Following a public backlash over their attempts to remove a video critical of their game, the developers of Day One: Garry’s Incident have issued a public apology to, well, pretty much everyone.
In a statement sent to Kotaku, Wild Games CEO Stephane Woods says:
We sent TotalBiscuit a Steam key on September 26th, giving him permission to evaluate Day One: Garry’s Incident.
Monetizing wasn’t mentioned in our communications and it was an error on our part to not have clarified the issue.
It was for that particular fact that Wild Games Studio had asked the video’s removal.
After the video was made unavailable, we have taken seriously the reaction from the community concerning freedom of expression.
We strongly believe in the freedom of expression of people and medias and have removed our copyright claim.
Wild Games Studio didn’t intend on preventing anyone from using their right to freedom of expression.
For this reason, Wild Games Studio sincerely apologizes to TotalBiscuit and anyone who felt that their freedom of speech was denied.
Well, the “monetisation” thing still doesn’t make sense, since a lot of other – less publicly critical – clips were left on YouTube to make advertising money, but, hey, they got to the apology in the end.
TotalBiscuit’s original video is now back online:
Comments
22 responses to “Developer Apologises Over YouTube Stunt”
Too little too late. Your rep is forever unclean as a studio.
This seems like an overly vindictive response from the gaming community, but having considered it carefully, I think it’s the only correct one. Why should we be prepared to forgive and forget because they caved to pressure and reversed ther decision? They abused youtube/google’s takedown policies to block a negative review of their game. Google’s policy makes it clear that they are making a legal claim and to do so without proper grounds is tantamount to fraud.
The monetisation argument is ludicrous. They know the channel and the videos are monetised, ergo they could reasonably expect any video based on their game to also be monetised. Assuming they did not intend to allow this, the onus was on them to make this clear to Totalbiscuit.
Clear attempt at censorship by nefarious means. They knew exactly what they were doing, but they were incredibly short-sighted in their execution. No one has any reason to trust them.
The reason this is something the community needs to be very firm with is because the only reason this blew up as much as it did is because it was TotalBiscuit, one of the biggest gaming channels on Youtube. Unscrupulous developers and publishers use these very same tactics on smaller channels regularly and with impunity, because those victims are too small to drum up enough backlash for the company to care.
The more we publicly draw this line in the sand and steadfastly refuse to allow it to be crossed, and the more we ensure that the consequences are firm and swift, the more chance we have of stigmatising this behaviour so that everyone is protected from it, not just the big channels with the influence to be able to fight back.
Reminds me of the OceanMarketing thing.
“Yes, it was a dick move, and I’m sorry I did it because I didn’t realize how much power you had,” is not a very sympathetic excuse or apology. Especially if you then think about how likely it was other people received exactly the same treatment without having the clout to fight back against it.
Yep, because of their poor reaction to a situation involving their terrible product, despite the apology, these guys will be forever relegated to the same hell that Day Z and its devs find themselves in.
umm you mean “the war Z” right
Day Z? What the?
I hope you mean WarZ/Infestation:Survivor Stories.
Day Z is the one people like. The other one was a cheap, rushed clone that was handled so poorly it was taken off Steam for a while. Then it was put back on under a new name and a whole host of people bought it during a sale.
The name confusion is no doubt deliberate on their end.
Yes, I did mean War Z. In my defence, derp. :p I always mix those names up…
And that’s exactly why War Z chose the name they did.
This isn’t an apology. He’s maintaining the monetization line, even though TotalBiscuit gave it a total smack down. It was a review, of course the video would be sponsored by ads!
So wait.. they sent him a review copy and then he is expected to review it for free without any way of using advertising to pay for his time and effort for reviewing?? Even that alone is enough to make me shake my head at this studio.
Perhaps the real reason it was asked to be taken down is because it is a rather scathing review and they didn’t like being told how crap their game is at the moment.
You must mean WarZ, which has since changed its name and is called something else.
Hold on. Lemme break this down.
OK, mistakes happen. But if you allow someone to evaluate their game, be ready to pay for services rendered. Everyone has to earn a living and game reviewing is one of them.
No, Wild Games Studio. You just couldn’t take any criticism what so ever and pulled a child enough move to eclipse Denis Dydak’s behaviour post-release of Too Human.
Hold on.
*Reads the earlier part of the statement again.*
According to your own claim you asked for the video’s removal because it was monetising. Now you say the claim was withdraw to support freedom of expression?
You cannot have your cake and eat it too, Wild Games Studio. Make up your mind on what your reasons/motivations were.
OK, where is the apology? This statement is basically a failed attempt at Wild Games Studio trying to wash the blame of their hands for their own actions.
“I apologize,” is an apology.
No, they have only said “I apologise”. They have not actually admitted they have done anything wrong.
All they have done is try to save some face. Unfortunately they are yet to realise they just blew their own head off so there is no face left to save.
Dude. “I apologize,” is an apology. It’s the same as, “I’m sorry.” You don’t have to go into some spiel about how and why you were wrong and you recognize the impact that it has and how the wronged party must FEEL about it, that’s all fluff and bullshit. ‘I apologize,’ IS the apology.
Yeah, the rest is totally excuses, but you can’t say they didn’t apologize.
Exactly. An apology through clenched teeth is still an apology. They may still hate you for exposing their duplicitous behaviour in a public forum and they don’t have to mean it, but they have to make self effacing act of contrition by going through the motions publicly. Not doing so only makes them seem recalcitrant, and that’s almost as bad as the original offence.
Is YouTube monetisation some how different to e.g. the ads at the top of this site? If they had given a review copy to Kotaku, would they also have been shocked to see ads at the top of the review article?
Not really and difference, except youtube also has video ads (and sending a takedown request to Kotaku would not result in immediate pull of the review).
They should go join Microsoft. I’m sure they’ll fit right in.
Did anyone else feel motion sickness while watching that review?
If you’re feeling bad for them, apparently they’ve been faking positive metacritic user reviews.
I really feel for developers sometimes. This isn’t the first time employees of a game company have been found to be posting their own reviews and positive comments on metacritic and the like. It’s gotta be rough to put a shit-tonne of effort into something only to watch a bunk of apathetic or even malicious neckbeard basement-dwellers (in their minds) tear it down with very real consequences for their paycheck and reputation. Especially if it feels unfair.
I imagine it was particularly galling for Wild Games Studio to give someone a free copy of their game, then watch that person earn money shitting all over it.
But to fake reviews and try to bully channels with take-down notices? No, no, no, no, no, no.
This is, as they say in a courtroom, ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt.’
Wild Fire: stick a fork in them, they’re done.
This review made me laugh so fucking hard!