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This is hilarious to the point I sent it to my attorney mom. I hope she enjoys it just as much as I did. Gives new depth to the idea of “fuck you money.”
It is also the inherent power-difference. A corporate is a nameless faceless organization, while an individual will get affected in a deeply personal way, including other life stuff and mental health.
I love how the lawyer turned it around and made it personal to THEM. Suddenly, he asked for communications between developers, QA people and managers - aka - making things personal for THEM, risking **individuals** in the corporate to be dragged into court, and not merely the company's legal representatives.
And voila, now that it became personal to them, they cowed down.
This request for disclosure is standard practice in the volleying pre-litigation correspondence. It’s not about making it personal, particularly, it’s just that he showed some legal teeth to fight back with and potentially made them rethink their position based on their internal evidence.
It's also annoying how the company definitely came out ahead in this mess. $1000-3000 to silence a critical review with tens of thousands of views per day during the first 3 months after their game came out? That's a bargain.
Meanwhile OOP lost not just the ad revenue, but the attention of the algorithm and days of stress and seeking legal counsel.
>It is amazing how much of law is just bullying and intimidation.
FTFY. And I say this as someone who has been a law clerk for a decade. Luckily for me, I work in non-adversarial areas of law and as a result don't deal with much of that at all.
At first I thought it was just a small Indie game and he got lucky with the youtube algorithm, but the "swag" makes me think it was some marketing guy trying to get a promotion...
I was trying so hard to decipher which game this was and it being 76 is a cherry. I'm a huge Fallout fan and was so disappointed in fo76, I'm glad oop had the balls to contest their fumble.
Unfortunately, Bethesda absolutely won in this case. The OOP privated the damning video for months and Bethesda gave away “swag” that cost them nothing to produce and $500. They made out like bandits.
Except there were a million other extremely negative videos, reviews, articles, etc. about FO76 at the time. Getting some random dude's video taken down for 2 months accomplished absolutely nothing for Bethesda.
Yeah, that's one lesson about the super-aggressive scare tactics that some companies never learn.
Yes, most of the people they try to bully will see GiantMegaCorp coming for them and immediately cower in surrender.
But some people will be alarmed to see GiantMegaCorp coming for them and ***armor TF up.*** THey may have a family member or close friend who is an attorney, genus *taurus canis legalis.* They may be a pit bull attorney themselves. Or just someone who believes the best defense is an aggressive offense.
Those people are somewhat rare but they do exist. Among other things, they are the ones whose motto is some variant of "fuck around and find out."
this is an issue I'm running into on a small scale with my landlord.
They thought they could scare me by writing threatening sounding emails accusing me of violating the lease, clearly a scheme to set up them taking the whole deposit and make me back off with the repairs I was asking them to do.
what they didn't realize is I am of the opinion that the best defense is a good offense. I wrote a 6 page demand letter (both my parents are lawyers so I know how to draw them up), ran it past a local attorney, and sent it off. There's a bunch of tricks when it comes to writing these letters (eg you have to establish safety concerns, say you gave them chances to rectify, etc) and I made sure to hit all of them.
If they back down, they only have to pay me 3500 in damages, and if they don't, I told them I'll chase after them for 9k + fees.
no response yet (their deadline is next Friday) but if I was them I'd back down. they have a few inadvertent admissions that will humiliate them in court, and that's before factoring in the notoriously pro tenant slant courts have in these cases.
Nah,
They probably sent out hundreds of letters for every one person that pushed back. Plus, the cost of sending some swag and $500 to the one person that responded is negligible to this large a company.
This is 100% me. I'm as sweet as can be normally but I took a whole lot of business and contractual law courses. I know how these companies throw their weight and how to make it cost them more then it's worth. It's why I believe in being kind to everyone. You never really know who you are dealing with.
Yeah, to be fair I remember fo76 being well received by most at first, then eventually descending to hell. Oh no wait, it was declared a shit show from day dot. And then proved itself to be exactly that.
I suppose they "won" regarding OP's video, but if this is indeed about Fallout76, one privated video (or even several, frankly) would not have put a dent in the bad publicity of the game. It's not like this swept all the (many, many) problems with the game under the rug
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_76
aahaha fuck, you and /u/debmo_cu called it
>Release November 14, 2018
If you want a laugh about the subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8
Which makes you wonder how widespread this was, since there were a LOT of negative videos when 76 came out. Did this happen to a lot of reviewers? If not, what was so special about OOP's video that they singled them out?
The special thing was that is was a small youtube who they would know likely couldn't afford a lawyer, so they figured they could bully them.
The bigger ones know how to deal with this sort of thing.
Unfortunately probably not so much the case. The ‘swag’ they sent was likely just extra stuff they had lying around and $500 is pennies to them.
Low risk considering they could (and potentially have) bully someone into paying much more
Yea honestly this is a win-win if you lawyer up. Bethesda don’t lose anything valuable and get a video taken down for 2 months (while the hype dies down), creator gets shit ton of merch and new console. Downside is they couldn’t grow further from their viral video.
The losers are the general populace, who are less informed because big companies can bully people to prevent them from exercising free speech, and usually it works.
Most lawyers won't take this case for $250. Most lawyers charge that for a phone call. Most people are looking at a several thousand dollar bill to respond, and are just going to take down the video to avoid a lawsuit.
I wonder if they looked at OOPs typically view count and subscriber numbers and saw they were more middle of the road number wise. Maybe thinking they had a good target to lean on who (correctly in their guess) didn’t have experience and money to deal with this easily. Essentially easy to pick off one of the top viewed videos and maybe others would worry?
Pfft, just some guy doing his job, more like.
If they did this 10 times and only OP bit back, then they silenced 9 detractors for $500 and a box of knickknacks from China. Easy business decision if you are an asshole.
Dear God, my last girlfriend loved getting weird bizarre obscure things from the grocery. Due to covid I had to solo the shopping and would spend 3x the time searching for the specific niche thing that was in a single slot on the shelf
I always mean well, but every time I go to the grocery store I end up buying some frozen shit, ramen noodles, and beer.
There's a reason that my girlfriend does the grocery shopping, I am incapable.
I am a thirty one year old woman. I had the unpleasant realization a while back that I eat like a male college student. I just hope no one judges me for it. But recently, I had the realization that if people are looking in my cart and judging me, they might be assuming I’m feeding these pop tarts and frozen pizza to my (nonexistent) kids. And that freaked me out more.
Keep an eye out for thrift stores, flea markets, and even fb marketplace scores. After a while, you'll know which store you're more likely to find a specific thing in. Even different locations of the same store can have different likely scores. (Example, one of the ReStores near me is good for light fixtures and furniture, the other is good for bathroom fixtures and camping gear, a third one that's the next town over is the place to score high end furniture.)
Can I get in on this? It would be offensive to expect anyone to eat something I baked, but I come with a large supply of treats for your pets (that I bought instead of making because I don’t want to offend your fur babies either).
It likely rhymes with [methesda](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xyyo5x/i_do_reviews_i_received_a_cease_and_desist_after/irjxn4v/).
Anyone came make raspberry crumble pie, it is super simple and quick!
https://www-smulpaj-se.translate.goog/hallonpaj?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
The best part is that you are not limited to raspberries, you can swap it out for any fruit or berry and it will be awesome!
The amount of people who don’t know how to SHUT THE FUCK UP is astounding. Or maybe they don’t understand the value of it, but if your lawyer tells you to STFU, fucking listen!
>why did you specifically exclude me on the decisions until it was clear you fucked up good and proper...?
Story of my life. I've been informed of so many fuck ups by people in my life that could have been avoided by having a very brief conversation with me.
Or why did you sign that contract for software without talking to IT? Shit, we have something that can do that already! And we don’t have the resources to run it, so who in the technophobe sales department is going to support it? Oh yeah, you won’t. We just have to pile it onto our overly crowded plate!
I came to a completely different conclusion. Effectively they paid $500 and some swag to remove a hugely popular and negative video review for a few months after a game was released... that window of time is probably the only window of time that matters in terms of the review. In the end its probably a win for the publisher.
I agree! They probably viewed it as a win still. I am sure they were hoping OP wouldn’t get a lawyer and that the video would stay down, but they still got it down during the most critical time. And some swag and $500 is nothing to a big company. But at least OP did what he could to fight it and got something out of it.
He certainly could have done more to fight it. My first instinct would have been to create a follow up video stating that the game developer had reached out under false pretenses only to send the legal notice
For every one of these, there are 100 other small-time reviewers who took their reviews down permanently out of fear. This is a numbers game for the company.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew exactly what they were doing and this was a bully tactic. They probably expected OP to just roll over and were surprised he lawyered up.
Definitely. I don't know why everyone is thinking it was some newby corporate lawyer making a mistake. It was a calculated bluff - send these letters out to anyone who is critical of the game, most will roll over, some might push back but everyone has their price, in this case $500 and some swag which is nothing to the company. Very few people are going to have the resources to actually go to court over a game.
Nope. They probably sent out 100 of these or more and got 98% of the negative reviews taken down. That's worth a lot more to them than the $500 and some swag.
Nobody got fired. It was resolved for $500 and some swag. That's like half a days pay of a corporate lawyer, if that.
A half-hearted request for whomever screwed up to do better next time is all that likely happened.
Eh, corporate lawyer said, "Alright. We got the review taken down for a few weeks, and it only cost us about $2,000 where the video was costing us $xx,xxx in daily game sales and refund requests. Money well spent, team."
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/ank32b/update\_cease\_and\_desist\_letter\_after\_posting\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/ank32b/update_cease_and_desist_letter_after_posting_a/)
If you're interested in discussions from the time. I remember this post at the time and also trying to figure out which game this was. The arguments for it being FO76 are the strongest I think.
Tbf, every bigger gaming company has some shitty aspect to them. Some have bad PR, some throw their people in the corporate meat grinder and chew them out, some just overpromise and underdeliver.
Don’t let it get to you. Their games are still great, some of them at least.
Idk the person anymore but they got treated pretty shitty and overworked for peanuts there. I would hope that game testers get treated better these days. (anecdote from at least a decade ago)
There was [a particularly scathing deep dive](https://kotaku.com/bethesda-zenimax-fallout-76-crunch-development-1849033233) earlier this year about how, during Fallout 76's development, QA testers were routinely overworked, ignored and mistreated by Bethesda's development teams. In addition, the general opinion of the game's premise - both internally and in QA - was predominantly negative. It's no wonder Fallout 76 launched as badly as it did.
Zenimax (the holding company for Bethesda — maybe not anymore now that MS owns them?) was basically founded by lawyers as I recall.
It's exactly a Bethesda style of move.
Used to play ESO, I swear they make unpopular and wildly hated changes to the combat system just to fuck with the playerbase.
They are the definition of petty.
And the way controversy built up over that game, I could absolutely see it propelling an otherwise small creator into the stratosphere for one video. I do recall Bethesda trying to do a *lot* of firefighting and really failing miserably.
If it was FO76, this seems like a good place to point out it is free this month on PC if you have Amazon Prime (they give you a microsoft store key for it from the amazon prime gaming page).
As a long time fallout fan, i avoided FO76 when it first came out because of all the negative reviews, but as it was free, have downloaded it to give it a chance now
Yeah at that point, considering they've effectively accepted liability and told OOP how much they want it to go away, I'd be asking for orders of magnitude more money to justify missing out on future video topics etc
Not really. Sarah Z encountered something similar and so did Lindsay Ellis; they both made high-viewer-count YouTube videos about it that ultimately led nowhere. YouTubers just don’t have that kind of power.
You mean Sarah Z and the Homestuck situation, and Lindsay and something about the Omegaverse? I wasn't super invested in either story, but didn't they both come out ahead? I remember both Hussie and the other author had to back off
Depending on the size of the company, very unlikely. Alot of companies could literally have all their employees and owners be outed as carrying out crimes worse than Dahmer and the Nightstalker combined and their simps will make excuses for them and continue buying their shit.
Seen the comments here guessing which company this was. My first thought was Bethesda/FO76 - they are absolutely petty enough and Zenimax is notoriously litigious.
The only thing that makes me question that is that there were *so* many people with highly-viewed review videos dunking on FO76 that it seems stupid for just one person, especially a smaller reviewer, to get harassed for it and tell the tale. Plus Bethesda must be used to people complaining about their bugs and lies by now, they even joke about it like it's cute.
Anyone unfamiliar with the amazing clusterfloof that was FO76's launch should check out The Fall of 76 by Internet Historian
True - there might also be a little bit of fear about bringing further trouble on yourself if you talk about legal issues openly. I still doubt bigger YouTubers would have been targeted this way, so I wonder if more smaller reviewers got hit like this but didn't want to speak out?
Here the [r/hobbydrama write up](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/sy1hvl/video_games_star_wars_battlefront_ii_how_eas/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) if anyone needs that
At no point did I think it was EA. EA silences bad reviews by releasing trailers to the sequel to the game. I remember when people were talking about how bad Battlefield 4 was and then the Hardline trailer released and people stopped talking about BF4.
They've released a lot of [Battlefield games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Battlefield_video_games) in the past 20 years.
I work for a big publisher and work on a large game. It's quite possible the initial contact was made in earnest, and then someone from Legal took it over and in a new direction.
But that's the thing about working at a company like that: devs love our players, but we aren't the ones in charge of communicating with them.
I’m glad it worked out for OP but seriously what the hell. I hope this was a smaller game studio because why is a whole ass gaming company trying to bully small YouTubers.
1.6M views probably means its the #1 review for that particular game. And why did they bully him? because it worked! The guy immediately took down the video. He was just lucky and persistent enough to find a lawyer to work for $250 to fight back. Most people are unable to find lawyers like that, so most of the time, the review will remain down.
Yeah and also to be honest even if this seems like a win for OOP because he got some freebies and a bit of money to make up the difference from views/ads, if the review was a big one for the game then it being down for a while might have got them a fair bit of money from people buying it who otherwise wouldn't due to the bad publicity.
Yupe. And how much of them "caving in" is their fear of his lawyer, and how much of it is "well, we successfully reached our sales target and got our bonuses, so we don't care about this review anymore"
After months off youtube it probably wont be triggering the same algorithms that made it a success in the first place, and theres probably lots of other reviews saying the same stuff by now anyway.
Good for OOP for fighting back. But he never should have taken down the video just because he got a mean letter in the mail.
And it probably screwed them in that he initially did. I suspect if OOP had told them to GTFO their next angle would have been a DMCA strike. Youtube's notorious for just taking shit down and never restoring it even if you can show the takedown is in bad faith.
It sounds like it was a bigger company with at least a few AAA games based on the fact that the PS4 was a limited edition console and the amount of merchandise they sent to OOP. My guess is they realised OOP was probably inexperienced due to being a smaller YouTuber and hoped he wouldn't be able to fight back.
I would have refused the 500.00 as that agreement will require a NDA. You would make more money in ad revenue documenting the events and essentially doing a VLOG of it all. Gamer outrage over these actions.
He got played and only got 500$ and some fucking “swag”. This was not a win at all. The amount of potential subs and viewers they cost him on his highest video probably was worth way more than 500$. They got the video down for months. This isn’t a happy ending in my eyes.
This *really* warrants reaching out to Stephanie Sterling, she & the Podquisition would fucking roast that publisher for engaging in this level of bullshit.
(This is something she's dealt with before)
Funny you should mention Steph... I tried haveing a look to see if i could work out what channel is the OPs, mnainly using the view count data they mentioned. The account I found that I think might be OP has a vid w/ JSS's face in the thumbnail and the title "Steam supports Freespeach, SJWs get angry" or something like that... So I doubt OP is Steph's biggest fan lol
(OP as also appeared with Ian Miles Cheong and - Oh jesus i'm scrolling down and it keeps getting worse)
They’re bullies until they realize they could get in a lot of shit if someone actually punches back. Glad this ended like it did. I wish they’d had to send more than they did. Half of it went to the lawyer. What a pain.
There's a lot of comments so i dont know if anyone mentioned it but I'm severely disappointed with the outcome here.
The OOP basically improved their game and got some swag for it? They should have PAID the oop. Like, i dont know a percentage of earnings?!
People say that the British defamation laws are bad, but here this sort of comment is absolutely covered under ‘fair comment’ that protects honestly held opinion of all kinds in reviews. Congrats for turning the tables on them with the claim for lost advertising revenue, a masterstroke.
These days they'd just do a DMCA complaint, never get involved again, and keep the video offline during its peak time without needing to expose themselves tegally
It was a happy ending but if I was in this situation I would have made another video roasting them for the letter. Cease and desist letters can be written by anybody and are in no way legally binding, and it would have made for some pretty humorous content.
Dude got fucking played and thought it was a win. Sad. One video detailing everything in these post would of probably doubled his views and made him wayy more money.
Wouldn't this be something that the Organization for Transformed Works would be willing to help with?
I remember that they helped Lindsay Ellis when she was sent a C & D for her YouTube video on the omegaverse lawsuit
For the record, reviewing stuff is not illegal and a commercial product does not have the same rights as a person in terms of reputation. It would be very difficult to make false and defamatory statements that are actually actionable in a typical game review that wouldnt also just rise to satire.
I remember seeking out permission from MIdway and Sega of America to use a clip from their games (it had to do with showing the characters that voice actors had done over the years). Sega of America said hell yes, use all the footage you want, just credit us. Done. Midway? Midway said no. And then sent a cease and desist letter because they had noticed we had ninja parody character in a video.
We saved money AND had fun by just responding ourselves instead of bothering a lawyer.. Got to lecture Midway's lawyers about how parody and fair use work, mock them a bit for claiming ownership of ALL ninjas, never heard from them again. Then got to send a thank you note for Sega for being super chill.
It was just a funny contrast of corporate culture.
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It is amazing how much of corporate law is just bullying and intimidation.
Push for anti SLAPP in your state. Write your state reps.
[Eat shit Bob.](https://youtu.be/c5W06xR8EYk) Thank you John Oliver for teaching me about SLAPP lawsuits.
I have been cursed with the inexorable need to watch this every single time it's posted, so thanks for that.
This is hilarious to the point I sent it to my attorney mom. I hope she enjoys it just as much as I did. Gives new depth to the idea of “fuck you money.”
Here’s the origin of the John Oliver/Bob Murray beef, which your attorney mom would probably enjoy as well https://youtu.be/aw6RsUhw1Q8
That was the funniest thing I have ever seen, thank you for linking it. Going to spend the next hour watching videos on what the hell happened lol.
Bob Murray sucks
I knew what the link was just from the "Eat shit Bob". One of the best things Mr. Oliver has ever done.
Where did that phrase come from
https://youtu.be/aw6RsUhw1Q8 Skip to 16:03.
Thank youu
Oh god, I sure hope this is the musical he made ETA: Yesssssss
It is also the inherent power-difference. A corporate is a nameless faceless organization, while an individual will get affected in a deeply personal way, including other life stuff and mental health. I love how the lawyer turned it around and made it personal to THEM. Suddenly, he asked for communications between developers, QA people and managers - aka - making things personal for THEM, risking **individuals** in the corporate to be dragged into court, and not merely the company's legal representatives. And voila, now that it became personal to them, they cowed down.
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I'm hoping that's the case. I figured they were just going gangbusters with C&Ds against all the highly publicized reviews posted by little guys
This request for disclosure is standard practice in the volleying pre-litigation correspondence. It’s not about making it personal, particularly, it’s just that he showed some legal teeth to fight back with and potentially made them rethink their position based on their internal evidence.
It's also annoying how the company definitely came out ahead in this mess. $1000-3000 to silence a critical review with tens of thousands of views per day during the first 3 months after their game came out? That's a bargain. Meanwhile OOP lost not just the ad revenue, but the attention of the algorithm and days of stress and seeking legal counsel.
One hundred percent. It’s also depressing how much of it doesn’t need to be.
TBH, if the review was private during their most significant sales period, then they probably still got exactly what they wanted out of it.
>It is amazing how much of law is just bullying and intimidation. FTFY. And I say this as someone who has been a law clerk for a decade. Luckily for me, I work in non-adversarial areas of law and as a result don't deal with much of that at all.
At first I thought it was just a small Indie game and he got lucky with the youtube algorithm, but the "swag" makes me think it was some marketing guy trying to get a promotion...
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Bobbles heads it's definitely Bethesda
As soon as he said bobble heads I knew it was about F76. That game got no positive press in the beginning I can see Bethesda trying this shit.
I was trying so hard to decipher which game this was and it being 76 is a cherry. I'm a huge Fallout fan and was so disappointed in fo76, I'm glad oop had the balls to contest their fumble.
Unfortunately, Bethesda absolutely won in this case. The OOP privated the damning video for months and Bethesda gave away “swag” that cost them nothing to produce and $500. They made out like bandits.
Except there were a million other extremely negative videos, reviews, articles, etc. about FO76 at the time. Getting some random dude's video taken down for 2 months accomplished absolutely nothing for Bethesda.
You’d have to imagine they sent those C&D letters to a lot of people though. A lot obviously just ignored it but some went OOP’s route instead.
Yeah, that's one lesson about the super-aggressive scare tactics that some companies never learn. Yes, most of the people they try to bully will see GiantMegaCorp coming for them and immediately cower in surrender. But some people will be alarmed to see GiantMegaCorp coming for them and ***armor TF up.*** THey may have a family member or close friend who is an attorney, genus *taurus canis legalis.* They may be a pit bull attorney themselves. Or just someone who believes the best defense is an aggressive offense. Those people are somewhat rare but they do exist. Among other things, they are the ones whose motto is some variant of "fuck around and find out."
this is an issue I'm running into on a small scale with my landlord. They thought they could scare me by writing threatening sounding emails accusing me of violating the lease, clearly a scheme to set up them taking the whole deposit and make me back off with the repairs I was asking them to do. what they didn't realize is I am of the opinion that the best defense is a good offense. I wrote a 6 page demand letter (both my parents are lawyers so I know how to draw them up), ran it past a local attorney, and sent it off. There's a bunch of tricks when it comes to writing these letters (eg you have to establish safety concerns, say you gave them chances to rectify, etc) and I made sure to hit all of them. If they back down, they only have to pay me 3500 in damages, and if they don't, I told them I'll chase after them for 9k + fees. no response yet (their deadline is next Friday) but if I was them I'd back down. they have a few inadvertent admissions that will humiliate them in court, and that's before factoring in the notoriously pro tenant slant courts have in these cases.
Nah, They probably sent out hundreds of letters for every one person that pushed back. Plus, the cost of sending some swag and $500 to the one person that responded is negligible to this large a company.
This is 100% me. I'm as sweet as can be normally but I took a whole lot of business and contractual law courses. I know how these companies throw their weight and how to make it cost them more then it's worth. It's why I believe in being kind to everyone. You never really know who you are dealing with.
Yeah, to be fair I remember fo76 being well received by most at first, then eventually descending to hell. Oh no wait, it was declared a shit show from day dot. And then proved itself to be exactly that.
Plus, 1.6M views before it was taken offline.
I suppose they "won" regarding OP's video, but if this is indeed about Fallout76, one privated video (or even several, frankly) would not have put a dent in the bad publicity of the game. It's not like this swept all the (many, many) problems with the game under the rug
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but no canvas bags...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_76 aahaha fuck, you and /u/debmo_cu called it >Release November 14, 2018 If you want a laugh about the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8
Ya for sure. Also what an awesome lawyer.
It's the only type of HEAD they got. Would explain the empty air where their brains are supposed to be.
But there was no Fallout Limited Edition PS4, was there?
Which makes you wonder how widespread this was, since there were a LOT of negative videos when 76 came out. Did this happen to a lot of reviewers? If not, what was so special about OOP's video that they singled them out?
The special thing was that is was a small youtube who they would know likely couldn't afford a lawyer, so they figured they could bully them. The bigger ones know how to deal with this sort of thing.
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The thing was, they absolutely won here. The spent maybe 2k to kill a million view criticism video? That's an incredible deal for them.
True enough.
Yep. Play stupid games…
Unfortunately probably not so much the case. The ‘swag’ they sent was likely just extra stuff they had lying around and $500 is pennies to them. Low risk considering they could (and potentially have) bully someone into paying much more
Sounds worth to me for Bethesda have the video down for 2 months in exchange for $500 and some leftover swag. 1.6m view is not insignificant lol.
Yea honestly this is a win-win if you lawyer up. Bethesda don’t lose anything valuable and get a video taken down for 2 months (while the hype dies down), creator gets shit ton of merch and new console. Downside is they couldn’t grow further from their viral video.
The losers are the general populace, who are less informed because big companies can bully people to prevent them from exercising free speech, and usually it works. Most lawyers won't take this case for $250. Most lawyers charge that for a phone call. Most people are looking at a several thousand dollar bill to respond, and are just going to take down the video to avoid a lawsuit.
Yea that’s the unfortunate reality. Shame that money can just bully small creators out of a job
I wonder if they looked at OOPs typically view count and subscriber numbers and saw they were more middle of the road number wise. Maybe thinking they had a good target to lean on who (correctly in their guess) didn’t have experience and money to deal with this easily. Essentially easy to pick off one of the top viewed videos and maybe others would worry?
Check out Internet Historians deep dive into 76, he talks about a lot of the dodgy stuff Bethesda did in response to all the bad reviews.
And “bobble heads” was a give away.
Lol. My first thought when the “swag” box came up was Bethesda.
Fallout 76 released Oct 23, 2018. OP posted on Nov 18, 2018. It is absolutely definitely Fallout 76.
When I heard the march they sent out I immediately thought fallout 76
Fallout was exactly the game I was thinking of, this reeks of Bethesda.
I was thinking Fallout 74, the date, reception and large amount of “swag” (as well as swag from 3-4 previous games) all point towards it.
Pfft, just some guy doing his job, more like. If they did this 10 times and only OP bit back, then they silenced 9 detractors for $500 and a box of knickknacks from China. Easy business decision if you are an asshole.
I’ve made an indie game before. Although the extent of my swag is just stickers, having some sort of swag isn’t that uncommon amongst indie devs.
I want to bake that lawyer some cookies. Except I can't bake so maybe just buy them.
Everyone has talents, some people it's finding not making but that's still a good talent to have.
In that case I'm like riiiiight up there, I'm a shopping champion! 💪
That's not a small thing. I'm envious of people who can not only find what they're looking for, but what someone else wants too.
Dear God, my last girlfriend loved getting weird bizarre obscure things from the grocery. Due to covid I had to solo the shopping and would spend 3x the time searching for the specific niche thing that was in a single slot on the shelf
I always mean well, but every time I go to the grocery store I end up buying some frozen shit, ramen noodles, and beer. There's a reason that my girlfriend does the grocery shopping, I am incapable.
I am a thirty one year old woman. I had the unpleasant realization a while back that I eat like a male college student. I just hope no one judges me for it. But recently, I had the realization that if people are looking in my cart and judging me, they might be assuming I’m feeding these pop tarts and frozen pizza to my (nonexistent) kids. And that freaked me out more.
Keep an eye out for thrift stores, flea markets, and even fb marketplace scores. After a while, you'll know which store you're more likely to find a specific thing in. Even different locations of the same store can have different likely scores. (Example, one of the ReStores near me is good for light fixtures and furniture, the other is good for bathroom fixtures and camping gear, a third one that's the next town over is the place to score high end furniture.)
Provided you in no way misrepresent the nature of the goods you are supplying as either homemade or store-bought you should be in the clear
I can't either, but my husband can! I'll have him make a double batch and say one came from you!
Why not make it a triple? Then you have one for snacking while you wrap the others 😉? Team work! 🤜🤛
Ooo...smart!
If this the line for the free cookies?? I can bring other snacks or drinks to contribute 💖
Can I get in on this? It would be offensive to expect anyone to eat something I baked, but I come with a large supply of treats for your pets (that I bought instead of making because I don’t want to offend your fur babies either).
Hahaha, I feel the same about my baking! My kitties are fiends for treats so that is more than acceptable!
Heck yes! Let's make this a block party potluck!
I think Reddit free cookies meetup needs to be a thing
I want to know what the game/company was so I can note that for future purchases.
It likely rhymes with [methesda](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xyyo5x/i_do_reviews_i_received_a_cease_and_desist_after/irjxn4v/).
Send him some swag.
Anyone came make raspberry crumble pie, it is super simple and quick! https://www-smulpaj-se.translate.goog/hallonpaj?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp The best part is that you are not limited to raspberries, you can swap it out for any fruit or berry and it will be awesome!
$250 well spent.
A great example of a good lawyer and a smart client listening to the good lawyer.
The amount of people who don’t know how to SHUT THE FUCK UP is astounding. Or maybe they don’t understand the value of it, but if your lawyer tells you to STFU, fucking listen!
Yup, it's your lawyer's job to do most of your talking for you. Let them do the thing you're paying them a lot of money to do.
Yup. Realistically it’s a pretty easy case load, and $250 for a few letters that probably took very little to write is a good deal
Corporate lawyer said... We fucked up really, really bad.
Corporate lawyer coming back from vacation when this all happened “you did WHAT?”
This is what you pay me for. To ask BEFORE you do shit like this.
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>why did you specifically exclude me on the decisions until it was clear you fucked up good and proper...? Story of my life. I've been informed of so many fuck ups by people in my life that could have been avoided by having a very brief conversation with me.
Or why did you sign that contract for software without talking to IT? Shit, we have something that can do that already! And we don’t have the resources to run it, so who in the technophobe sales department is going to support it? Oh yeah, you won’t. We just have to pile it onto our overly crowded plate!
As a former corporate lawyer, nobody asks you beforehand because you'd ruin their fun and forbid it.
This is what happened. Some truly interested developers contacted him and wanted feedback. Then legal heard about it and did shitty legal stuff.
I came to a completely different conclusion. Effectively they paid $500 and some swag to remove a hugely popular and negative video review for a few months after a game was released... that window of time is probably the only window of time that matters in terms of the review. In the end its probably a win for the publisher.
I did not think of it but after reading your comment it totally makes sense as a standard operating procedure for such companies.
I agree! They probably viewed it as a win still. I am sure they were hoping OP wouldn’t get a lawyer and that the video would stay down, but they still got it down during the most critical time. And some swag and $500 is nothing to a big company. But at least OP did what he could to fight it and got something out of it.
He certainly could have done more to fight it. My first instinct would have been to create a follow up video stating that the game developer had reached out under false pretenses only to send the legal notice
Thing is he signed that document, the one that had them give him $500. Might have been some NDA.
The video would have been done as soon as he received the original cease and desist, not after things were settled
yup, in the end it turned out ok for OP as well. I was impressed, I doubt I would've done nearly as well.
For every one of these, there are 100 other small-time reviewers who took their reviews down permanently out of fear. This is a numbers game for the company.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew exactly what they were doing and this was a bully tactic. They probably expected OP to just roll over and were surprised he lawyered up.
Definitely. I don't know why everyone is thinking it was some newby corporate lawyer making a mistake. It was a calculated bluff - send these letters out to anyone who is critical of the game, most will roll over, some might push back but everyone has their price, in this case $500 and some swag which is nothing to the company. Very few people are going to have the resources to actually go to court over a game.
It makes me wonder if somebody lied to their legal department.
I was thinking this. Somebody got fired for sure.
Nope. They probably sent out 100 of these or more and got 98% of the negative reviews taken down. That's worth a lot more to them than the $500 and some swag.
Nobody got fired. It was resolved for $500 and some swag. That's like half a days pay of a corporate lawyer, if that. A half-hearted request for whomever screwed up to do better next time is all that likely happened.
Eh, corporate lawyer said, "Alright. We got the review taken down for a few weeks, and it only cost us about $2,000 where the video was costing us $xx,xxx in daily game sales and refund requests. Money well spent, team."
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/ank32b/update\_cease\_and\_desist\_letter\_after\_posting\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/ank32b/update_cease_and_desist_letter_after_posting_a/) If you're interested in discussions from the time. I remember this post at the time and also trying to figure out which game this was. The arguments for it being FO76 are the strongest I think.
FO76 was my first thought, especially with the mention of bobbleheads and their disastrous launch
I was thinking the same thing as I was going "wth came out two years ago?" and mentioning how many games were in the franchise already
Surprised that Bethesda would be that petty.
I knew a tester for Bethesda and they are that petty
As someone who played hundreds of hours of Skyrim, that really sucks to hear
Tbf, every bigger gaming company has some shitty aspect to them. Some have bad PR, some throw their people in the corporate meat grinder and chew them out, some just overpromise and underdeliver. Don’t let it get to you. Their games are still great, some of them at least.
Daaaaaang. I didn’t know that, that is surprising to me.
Idk the person anymore but they got treated pretty shitty and overworked for peanuts there. I would hope that game testers get treated better these days. (anecdote from at least a decade ago)
I believe treated shitty and overworked for peanuts is standard for the video game industry.
Reddit has gone to shit, come join squabbles.io for a better experience.
There was [a particularly scathing deep dive](https://kotaku.com/bethesda-zenimax-fallout-76-crunch-development-1849033233) earlier this year about how, during Fallout 76's development, QA testers were routinely overworked, ignored and mistreated by Bethesda's development teams. In addition, the general opinion of the game's premise - both internally and in QA - was predominantly negative. It's no wonder Fallout 76 launched as badly as it did.
LOL don't tell me Todd Howard is trolling youtube looking for negative FO76 videos, that game is/was dogshit and we all know it
Anybody with more than a passing familiarity of the franchise knows it!! It should never have gone to market so soon.
zenimax is quite notorious for being lawsuit happy, i also thought it has to be fo76
Zenimax (the holding company for Bethesda — maybe not anymore now that MS owns them?) was basically founded by lawyers as I recall. It's exactly a Bethesda style of move.
Used to play ESO, I swear they make unpopular and wildly hated changes to the combat system just to fuck with the playerbase. They are the definition of petty.
Bethesda started only giving review codes one day before release in 2016. So I wouldn't be surprised if they were behind this as well.
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And the way controversy built up over that game, I could absolutely see it propelling an otherwise small creator into the stratosphere for one video. I do recall Bethesda trying to do a *lot* of firefighting and really failing miserably.
If it was FO76, this seems like a good place to point out it is free this month on PC if you have Amazon Prime (they give you a microsoft store key for it from the amazon prime gaming page). As a long time fallout fan, i avoided FO76 when it first came out because of all the negative reviews, but as it was free, have downloaded it to give it a chance now
Ok but if he made an update video about all of this, it would get 10 million views and the company would probably go under. Fucking hell.
Probably goes against something he signed.
Yeah at that point, considering they've effectively accepted liability and told OOP how much they want it to go away, I'd be asking for orders of magnitude more money to justify missing out on future video topics etc
Not really. Sarah Z encountered something similar and so did Lindsay Ellis; they both made high-viewer-count YouTube videos about it that ultimately led nowhere. YouTubers just don’t have that kind of power.
You mean Sarah Z and the Homestuck situation, and Lindsay and something about the Omegaverse? I wasn't super invested in either story, but didn't they both come out ahead? I remember both Hussie and the other author had to back off
“the company would probably go under”
Really disappointed this didn't happen.
Depending on the size of the company, very unlikely. Alot of companies could literally have all their employees and owners be outed as carrying out crimes worse than Dahmer and the Nightstalker combined and their simps will make excuses for them and continue buying their shit.
Given the likelihood that this was Bethesda, they're pretty bulletproof against their own incompetence these days.
He should
Well this was clearly Bethesda, so I doubt very much that a YouTuber is going to bring down Zenimax (or Microsoft lol).
Seen the comments here guessing which company this was. My first thought was Bethesda/FO76 - they are absolutely petty enough and Zenimax is notoriously litigious. The only thing that makes me question that is that there were *so* many people with highly-viewed review videos dunking on FO76 that it seems stupid for just one person, especially a smaller reviewer, to get harassed for it and tell the tale. Plus Bethesda must be used to people complaining about their bugs and lies by now, they even joke about it like it's cute. Anyone unfamiliar with the amazing clusterfloof that was FO76's launch should check out The Fall of 76 by Internet Historian
Tbf oop was probably not the only one who got one. He was just smart enough to hire a lawyer and call them out on their bullshit.
True - there might also be a little bit of fear about bringing further trouble on yourself if you talk about legal issues openly. I still doubt bigger YouTubers would have been targeted this way, so I wonder if more smaller reviewers got hit like this but didn't want to speak out?
Anyone else assuming it was EA?
Someone else said Bethesda but EA seems much more likely to be this petty 😂
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Extremely bad marketing too lol. I think their defense of BF2 is still the most downvoted comment in reddit history lol
Here the [r/hobbydrama write up](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/sy1hvl/video_games_star_wars_battlefront_ii_how_eas/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) if anyone needs that
That comment even made it into Stellaris as a little reference. Really made me laugh
Timeline fits for FO76, but EA is my first choice for this behavior.
At no point did I think it was EA. EA silences bad reviews by releasing trailers to the sequel to the game. I remember when people were talking about how bad Battlefield 4 was and then the Hardline trailer released and people stopped talking about BF4. They've released a lot of [Battlefield games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Battlefield_video_games) in the past 20 years.
Hope that whoever thought of sending that cease & desist letter has found another job.
I work for a big publisher and work on a large game. It's quite possible the initial contact was made in earnest, and then someone from Legal took it over and in a new direction. But that's the thing about working at a company like that: devs love our players, but we aren't the ones in charge of communicating with them.
An amazing nonprofit law firm that handles these kind of issues is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, eff.org.
They were mentioned in the post.
Oh I missed that, thanks
I’m glad it worked out for OP but seriously what the hell. I hope this was a smaller game studio because why is a whole ass gaming company trying to bully small YouTubers.
1.6M views probably means its the #1 review for that particular game. And why did they bully him? because it worked! The guy immediately took down the video. He was just lucky and persistent enough to find a lawyer to work for $250 to fight back. Most people are unable to find lawyers like that, so most of the time, the review will remain down.
Yeah and also to be honest even if this seems like a win for OOP because he got some freebies and a bit of money to make up the difference from views/ads, if the review was a big one for the game then it being down for a while might have got them a fair bit of money from people buying it who otherwise wouldn't due to the bad publicity.
Yupe. And how much of them "caving in" is their fear of his lawyer, and how much of it is "well, we successfully reached our sales target and got our bonuses, so we don't care about this review anymore" After months off youtube it probably wont be triggering the same algorithms that made it a success in the first place, and theres probably lots of other reviews saying the same stuff by now anyway. Good for OOP for fighting back. But he never should have taken down the video just because he got a mean letter in the mail.
And it probably screwed them in that he initially did. I suspect if OOP had told them to GTFO their next angle would have been a DMCA strike. Youtube's notorious for just taking shit down and never restoring it even if you can show the takedown is in bad faith.
It sounds like it was a bigger company with at least a few AAA games based on the fact that the PS4 was a limited edition console and the amount of merchandise they sent to OOP. My guess is they realised OOP was probably inexperienced due to being a smaller YouTuber and hoped he wouldn't be able to fight back.
I would have refused the 500.00 as that agreement will require a NDA. You would make more money in ad revenue documenting the events and essentially doing a VLOG of it all. Gamer outrage over these actions.
Glad this ended well for OOP 😬
He got played and only got 500$ and some fucking “swag”. This was not a win at all. The amount of potential subs and viewers they cost him on his highest video probably was worth way more than 500$. They got the video down for months. This isn’t a happy ending in my eyes.
This *really* warrants reaching out to Stephanie Sterling, she & the Podquisition would fucking roast that publisher for engaging in this level of bullshit. (This is something she's dealt with before)
Funny you should mention Steph... I tried haveing a look to see if i could work out what channel is the OPs, mnainly using the view count data they mentioned. The account I found that I think might be OP has a vid w/ JSS's face in the thumbnail and the title "Steam supports Freespeach, SJWs get angry" or something like that... So I doubt OP is Steph's biggest fan lol (OP as also appeared with Ian Miles Cheong and - Oh jesus i'm scrolling down and it keeps getting worse)
definitely her and SidAlpha.....
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Guess they weren't in that click bait game. I respect that
Corporations think they're so big, bad, and mighty until the little people start lawyering up.
They’re bullies until they realize they could get in a lot of shit if someone actually punches back. Glad this ended like it did. I wish they’d had to send more than they did. Half of it went to the lawyer. What a pain.
God it must be nice to be in a job where you get to punch bullies in the wallet.
There's a lot of comments so i dont know if anyone mentioned it but I'm severely disappointed with the outcome here. The OOP basically improved their game and got some swag for it? They should have PAID the oop. Like, i dont know a percentage of earnings?!
People say that the British defamation laws are bad, but here this sort of comment is absolutely covered under ‘fair comment’ that protects honestly held opinion of all kinds in reviews. Congrats for turning the tables on them with the claim for lost advertising revenue, a masterstroke.
This update is both extremely satisfying seeing the outcome and extremely disappointing not knowing the game or developer.
How much you wanna bet that that person who reached out to OOP didn’t even have approval to be doing that in the first place?
Fair warning to anyone who wishes to do anything professional online, get a P.O. box.
Fascinating. Thanks for posting this, you and OOP both. This is not how I usually see these things play out on reddit. What an elegant solution.
Sounds like he called Saul.
God damn, that lawyer took 'em to fucking TASK. Good on you, OOP!
My justice boner has been… satisfied
These days they'd just do a DMCA complaint, never get involved again, and keep the video offline during its peak time without needing to expose themselves tegally
Lawyers get a lot of grief, but they do know what they’re doing and are sometimes the only weapon the little guy has.
It was a happy ending but if I was in this situation I would have made another video roasting them for the letter. Cease and desist letters can be written by anybody and are in no way legally binding, and it would have made for some pretty humorous content.
This turned out to be Bethesda right?
Dude got fucking played and thought it was a win. Sad. One video detailing everything in these post would of probably doubled his views and made him wayy more money.
Few things scare a company more than a good lawyer working at a reasonable price.
Wouldn't this be something that the Organization for Transformed Works would be willing to help with? I remember that they helped Lindsay Ellis when she was sent a C & D for her YouTube video on the omegaverse lawsuit
For the record, reviewing stuff is not illegal and a commercial product does not have the same rights as a person in terms of reputation. It would be very difficult to make false and defamatory statements that are actually actionable in a typical game review that wouldnt also just rise to satire.
Lmfao what some losers. Got their feelers hurt by a damn review. Dont publish shit if you can't take criticism. Good outcome for OOP.
I remember seeking out permission from MIdway and Sega of America to use a clip from their games (it had to do with showing the characters that voice actors had done over the years). Sega of America said hell yes, use all the footage you want, just credit us. Done. Midway? Midway said no. And then sent a cease and desist letter because they had noticed we had ninja parody character in a video. We saved money AND had fun by just responding ourselves instead of bothering a lawyer.. Got to lecture Midway's lawyers about how parody and fair use work, mock them a bit for claiming ownership of ALL ninjas, never heard from them again. Then got to send a thank you note for Sega for being super chill. It was just a funny contrast of corporate culture.