Jim was hit with a dmca claim (again) *Updated* the dev response

[Lufia Erim]

I don't know how i feel about this. I think people ( especially people with influence) should seek permission before making a video based on someone elses work. Because he is taking and showing something he didn't make ( to praise or condemn). While you could argue that they have the right to critique art or whatever, people go to those channels to see the video those personalities are talking about. The video wouldn't have as many views or as big of an impact if it was just a Vlog of someone talking without the video in question.

Jim could very well just talk about the trailer without showing it, but he wouldn't get as many views as if it does show it. So Jim is kind of dependant on showing the video to maximise his views, therefor the original creator is kind of entitled to something in return.

My 2 cents.

And you are objectively wrong.

He didn't show a video game that was monetized, he showed an advertisement that was free for all to view and critiqued what was shown. No one went to the video to watch the advertisement. They went to the video to listen to Jim talk about it.

The laws extensively protect this right, because without it the NEWS (yes, all of it) would just cease to exist if they had to seek permission to air basic video content, and I can't think of something that is more meant to influence than NEWS channels. I mean Faux NEWS lives entirely by being a echo chamber.

Good to know that disagreeing with you makes me objectively wrong. I'll be sure to check in with you next time i have an opinion.

 

[Redryhno]

I don't know how i feel about this. I think people ( especially people with influence) should seek permission before making a video based on someone elses work. Because he is taking and showing something he didn't make ( to praise or condemn). While you could argue that they have the right to critique art or whatever, people go to those channels to see the video those personalities are talking about. The video wouldn't have as many views or as big of an impact if it was just a Vlog of someone talking without the video in question.

Jim could very well just talk about the trailer without showing it, but he wouldn't get as many views as if it does show it. So Jim is kind of dependant on showing the video to maximise his views, therefor the original creator is kind of entitled to something in return.

My 2 cents.

And you are objectively wrong.

He didn't show a video game that was monetized, he showed an advertisement that was free for all to view and critiqued what was shown. No one went to the video to watch the advertisement. They went to the video to listen to Jim talk about it.

The laws extensively protect this right, because without it the NEWS (yes, all of it) would just cease to exist if they had to seek permission to air basic video content, and I can't think of something that is more meant to influence than NEWS channels. I mean Faux NEWS lives entirely by being a echo chamber.

Good to know that disagreeing with you makes me objectively wrong. I'll be sure to check in with you next time i have an opinion.

Eh, he's got a bit of a point, it was a free trailer put up for marketing purposes, Jim sorta did that and added onto it(very flimsy definition in this instance imo, but he did all the same). And games you sorta are getting their permission to do whatever you want with the gameplay within, since you know...bought it or were given a code.

Personally I'd rather he talk about literally anything but the shittest at the bottom of the shit bin on shitday sunday when he talks about this kind of stuff. Everyone can see...Garry's Incident, Wolfscape whatever, and Day...something were goingg to be bad by looking at the trailers, just like this one. Like Reign of Kings(decent game, but it's essentially a prettier Minecraft with taxes and kings, combat's bad, not optimized all that well, or my computer's more shit than I thought) being made by the same devs that abandoned Starforge. Or that Spacebase DF-9 was also completely abandoned by Double Fine and then they went asking for money for like six other games, three of which are still in early access with simplistic and bare bones mechanics(especially for one of them trying so hard to be !NOT! FireEmblem), the other the infamous Broken Age.

Like he could go on like a three part series of cautionary tales and telling the people that still watch his show to be careful about their money and what to watch out for instead of this. This is just embarassing.

 

[DoPo]

Somebody found their website, it made me giggle. [http://digpexgames.com/]

Actually, further to my previous post - anybody know who Ed Lovejoy might be? It could be the name of a developer or something. Well, I...let's say "stumbled upon" it when I poked around more on their website. I tried to visit "My Account" and was greeted with a SQL error, which, rather helpfully[/I] included the SQL statement that failed and a full stack trace. Seems the site is in the directory /home/edlovejoy/public_html/ on the server.

Oh, and it turns out their website is Magento based. ...eh, nice? Or something?

 

[RedDeadFred]

It wasn't a joke trailer. It was on Greenlight. If it really was a joke trailer, then it just goes to show you how much shit goes onto Greenlight. Jim has been doing this for a while (warning people of awful stuff on Greenlight), why people are starting to defend devs now is beyond me. Jim Critiques stuff. If something is so awful that critique turns into mockery, it's still critique. Also, it's not like all he did was laugh, he did point out some of its issues (the frame rate). It depresses me that people would actually try defend this.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Just another dev naive in how brutally honest the internet can be, striking back because of it, and getting more flack in the process. Why don't they learn? Why don't they realize yet that DMCA's, removing bad reviews, and other such things will only get them -more- negative publicity? Why can't they just start saying "So the public sees our game as too unfinished/buggy/whatever to be sold. We'll remove it, improve, and try again"? Is it really that hard to admit that your shitty game is, indeed, shitty?

Because that would take more effort and strength of character then these pathetic little cowards are willing to muster. I mean this particular coward removed all traces of the game from the Internets so they don't even have the back bone to face the backlash from they're cowardly action.

or maybe the saw just how shit the game is and this is less about taking down bad press and more about removing this embarrassment from the internet before it can be around long enough to haunt them later.


ether way, its a chicken shit move.

 

[Redryhno]

It wasn't a joke trailer. It was on Greenlight. If it really was a joke trailer, then it just goes to show you how much shit goes onto Greenlight. Jim has been doing this for a while (warning people of awful stuff on Greenlight), why people are starting to defend devs now is beyond me. Jim Critiques stuff. If something is so awful that critique turns into mockery, it's still critique. Also, it's not like all he did was laugh, he did point out some of its issues (the frame rate). It depresses me that people would actually try defend this.

If you say so, he could've just put out a tweet saying "look at this piece of crap on Steam Greenlight" and it would've covered everything in the video. I'm not defending the devs for making this, but I'm not going to defend Jim for doing this crap YET AGAIN. Everyone can see that the game is not going to be good from the trailer alone. It's pointless wankery on his part to think that pointing out framerate and text-to-speech for voice acting is something worthy of being considered "critique".

But who knows, I never cared for any of his stuff outside of the Jimquisition because I could get better from a bunch of smaller youtubers that just do it for fun. So that might be bias on my part.

 

[Therumancer]

I don't know how i feel about this. I think people ( especially people with influence) should seek permission before making a video based on someone elses work. Because he is taking and showing something he didn't make ( to praise or condemn). While you could argue that they have the right to critique art or whatever, people go to those channels to see the video those personalities are talking about. The video wouldn't have as many views or as big of an impact if it was just a Vlog of someone talking without the video in question.

Jim could very well just talk about the trailer without showing it, but he wouldn't get as many views as if it does show it. So Jim is kind of dependant on showing the video to maximise his views, therefor the original creator is kind of entitled to something in return.

My 2 cents.

And you are objectively wrong.

He didn't show a video game that was monetized, he showed an advertisement that was free for all to view and critiqued what was shown. No one went to the video to watch the advertisement. They went to the video to listen to Jim talk about it.

The laws extensively protect this right, because without it the NEWS (yes, all of it) would just cease to exist if they had to seek permission to air basic video content, and I can't think of something that is more meant to influence than NEWS channels. I mean Faux NEWS lives entirely by being a echo chamber.

Your wrong to an extent. Slander and/or Libel (similar things, defined largely by the means of communication used) are illegal and like inciting a riot or sedition to reinforce treasonous behavior they are rarely enforced, so people tend to forget that these things are against the law. To be honest if the laws were to be enforced it would have a tremendous impact on both politics and the news media, certain people who have made careers out of this would be in jail more or less for life... like Al Sharpton. The idea being that you have the right to free speech and free aseembly as long as you aren't doing anything that hurts society or anyone else, which is a key provision. As many protest marches and such are offensive in nature, setting out to do damage to someone or their position, they could be considered illegal especially when based on things that have never been proven to be undisputed facts. What's more even if your not saying "kill people" or "riot" if your behavior encourages people in this direction despite your words, your also committing a crime. It gets more complicated than this in practice, but the bottom line is that a lot of people claiming to be exercising their right to free speech are indeed committing crimes, it's just that for the most part we have chosen not to enforce the laws, or when they are enforced the case is not pursued in the right way.

In the case of a "slice and dice" review which Jim was engaged in here, something that isn't unique to him incidently, people like "Evil Scorpia" and "The Condor" had been doing this almost as long as there have been mass market video games even if the oldest of the old guard have long since retired (Scorpia and Condor were purely in print for example). However when you look at what is going on here, you have someone attacking a piece of work with the deliberate intention of doing damage in the sense of preventing anyone from buying it so the creator cannot recoup their investment. Especially when this is being done with things like advertisements, it can become touchy if challenged correctly. If the guys doing this game actually had the time and money to take Jim to court, and their lawyer pursued it correctly, things could very well end badly for Jim because the oft quoted "fair use" does give you an excuse to break other laws, simply that they can't deny you the right to review or criticize something, when an opinion goes over the edge and becomes slander or libel is going to be the gist of real battle on the subject. Youtube long ago realized this, and being international, and also planning to become a long time institution, it hasn't wanted to bait the tiger so to speak, because it knows the pendulum can easily swing back the other way, and it doesn't want to wind up getting cut when and if (mostly when) people start seriously looking into these laws.

See, for big companies like EA and the like it doesn't much matter because from their perspective any publicity tends to be good publicity. They have spent so much on marketing, distribution, etc.. it takes a lot for one of their products to truly bomb, and their failures tend to be measured in terms of "we didn't make as much money as we thought we would so we'll consider it a loss" as opposed to any kind of objective failure which is very uncommon. The guys who mostly complain are those who are relatively small operators, trying to make some money while they polish their skills, as darkly hilarious as it sounds, the guy running the "Skateman" team might have taken out a loan, or put a double mortgage on his house, and thus someone like Jim is doing far more damage. In general with guys like Jim big publishers can easily deal with them by simply refusing to send them review copies or invite them to the big events, sort of like what just happened with Squeenix. The end will probably start when some of these little guys actually hold enough cash in reserve to hire a decent lawyer, and then go after someone who is on a relative shoestring like Jim to start getting precedent established.

Now you might fairly be wondering how a critic fairly goes about doing their job if they wind up running risks by saying anything bad about anyone or anything, not to mention news, especially political news. The answer to that is simply that these kinds of things come and go, and people in those positions do run into trouble throughout various parts of the world, and could in theory run into trouble in the US if they started enforcing the laws more vigorously
as I pointed out. The biggest problem to this usually comes down to proving damage either tangible, or to someone's personal reputation/political capitol due to someone's slander. It should also be noted that for a while critics tended to be fairly high brow because even in slamming people they needed to be fairly polite about it, and also be able to defend their position based on their own qualifications and reputation. Some also intentionally hid their identities and acted as anonymous sources for their patron who would not divulge their sources. Occasionally on sitcoms you see skits harkening back to this where they wonder who the local gourmet critic is or whatever so the main characters can impress them when they hear a rumor that person is going to be stopping by to write them up in a major paper. Today we're looking at a situation where literally anyone can be a critic, all it takes is a basic webcam and a youtube account and you can in theory reach thousands of people, and that could very well be the downfall of this entire thing since most of these people are easily identified, and most can't provide any kind of objective expertise, which means they are just begging for Slander/Libel suits. Especially when you consider a lot of critics tend to mostly spew bile to entertain people. For example originally "The Galloping Gourmet" or something similar might actually be a literal gourmet with numerous awards for cooking, and having run successful dining establishments in the past. If he was ever identified and brought up on charges of libel he could point to all of his qualifications and point out he is as objective a judge as your likely to find for something like this as he understand everything there is to know about food and it's preparation and what is going to appeal to people judging by their own success. In comparison what qualifications does your average guy slicing and dicing video games on the internet have? Not much that could ever be pointed to as a defense, in most cases they literally are some guy saying "this game sucks" and saying bad things about it and the developers so people won't buy it. They might very well be right, and from what I've seen most of the time they are, but legally speaking it could *become* an issues and that's what Youtube is concerned about in the long term.

Ah well, I'm rambling, but hopefully this helps some people out. I don't agree with Youtube's attitudes on a lot of things, but I at least understand where they are coming from. If Youtube didn't honor a lot of these requests, and then someone filed a suit, they could be considered complicit in any proven damages deriving from slander, libel, or of course IP theft, providing a paid piece of media for free. I do not entirely agree with everything I'm saying here, just pointing out that I understand it.

 

[RedDeadFred]

If you say so, he could've just put out a tweet saying "look at this piece of crap on Steam Greenlight" and it would've covered everything in the video.

Like I said, he does actually make legitimate criticisms about the trailer, though yes, the gist of it was "this is shit."

I'm not defending the devs for making this, but I'm not going to defend Jim for doing this crap YET AGAIN. Everyone can see that the game is not going to be good from the trailer alone. It's pointless wankery on his part to think that pointing out framerate and text-to-speech for voice acting is something worthy of being considered "critique".

That's fine, but that doesn't really have anything to do with what I was talking about. I was explaining why Jim's video doesn't deserve the Take Down, not arguing the quality of it.

But who knows, I never cared for any of his stuff outside of the Jimquisition because I could get better from a bunch of smaller youtubers that just do it for fun. So that might be bias on my part.

That's what this basically comes down to. You don't like his content (or at least when it's in this form). That's fine, but it doesn't mean he should stop. Others do like his content. I personally don't really watch many of these types of videos since the do become quite samey. Others find them funny though.

I might be missing your point though. Could you clarify if I'm not getting it?

 

[Redryhno]

I might be missing your point though. Could you clarify if I'm not getting it?

You said that people were defending devs for this, when what I've seen of the thread has been more condemning both of them. The dev for thinking it would fly, Jim for pulling a random crap game off of Greenlight again and going with his "LOOK AT IT, I AM SUPERIOR" attitude with it again. That was my point really. I thought I made it clear, but I haven't had my afterwork nap yet today, so I may not being as lucid as I think I am.

I won't defend the DMCA, but it shouldn't have been able to be available for DMCA in the first place by him putting up the vid.

 

[camazotz]

I don't know how i feel about this. I think people ( especially people with influence) should seek permission before making a video based on someone elses work. Because he is taking and showing something he didn't make ( to praise or condemn). While you could argue that they have the right to critique art or whatever, people go to those channels to see the video those personalities are talking about. The video wouldn't have as many views or as big of an impact if it was just a Vlog of someone talking without the video in question.

Jim could very well just talk about the trailer without showing it, but he wouldn't get as many views as if it does show it. So Jim is kind of dependant on showing the video to maximise his views, therefor the original creator is kind of entitled to something in return.

My 2 cents.

I've seen this argument in the past, it essentialy comes down to is the work transformative or not, does jim add enough of his own input to clearly seperate the original trailer from his. This is the exact same defense let's play's use as even the act of playing the game can be argued to be transformative because no two people play the same way. Add in commentary to the play and you've once again distanced the original product from the video.

The original creator has no right to jim's opinion whether it be good or bad. Critique is a protected from copyright law under fair use. In theory this means the creator gets nothing from jim, even if footage used directly improves jim's viewership and in turn earns him a greater profit.

Nintendo are pretty much the only company right now trying to challenge this transformative and protected by fair use content. Essentialy what nintendo want is what you said, that they as the original creator's own the copyright and are entitled to a share of the profit for all video's relating to their IP. This includes reviews, trailers used as part of a larger piece of content like a podcast and ofcourse let's play. Im not certain if it also includes disscusion of said products or if direct footage has to be shown.

(link if your curious)
https://r.ncp.nintendo.net/terms/

yeah i heard about what nintendo is doing,and i kind of agree with it. People are making money buy playing and showing off their games. I know it'S not a popular opinion , but if you are using someone elses work ( like a game or a trailer or whatnot ) they kind of deserve a peice of that action. The trailer in this case is just there to Boost the views on his video. I wouldn'T want to censor or prevent anyone from critiquing anything, however, if people were just interested in Jim's opinion, i don'T see why he couldn't just talk about the trailer, and put a link for the trailer in the description for his video. That way , Jim says what he wants, and the creator of the trailer would get views from people interested in seeing what he is talking about at the same time. It's a win/win .

Again, i know it's not a popular opinion. But hey this forum is about discussion right ?

Well, while I agree with you and possibly to a certain extent with Nintendo, I think you're confusing degrees here. Two examples:

Case #1: Guy plays all of game X and posts lengthy play-through of video on youtube. People can watch the entire game from start to finish as this guy plays it.

Case #2: Guy critiques same game, using several minutes of video footage, possibly from playthrough and possibly from trailer...but talks about the game content while not actually posting the whole game.

If it's really not cool to post an entire movie on Youtube then why would it be okay to play and post the entire game experience? I can agree that's not a good thing for the producer/publisher of that game....they now have a gimped version of their product essentially out there for free, with one player controlling the narrative control. That strikes me as equivalent to filming the movie in the theater and posting it up for free later.

Case #2 is different, because it is usuing illustrative content from the critiqued product (be it a movie or a game review) and demonstrating that it's got problems. The content used in the video is illustrative of a point that the video maker is offering....it is not the actual product on display, but a representative sampling.

I lack the energy to watch Jim's Youtube video to see whether it's #1 or #2, but I'm guessing it was #2.

As a side note, I'm not clear that anyone actually does #1, most of the time. Maybe the guy who filmed his five hour playthrough of The Order: 1886? I mean, I don't think even Pew dee Pie or whatever his name is actually posts hours-long video playthroughs, does he? So while I would agree with Nintendo on examples like #1 above, I don't think most videos out there under scrutiny fit that bill....most games are too long. Buuuut I don't exactly spend much (read: any) time watching people play games on youtube, except for Jim, so take what I say with a seriously grade-a-grain of salt.

 

[Story]

Here's the Kotaku article about it:
http://kotaku.com/indie-developer-retaliates-to-negative-video-with-youtu-1692469143

Again same old story basically, but I thought some here might want to read it.

 

[StreamerDarkly]

Honestly, it's ridiculous how hypersensitive most gaming critics are to any criticism of their own work. Considering what they themselves do for a living, you'd think they'd have a thicker skin about it. It's the primary reason Gamergate continues to exist.

It was quite apparent in the incident just a couple months ago when the Slaughtering Grounds dev retaliated with a video of how clueless Jim Sterling was when playing his game. Sure, it didn't look like the best game by any stretch, but instead of just letting it go Jim had to come back and really try to embarrass the guy. You see it with TotalBiscuit too. He just can't help but retaliate any time anyone says anything negative about his work, even when they have a decent point.

You're certainly within your rights to defend yourself if you feel like you're being unfairly attacked, but it goes both ways. Getting shit on for something you put years of work into is definitely a harder pill to swallow than getting called out for your latest review, which took a few days of work at most. Especially when developers don't have the luxury of hiding behind "it's just an opinion" when their work is found lacking.

I don't excuse spurious DMCA claims as it's a shitty thing to do and never seems to lead to any serious punishment for the offender. But it's amazing how gamers always staunchly defend the critic and dogpile the developer in these disputes. I guess it's because of the perception that the developer wants your money while the critic is looking out for your best interests. Or maybe that certain games reviewers have achieved celebrity status while most developers are anonymous.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Whilst I don't agree with the DMCA, and I doubt anyone will, I suppose I'll take up the mantle of playing devil's advocate, else we'll have a very boring topic.

So, as such I'll raise the following point.

What does Jim add to the video? Essentially it's just him laughing at and mocking the game, using only the footage given by the developers. How does this qualify for the "Fair use" justification, as, given the purpose of these videos is to mock the games and their developers, is it not up to the developer if they want to allow their footage to be used for such things?

Given most of the developers featured on these videos end up the receiving end of abuse and harassment from Jim's fans, is it not fair that a developer would want to try and shield themselves as much as possible from that? Admittedly, Streisand affect tells us this is counter productive, but, in a situation, I imagine one would feel they have little other choices.

I don't think you can really blame Jim for that. In the recent video he goes out of his way to mention that one of the worst parts of this is that the Devs could have just Talked to him about it, as other Devs have before when they took issue with a video of his.
As he said, instead of being diplomatic they went for instant spiteful gratification.

I don't mean to say that the devs deserve any and all abuse they may get for this behavior, but that it shouldn't be put on Jim either. Credit for such actions should be given to the people who carry them out.

It's not unreasonable that they wanted to do some damage control, but how they went about doing so was very much unreasonable as well as unprofessional.

As for Jim's commentary video on the trailer, he added all that he needed to the video. It wasn't just the trailer and his commentary. He also went to find info on the game to share with views and talked about that too. I'd be surprised if anyone else gave the game as much time as Jim did actually.

It looks to me like the developers achieved exactly what they were hoping for. Here is my theory:

They made a laggy, poorly rendered, badly edited trailer of an either unfinished or generally bad game for the purpose of it being mocked. Then they do the old take down dance with Jim so that everyone hears about it and by extension them and their game.

If that was their plan, it worked. I wouldn't have heard of them otherwise.

That's the weird thing for this specific case. Not only did the dev take down the video, but the game was taken off greenlight, the company doesn't seem to have any social media presence, and when Jim searched for it he couldn't find anything.

It's very strange. :/

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Honestly, it's ridiculous how hypersensitive most gaming critics are to any criticism of their own work. Considering what they themselves do for a living, you'd think they'd have a thicker skin about it. It's the primary reason Gamergate continues to exist.

It was quite apparent in the incident just a couple months ago when the Slaughtering Grounds dev retaliated with a video of how clueless Jim Sterling was when playing his game. Sure, it didn't look like the best game by any stretch, but instead of just letting it go Jim had to come back and really try to embarrass the guy. You see it with TotalBiscuit too. He just can't help but retaliate any time anyone says anything negative about his work, even when they have a decent point.

You're certainly within your rights to defend yourself if you feel like you're being unfairly attacked, but it goes both ways. Getting shit on for something you put years of work into is definitely a harder pill to swallow than getting called out for your latest review, which took a few days of work at most. Especially when developers don't have the luxury of hiding behind "it's just an opinion" when their work is found lacking.

I don't excuse spurious DMCA claims as it's a shitty thing to do and never seems to lead to any serious punishment for the offender. But it's amazing how gamers always staunchly defend the critic and dogpile the developer in these disputes. I guess it's because of the perception that the developer wants your money while the critic is looking out for your best interests. Or maybe that certain games reviewers have achieved celebrity status while most developers are anonymous.

What criticism?
There was no criticism on Jim. The Slaughtering Grounds Dev just made a video to personally insult Jim and then took down the video a good while later when it didn't go his way. The others didn't even contact Jim.

The reason the majority of people take the critic's side in these situations is because these Devs don't have a leg to stand on.

These aren't instances of critics "retaliating against criticism". It's them talking about how devs are trying to hide any negative press about their games.

As they should.
If someone took down something you worked on with no justifiable reason just to mess with you for about a week, wouldn't you be a bit miffed and let people know what happened?

 

[RedDeadFred]

I might be missing your point though. Could you clarify if I'm not getting it?

You said that people were defending devs for this, when what I've seen of the thread has been more condemning both of them. The dev for thinking it would fly, Jim for pulling a random crap game off of Greenlight again and going with his "LOOK AT IT, I AM SUPERIOR" attitude with it again. That was my point really. I thought I made it clear, but I haven't had my afterwork nap yet today, so I may not being as lucid as I think I am.

Like I said, just because you or I don't like his videos, doesn't mean they shouldn't be put up. Others do like them. Admittedly, I think I only saw one person defending the devs and that may have been more of a devil's advocate kind of thing. I probably overreacted.

 

[Redryhno]

I might be missing your point though. Could you clarify if I'm not getting it?

You said that people were defending devs for this, when what I've seen of the thread has been more condemning both of them. The dev for thinking it would fly, Jim for pulling a random crap game off of Greenlight again and going with his "LOOK AT IT, I AM SUPERIOR" attitude with it again. That was my point really. I thought I made it clear, but I haven't had my afterwork nap yet today, so I may not being as lucid as I think I am.

Like I said, just because you or I don't like his videos, doesn't mean they shouldn't be put up. Others do like them. Admittedly, I think I only saw one person defending the devs and that may have been more of a devil's advocate kind of thing. I probably overreacted.

Eh, I'm gonna argue again that this is far below Sterling's supposed legitimacy. Heck, at least TB, Yahtzee, NL, and many other youtubers, they make an effort to make decent jokes when something's a piece of shit as they go through it. Jim just laughs at it when everyone can see that the thing has problems(to put it lightly) and just talks about what's on the screen.

It's boring and has next to no thought put into it. I mean, if he's going to single out Greenlight and Early Access games that are crap, he could at least make an effort to single out the stuff that aren't blatantly and obviously bad from the trailers alone. There's some crap games that devs have abandoned, made promises they couldn't/refuse to keep, and have just up and disappeared off the face of the earth. What makes junk like this worthy of his attention, but people actually getting cheated out of money through EA adoption don't warrant even a post?

I'm not meaning to disparage the people that like this type of stuff, but you can probably get some buddies around and get more laughs out of the trailer than the Jim-video.

 

[snekadid]

-Holy shit I'm not reading all that-

I read the first section because that seemed like it was actually aimed at me rather than the thread as a whole.

Slander(libel is printed) would be a stretch to apply to a critique and would be thrown out of most courts before actually being heard for a couple reasons.

Slander typically applies to spoken comments that attack a person or business in a way that threatens their status AND must be proven to be not true. As everything Jim states is opinion and when he actually goes after a person(ala Slaughtering grounds) he makes sure to only make statements that are factually true, there is no case as Jim is commenting on what he is seeing rather than making assertions about the developers or such.

A critique by definition (both common language and legal) is an opinion and not an assertion of empirical truth. It is EXTREMELY difficult to successfully sue someone because of their opinion because of free speech laws. And since Jim did not order viewers to do anything illegal in response to watching his video, the what I like to call "Common Sense clause" of the free speech laws do not come into play.

If you want to respond I'd love to debate but please keep it to under a book. For my sanity. ^_^

 

[RedDeadFred]

I might be missing your point though. Could you clarify if I'm not getting it?

You said that people were defending devs for this, when what I've seen of the thread has been more condemning both of them. The dev for thinking it would fly, Jim for pulling a random crap game off of Greenlight again and going with his "LOOK AT IT, I AM SUPERIOR" attitude with it again. That was my point really. I thought I made it clear, but I haven't had my afterwork nap yet today, so I may not being as lucid as I think I am.

Like I said, just because you or I don't like his videos, doesn't mean they shouldn't be put up. Others do like them. Admittedly, I think I only saw one person defending the devs and that may have been more of a devil's advocate kind of thing. I probably overreacted.

Eh, I'm gonna argue again that this is far below Sterling's supposed legitimacy. Heck, at least TB, Yahtzee, NL, and many other youtubers, they make an effort to make decent jokes when something's a piece of shit as they go through it. Jim just laughs at it when everyone can see that the thing has problems(to put it lightly) and just talks about what's on the screen.

It's boring and has next to no thought put into it. I mean, if he's going to single out Greenlight and Early Access games that are crap, he could at least make an effort to single out the stuff that aren't blatantly and obviously bad from the trailers alone. There's some crap games that devs have abandoned, made promises they couldn't/refuse to keep, and have just up and disappeared off the face of the earth. What makes junk like this worthy of his attention, but people actually getting cheated out of money through EA adoption don't warrant even a post?

I'm not meaning to disparage the people that like this type of stuff, but you can probably get some buddies around and get more laughs out of the trailer than the Jim-video.

I'm sure Jim looks at the types of games you're talking about as well given that he has an entire series based around them. I never really look at Greenlight games in the first place so I don't really know about how their trailer quality in the first place. I imagine that one was lower on the spectrum than most. I agree, it would be more informative if he specifically went after games that look good from the trailer, but then turn out to be crap. I don't follow this stuff of his very closely (pretty much only watch Jimquisition) so I don't know if he does that too. It seems like something he would do though.

As for the EA thing, Jim calls out AAA devs all the time. That's kind of his thing and it's why a lot of people put more weight in the opinions he expresses in his reviews. You can generally be sure that he's not going to pull any punches, even if it's a big dev with lots of money. I haven't seen every Jimquisition episode, but I imagine he would have at least touched on what you're referencing. Though, I'm not 100% sure what that is. Are you talking about them buying smaller devs and then cheating them out of profits. Legitimately curious since I don't think I've heard of this and it sounds like it should be a big deal.

For your last point, I agree completely. It's like watching a terrible movie and making fun of it with a group of friends. A lot more fun than watching someone else laugh at it. Other people really like watching youtubers react to things though. I mean, there's a reason PewDiePie -*shudders*- is so popular.

 

[Therumancer]

-Holy shit I'm not reading all that-

I read the first section because that seemed like it was actually aimed at me rather than the thread as a whole.

Slander(libel is printed) would be a stretch to apply to a critique and would be thrown out of most courts before actually being heard for a couple reasons.

Slander typically applies to spoken comments that attack a person or business in a way that threatens their status AND must be proven to be not true. As everything Jim states is opinion and when he actually goes after a person(ala Slaughtering grounds) he makes sure to only make statements that are factually true, there is no case as Jim is commenting on what he is seeing rather than making assertions about the developers or such.

A critique by definition (both common language and legal) is an opinion and not an assertion of empirical truth. It is EXTREMELY difficult to successfully sue someone because of their opinion because of free speech laws. And since Jim did not order viewers to do anything illegal in response to watching his video, the what I like to call "Common Sense clause" of the free speech laws do not come into play.

If you want to respond I'd love to debate but please keep it to under a book. For my sanity. ^_^

You already received the answer and skipped it. There is a reason why my posts are so long, while I do tend to ramble, I put in a lot of information and "head off" what would be common responses to what I say initially. If your going to use the equivalent of a TLR you (and others) shouldn't bother to respond. I tend to write a lot so if I'm going to discuss something, the predictable stuff I was ready to answer is more or less already handled.

For a "short" version what your talking about is the common enforcement of the law right now, not what the laws actually are, which is why I suspect your going to see some interesting challenges in the next few years, and is also why companies like Youtube have likely put these policies into force. Being a critic is not an excuse to be able to hammer someone, if expressing your opinion actually winds up costing someone money or does damage, that can become a crime, or grounds for a civil suit. One of the things that is going to come into play is someone like Jim having to defend their qualifications to make these judgements, since he did damage. As I've said, once upon a time critics generally had to be experts in their respective fields, AND also had a tendency to conceal their identity for that reason. Basically if a critic shares their unqualified opinion that something sucks, and as a result someone suffers harm including that to their reputation, a case can be made for liability. You do not see this being enforced, that much is true, but the thing is that it was intended to be alongside free speech laws as one of the few limitations on free speech on a personal level. General free speech principles are not intended to be interpreted in such a way that defends treasonous behavior, slander, libel, or calls to civil disobedience like riots.

You might disagree with me here, but really there isn't much to debate, Youtube's own policies (which we are discussing) are pretty much the entire case. I'm explaining one of the reasons why they are there, not suggesting that changes to society be made. As a big free speech advocate I don't like Youtube's policies myself, I just understand them.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Why that developer chose to allow any of that "game" to be viewed by anyone is unfathomable. I don't care if it's incomplete, it is one of the shittiest things I have ever seen. A game should be at least vaguely presentable before you let people see it. To then be a douche and try to silence someone showing your "game" with what seems more and more like a way to troll and attack someone than a means of protecting yourself is just pathetic. The video can still be seen on other sites. I had never heard of it until their little takedown. But me, like many I imagine, sought it out and found it just to spite them for being asshole censors.

If you make your product visible to critics and reviewers, you should prepare to have your product criticized and reviewed. How hard is that to understand?

Just like Slaughtering Grounds, going about it the way they did will cause more harm to their reputation than Jim's videos ever could.



If you trip and fall in public, do you scream out aloud and make everyone turn to see what happened? Or do you swallow your pride and get up quietly and hope only a few people saw?