Warner Bros. Settles FTC Charge For Not Disclosing Payments To YouTubers For Positive Reviews (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with Warner Bros. over claims that the publisher failed to disclose that it had paid prominent YouTubers for positive coverage of one of its video games. The FTC charge stated that Warner Bros. deceived customers by paying thousands of dollars to social media "influencers," including YouTube megastar PewDiePie, to cover Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor without announcing that money had changed hands. Under the terms of the agreement, Warner Bros. is banned from failing to disclose similar deals in the future, and cannot pretend that sponsored videos and articles are actually the work of independent producers. Warner Bros.' deal with the influencers involved stated that they had to make at least one tweet or Facebook post about the game, as well as produce videos with a string of caveats to avoid showing it in a negative light. Those videos could not express negative opinions about the game or Warner Bros. itself, could not show any glitches or bugs, and must include "a strong verbal call-to-action to click the link in the description box for the viewer to go to the [game's] website to learn more about the [game], to learn how they can register, and to learn how to play the game," according to Ars Technica. Influencers were advised to disclose the video's sponsored status under YouTube's "Show More" section, but some did not, and the FTC says this would not have been enough to skirt the rules anyway, as the disclaimer would not have been visible on videos watched through Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sources.

Comments

Why?

[wardrich86]

Why is the onus on WB for not disclosing it? Shouldn't that be the responsibility of the person reviewing the game?

so....gamergate was right

[ganjadude]

there does seem to be some lack of ethics in gaming these days

Re:so....gamergate was right

[Desler]

People knew that long before gamergate ever existed. Games journalism has always been corrupted by money and publisher influence. Here's such an article from 2003. Gamergate didn't actually expose some hidden truth that no one knew about.

Re:so....gamergate was right

[Mashiki]

Gamergate didn't actually expose some hidden truth that no one knew about.

Actually it did. See the gamejournopros leak . People thought there was a list, they believed there was collusion going on just like the game mags from the 90's, but had no proof. But the truth came out, and it was the same jackass who created Journolist doing the same thing to the games industry. Then people found out about the number of authors engaging in shady shit by shilling for their friends games, and other authors not disclosing that they were involved in a personal relationship with PR people see PCGamer and the author(Tyler Wilde) who had all of his stories removed about Ubisoft. And the attempted blacklisting/ostracizing of authors/publications who refused to engage in groupthink, and the massive amount of groupthink going on in said organizational group.

They were also the group that got the disclosure rules changed for native advertising/affiliate links/etc. Meaning that shitty, shady and clickbait sites had to be open, clear, with disclosure and no more obfuscated stuff. In the end it shone light on the rest of the garbage in the industry, and did a very good job at costing shitty companies money for being very shitty companies. And continues to do so while pushing back against people who instead of making their own games/characters/stories and let them sink or swim on merit like the rest of the industry. Ensuring that established characters/games/stories aren't rewritten to fit some special snowflakes head cannon. And bringing to light assholes like polygon/kotaku/RPS/etc who are now in the Jack Thompson camp screaming about how we should really censor games because it might hurt someones feelings, and how xyz thing is sexist/racist/homophobic/etc.

Re:so....gamergate was right

[_xeno_]

Really? Were you just ignoring it then?

It was even covered on Slashdot at the time.

There was plenty of outrage at the time.

Even in 2007 you can see plenty of people with the opinion that the game journalism industry is simply corrupt to the core and aren't surprised at all to see a journalist fired for giving an advertiser a bad review.

Re:so....gamergate was right

[Mashiki]

But of all the things to cause Gamergate to coalesce, it was really a relatively minor thing, blown way out of proportion, with a fair amount of misdirection and outright lying.

Oh it was blown out of proportion, but that was done by the games media. They could have ended it in the first week by going "yeah, you're right. There was a serious ethical breach here when he wrote about someone he had prior contact to, was banging, and had done work for in the past." Instead they decided to double down on the "you're a sexist and misogynist" for disagreeing with us, and then turning around and saying there was no ethical problems. Of course, 8mo later the sites that were directly responsible for originally setting it off...surprise...all had disclosed that there had been prior relationships. But lying? Nope. All that shit happened, and if you think that "the zoepost" wasn't real, there was the video evidence of it. If you think that 12+ publications deciding all on the same day to write "gamers are dead, gamers are over" articles didn't happen or it was just a coincidence you're just being naive. FYI: Run those articles through a plagiarism checker, and you'll find that they range from 40-70% of all the same content.

But what really started gamergate, and if you ask people who were around at that time? It was the game sites censoring any discussion of it. Reddit gaming subs banning all discussion of it. And those "gamers are dead" articles, that's what drew people to it. And that's when people had enough. What do you know, the Streisand Effect *does* work.

Like handing out speeding tickets...

[bazmail]

... at the Indy 500 (Captain Benjamin L. Willard - Apocalypse Now)

21st century version of payola?

[Whatsmynickname]

Isn't this another form of payola? Isn't the principal the same, where a company influences people promoting a product with money? I don't see the difference between a 1950's DJ pushing a song after getting paid by the record company while the listener doesn't know it's being promoted and a 2016 overenthusiastic Internet reviewer getting paid by the company making the product while the reader doesn't know it's being promoted. Same marketing mechanism, same ethical problem, same net result.

Of course, you know paying online reviewers will never be made illegal because politicians are now doing this in droves!

Re:Must be nice being a big corporation.

[bobbied]

This happens all the time.. It's called "Probation" and it usually involves a suspension of the punishment for a crime committed with the stipulation that the punishment is reinstated if you commit another crime within the probation period.

Where I live, 90 day probation is usually offered for most traffic tickets (assuming it's not a DUI or something serious like doing 90 in a school zone). The terms of probation require you to plead guilty, pay the fine, attend a defensive driving course and keep your nose clean for 90 days and the ticket gets struck from your record. It's a racket, to be sure, but it is routinely used.

Sorry, That Narrative Has Crumbled

[Kunedog]

No. Because GamerGhazi is built on a tissue of lies. And worse, they paid virtually no attention to this particular scandal, adding even more proof that it was mostly about the gaters' misogyny.

Look at you, still clinging desperately to the "mysogyny and harrassment" narrative and trying to ignore what GG accomplished.

Gamergate campaigned to inform the FTC of this kind of unethical behavior, and the FTC got involved as far back as December 2014 in direct response to Gamergate pressure, and Gawker was forced update their disclosure policy (and tons of articles that were then clearly in violation). And the FTC also updated their disclosure guidelines several times, including last summer (guess who was running an ethics campaign asking for exactly that?):
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/38gocf/ethics_major_ftc_update_the_ftc_has_updated_their/

The section of the FTC's website that deals with disclosures was updated late last month:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advic...

Some of this new guidance directly reflects the language and particulars of the concerns GamerGate asked the FTC to address.

"Is "affiliate link" by itself an adequate disclosure? What about a "buy now" button?"

Consumers might not understand that "affiliate link" means that the person placing the link is getting paid for purchases through the link. Similarly, a "buy now" button would not be adequate

Does this guidance about affiliate links apply to links in my product reviews on someone else’s website, to my user comments, and to my tweets?

Yes, the same guidance applies anytime you endorse a product and get paid through affiliate links.

The revised webpage contains a great deal more language that needs to be analyzed but these two examples in particular reflect specific complaints GamerGate had about how Gawker Media handle their affiliate link disclosures. I know of no other group of people who were vocally complaining about this specific practice to the FTC. In addition, the FTC emails from my previous posts confirm that, yes, the FTC tailored part of their new guidance because of frequent complaints sent by GamerGate.

If you read further, there is specific language about requiring Let's-Players to disclose as well. And then there are the many, many sites that have updated their ethics policies. It's shameful that you will lie about an entire group of people because you and the press want to pretend that GG isn't the driving force behind all this ethics reform.

P.S. /r/GamerGhazi is an anti-Gamergate cesspool, so of course it is based on lies. But you already knew that.

P.P.S. Yes, Gamergate paid plenty of attention to this scandal. You did know that it was leaked by TotalBiscuit (during a time period when anti-GG was relentlessly shitting on him), right?