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FTC: Machinima Took Secret Cash To Shill Xbox One
jfruh writes: The Machinima gaming video network took money from a marketing agency hired by Microsoft to pay "influencers" up to $45,000 to promote the Xbox One. Crucially, the video endorsers did not disclose that they'd been paid, which has caused trouble with the FTC. For its part, Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge.
Just a reminder: Machinima is not a "youtuber". It's a professional gaming publication with accreditations to major industry events (like E3) and 15 years of experience, and that's merely using youtube to deliver their own content, including reviews, previews and yes, "native ads". So before any professional publication takes the distance from Machinima just remember that most of any other major gaming site or gaming journalist is or has been in the past guilty of doing the same things.
1) Deepfreeze.it: http://www.deepfreeze.it/ does a great job of digging into and revealing the ties, 'backscratching' and outright corruption behind most of the gaming journalists on the big sites.
2) http://www.gamespot.com/forums... or at least the general question: "Gaming 'journalist' - seriously? It's a multibillion-dollar industry, and yet most of the "journalists" are freaks sitting in mom's basement desperately trying to pretend they're the next Perez Hilton, and who are tickled if someone even mentions they exist. None of them have the credibility of even the shammiest movie review shill.
-Styopa
But that was disclosed. It's okay to be a paid shill if you tell people you're a paid shill.
Ethics? Us taking money from the companies whose products we review?? Firing journalists for giving bad reviews?? Literally in bed with the studios?
LOOK! MISOGYNY!
[runs away]
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I work in bank robbing, and I have robbed banks many times. The most effective bank robberies are the ones where you don't run in and scream "This is a bank robbery!". I don't see a problem with this, it's way more common than you think.
But, sirs, that was YEARS ago--way back in the 2013 era. You can't hold us responsible for what happened in the long-long-ago!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Why not?
Because that would allow companies to get out of any liability for illegal or negligent activity by simply shifting around their management structure regularly.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So if the management changes, the current management is not responsible for anything.
Of course, that was WAY back in 2013, when Allen DeBevoise was the CEO of the company. Now he's just the Chairman of our Board of Directors.
Lol, I'm not even joking.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Seriously, the past couple years it has reached the point where I'm questioning if half the things I'm reading online are even genuine, or just shilled marketing from some PR team to push an agenda or product. It's happened on imgur, on reddit, even 4chan. Nevermind the gawker media rags, gaming media, and even mainstream media. I wouldn't even be surprised if it has happened here. We've all probably seen it - these people we've never heard of who suddenly get mass exposure for no reason, or things that nobody would've given two shits about, but every network carries the story. (Hurr, is the dress black and blue or white and gold!?!)
It's like mass advertising has become mass propaganda, and there's nowhere you can go to escape it.
You're about a century late to the party. But better late than never.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Since i can't tell if the parent is being sarcastic or doubly sarcastic, i'll say this.
If GG had only focused on issues like this, i for one would be cheering them on. But GG didn't come into existence when, for example, Jeff Gerstmann was fired under pressure from a game developer whose game he reviewed poorly, way back in 2007.
They didn't erupt into fury until an indie female developer had sex with a journalist who never even reviewed her game. _That_ was the ethical violation so shocking that it demanded the creation of a movement. And then followed up by throwing a hissy-fit about Sarkesion's and Wu's op-ed pieces. And because there was no rational reason for the level of objections they were raising they resorted to misogynistic threats and insults of anyone who disagreed with them.
So now actual violations of ethics in game journalism are being overshadowed by the group that's using ethics as a flag to wave over their apparent rage that women are involved in gaming and have opinions about it. Claiming to be concerned about "ethics" while focusing almost exclusively on categories of people you dislike is like saying "think of the children" while drafting laws to enable spying on and imprisonment of the kinds of people you dislike.
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Either way, the current management will eat the FTC fines (if any), and if the activity was criminal, I'm pretty sure the authorities can locate and drag in the former CxO's for the time period in question
Well, they won't have to look very far, at least. Machinima's CEO from 2013 is currently the Chairman of their Board of Directors. As soon as the heat came down, he resigned as CEO, became Chairman, appointed his own CEO successor, and hoped no would would notice the shell game.