A quote attributed to Kotaku in a launch trailer for Battlefield V was recently removed from that trailer by publisher EA at our company’s request after a miscommunication by both parties led to the inaccurate quote’s appearance.
The launch trailer attributed to Kotaku the accolade “best of the series,” even though that phrase only appeared on Kotaku in an impressions piece about the game’s beta as follows: “I think Battlefield V’s raw gunplay is some of the best of the series, but without some tweaks, that intense Battlefield feeling I’ve come to know and love doesn’t quite shine through.”
It is common for publishers and game developers to request permission to use a quote in a trailer or other marketing materials. I keep editorial as removed from this process as possible and forward such requests to the business part of our company, which manages Kotaku and our sister sites.
In this case, those of us on the editorial side were unaware of this quote being requested for use and, when we spotted it in the trailer well after the trailer debuted, I asked our business people about it.
It turns out that a series of miscommunications on EA’s end and our company’s end led to the quote not being flagged as being out of context. Parties on both sides have talked through the protocols needed to avoid this in the future.
Our company eventually asked EA to remove the quote, and they quickly complied.
Thankfully, this has not happened before in the near-decade I’ve been at Kotaku, as best as I can recall and am aware. Any quote usage requests from EA have been reasonable in what they’ve asked to use (this “best” quote had not hit my inbox and is clearly one that just shouldn’t have been asked for).
I’ve noticed a couple of out-of-context requests from other parties in the past but they never made it through the process. To the best I can tell, whatever checks we’ve had on any misuse have otherwise been effective. With any luck, this is a one-time thing.
The idea that Kotaku called Battlefield V “the best in the series” has come up in reader feedback on our site and elsewhere online. This hopefully sets the record straight about what we said or, more accurately, what we didn’t say.
Comments
7 responses to “An Update On A Battlefield Trailer Quote”
Interesting piece, you did literally use the phrase “the best of the series” so it’s not like they misquoted you.
But on the other hand the full quote could have been “If you love bugs and hate fun then this is the best of the series” then the context of your quote has been removed and it could be seen as a wrongful quote!
I guess that’s why they’re meant to check with you before making endorsements like that!
No they wrote
that does not equal…
to be an acceptable they would of had to at least use the whole line for which it was only a small part, even then with that part of the sentence it still doesnt mean what the EA tried to make it mean.
I think his point was, word for word, they wrote ‘the best of the series’, even though that obviously wasn’t the point they were making at the time.
This is a textbook case of taking things out of context.
A misquote by omission is still a misquote. They removed the quote from it’s surroundings such that it substantially distorts the original meaning of the sentence.
I think you’ve misquoted the definition of misquote!
*contextualised?
Whenever I saw the Battlefield 5 trailer at the cinema, that particular quote always did have me pondering what worldline I was in.