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

[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.

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!