal” doesn’t make it a moral justification. My wife and I have a joint bank account. It is legal for me to take money from it and gamble it all away, the gate is “open” but that doesn’t make it morally justifiable.
Meh, I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with what he did. What he did wasn’t just legal, it’s literally his job. The only issue is that Valve is now angry at him for their own failing.
To continue the same analogy, they didn’t just leave the gate open, they literally invited a bunch of people and told them to invite other people. I’m not sure what they expected if not this exact situation.
Valve isn’t really angry as far as I can tell, or have heard. They’re about as angry as any other person which goes and posts this stuff online: revoking access. If Valve wanted to expand their testing userbase without people leaking it online, they would have sought NDAs and other legally-binding agreements with testers and - by extension - journalists who can test the game.
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The social contract exists always. It isn’t a paper contract but a societal consensus about what constitutes acceptable behavior. Gambling joint money without agreement is not socially acceptable behavior. Bypassing a eula/nda for a beta version of a thing and then spreading the info just because you’re legally in the clear is not societally acceptable behavior. It doesn’t matter that it shouldn’t have been so easy to do so or that they won’t face legal consequences.
It’s just bad faith reporting. It reminds me of Kotaku sneaking into conventions before they opened to report what games were there.
It lowers my opinion of The Verge, I used to think they were at least reputable with standards, but that’s a real tabloid move.
they were at least reputable with standards
I think you must be talking about a different website?
That’s what I thought as well. When has The Verge ever been good?
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The verge has been paid advertising disguised as tech news for decades now. Arstechnica too.
Isn’t it like just over ten years old?
Too bad the game itself doesn’t sound very interesting.
It’s a MOBA at heart. I don’t like MOBAs, so I couldn’t stick with it.
And at the end of the day…it’s just an ok game.
Have you tried it? Genuine question, since we’re free to talk about it I’d love to hear why you think it’s mediocre, so far all the talk is always hype so I’m eager for some less positive takes.
Preface that it is an early alpha build and everything can change.
Yes, I have played it. It is literally just a moba. It feels like they took Dota and slapped 5% of an fps to it. The matches can be way too long, and it suffers from the snowballing effect that if you don’t get a good start, it is really hard to be effective. If you are 10 mins in a match and getting outplayed, you probably arent going to enjoy the remaining 20-30 mins. If you took Dota and modded it with 1st person controls, you’d be almost there with this game.
There is some good. The vertical elements do help, and the jungle aspects, along with destroyables, do help somewhat to make up lost ground in your build. The art design is pretty good for being alpha, and I do enjoy the map. There are lots of crisscross paths and hidden areas. There are also some map mechanics that are fresh, like 1 way viewable smoke screens.
If you don’t like mobas, I’d almost guarantee you won’t like this. It’s not a new, genre defining experience, and it doesn’t pull enough fps features to make it different. 4/10 as it sits.
Oh interesting, so it’s not at all like early Overwatch 1 which was way more FPS and was only compared to a MOBA because of the comparatively mild focus on abilities?
That’s both good and bad to hear, but yeah, sounds like overall it has a long long way to go.
“Leaked”.
All leaks are deliberately orchestrated to fan the hype train.
Eh. I find it difficult to have any sympathy for Valve. Sounds like it was only a matter of time before someone did this. If anything this is just free marketing.
