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owsf2000This seems to be making news on reddit/pc gamer/etc. It's about a game dev that, "on his normal PR rounds" received an email from one youtuber with millions of subscribers that offered to do a video with 2 or 3 talking points for $17.6k - or $22k with the inclusion of a link in the description. This of course apparently baffled the dev who refused - then went to reddit to complain.
First of all, complaining on reddit. lol.
Ok, that's out of my system.
Personally, I'm not entirely sure what the big deal is. Should you be siding with the developer here at being shocked at being quoted something much higher than the free review copy of his game that he was offering? Or should you be siding with the Youtuber?
First of all, let's assume that the paid nature of the review will be made apparent to the viewers. After all we already have youtubers getting in trouble and facing stiff penalties for deceptive advertising. IE: Passing paid advertisements off as their personal opinions by not explicitly telling people that they are being paid to make the video.
So. Assuming that's out of the way what do we have here? The Game Dev is going around trying to solicit people to review his game by giving them free copies of the game. That's one cheap bribe, especially if the reviewer doesn't particularly want to play it on his own dime. What does the game dev get for this free copy (A copy that costs him nothing to offer!) It gets him public exposure to a few million eyeballs - and free video recording, editing, cleanup, and hosting.
He refuses to mention the name of the person that actually expected to be paid for the time spent on video editing, game reviewing, commentary, etc etc. With a few million subscribers however he must be doing something right so his videos are probably a bit more than him sitting in front of a webcam talking for 20 minutes. (Think Angry Joe for instance. Most of his videos probably take a bit longer than sitting down for 10 minutes. There are some videos where the props alone cost a few hundred dollars.)
It's not wrong to expect compensation for work expected. The question is whether or not the person wanting the work done is willing to pay. If he isn't, then nothing gets done and both can go about their lives. Or COULD have gone about their lives if one didn't decide to start a bitchfest on reddit.
One last thing to consider. If this youtuber has a few million subscribers, odds are this dev isn't the only person trying to pawn off free games for a spotlight on the channel. The youtuber only has so much time available. When time is a limited resource, and demand far exceeds it, you weed out demand by raising the price. Demanding that much money for a game he probably wasn't interested in is probably how he tells them "No. Unless you make it worth my time, I'm going to play something else." Net result would be all the riftraft he doesn't want to review anyway shuts up and he can play and review things he's actually interested in for free (getting money from youtube instead for the views, etc)
There are people on the reddit thread saying how they're Let's Players and how they're shocked and sorry that people are "exploiting" game developers by demanding fees for exposure but seriously I just can't get upset over it. It's not like EVERY Let's Player is doing this. Supposedly very few are. If that's the case, a game dev should quickly learn which channels are "off limits" to his games and move on. Not everyone is willing to do 6-10 hours of video editing for a free game they didn't want. (And apparently one person in the reddit thread said the game in question was pretty bland and unremarkable anyway. Whether or not he's just trolling though I dunno. I can't even be bothered to verify what game this is all about.)
*addition/ps/whatever*
Of course this makes me wonder how I'd do it if I were a youtuber myself. Of course, I also mean assuming I had more than 20 subscribers as well.
How would I handle being offered free steam games from devs? Fact is I know I wouldn't have a lot of time to cover even the games I wanted to cover, but at the same time I doubt I'd ask for $22,000 either. Why? Because that would actually add work to my schedule that I'd -have- to get done, if someone was silly enough to agree to it. Right now I'd probably reply to any dev that sent me that kind of offer with something like "If you want to, you can send me a code for the game. I can't promise a review will be made, but if it is I'll let you know."
And then let them decide if they want to take the risk of giving away a free copy of their game and not getting a review - since none is being promised.
Of course this would also depend on previous actions of devs as well. For instance, I wouldn't even agree to take a code from Nintendo etc - companies that screw over youtubers by making claims on their videos. Angry Joe has had lots of things to say about that in the past! In one case he was even given promotional materials to use in his review, and the company used those very promotional materials to lay claim on his video - thus stealing all the revenue he would have made from it after having him spend 10 hours making the video. (IE: American office of company gave him the materials, then Japan office claimed the video. In my opinion, there's no difference.)
First of all, complaining on reddit. lol.
Ok, that's out of my system.
Personally, I'm not entirely sure what the big deal is. Should you be siding with the developer here at being shocked at being quoted something much higher than the free review copy of his game that he was offering? Or should you be siding with the Youtuber?
First of all, let's assume that the paid nature of the review will be made apparent to the viewers. After all we already have youtubers getting in trouble and facing stiff penalties for deceptive advertising. IE: Passing paid advertisements off as their personal opinions by not explicitly telling people that they are being paid to make the video.
So. Assuming that's out of the way what do we have here? The Game Dev is going around trying to solicit people to review his game by giving them free copies of the game. That's one cheap bribe, especially if the reviewer doesn't particularly want to play it on his own dime. What does the game dev get for this free copy (A copy that costs him nothing to offer!) It gets him public exposure to a few million eyeballs - and free video recording, editing, cleanup, and hosting.
He refuses to mention the name of the person that actually expected to be paid for the time spent on video editing, game reviewing, commentary, etc etc. With a few million subscribers however he must be doing something right so his videos are probably a bit more than him sitting in front of a webcam talking for 20 minutes. (Think Angry Joe for instance. Most of his videos probably take a bit longer than sitting down for 10 minutes. There are some videos where the props alone cost a few hundred dollars.)
It's not wrong to expect compensation for work expected. The question is whether or not the person wanting the work done is willing to pay. If he isn't, then nothing gets done and both can go about their lives. Or COULD have gone about their lives if one didn't decide to start a bitchfest on reddit.
One last thing to consider. If this youtuber has a few million subscribers, odds are this dev isn't the only person trying to pawn off free games for a spotlight on the channel. The youtuber only has so much time available. When time is a limited resource, and demand far exceeds it, you weed out demand by raising the price. Demanding that much money for a game he probably wasn't interested in is probably how he tells them "No. Unless you make it worth my time, I'm going to play something else." Net result would be all the riftraft he doesn't want to review anyway shuts up and he can play and review things he's actually interested in for free (getting money from youtube instead for the views, etc)
There are people on the reddit thread saying how they're Let's Players and how they're shocked and sorry that people are "exploiting" game developers by demanding fees for exposure but seriously I just can't get upset over it. It's not like EVERY Let's Player is doing this. Supposedly very few are. If that's the case, a game dev should quickly learn which channels are "off limits" to his games and move on. Not everyone is willing to do 6-10 hours of video editing for a free game they didn't want. (And apparently one person in the reddit thread said the game in question was pretty bland and unremarkable anyway. Whether or not he's just trolling though I dunno. I can't even be bothered to verify what game this is all about.)
*addition/ps/whatever*
Of course this makes me wonder how I'd do it if I were a youtuber myself. Of course, I also mean assuming I had more than 20 subscribers as well.
How would I handle being offered free steam games from devs? Fact is I know I wouldn't have a lot of time to cover even the games I wanted to cover, but at the same time I doubt I'd ask for $22,000 either. Why? Because that would actually add work to my schedule that I'd -have- to get done, if someone was silly enough to agree to it. Right now I'd probably reply to any dev that sent me that kind of offer with something like "If you want to, you can send me a code for the game. I can't promise a review will be made, but if it is I'll let you know."
And then let them decide if they want to take the risk of giving away a free copy of their game and not getting a review - since none is being promised.
Of course this would also depend on previous actions of devs as well. For instance, I wouldn't even agree to take a code from Nintendo etc - companies that screw over youtubers by making claims on their videos. Angry Joe has had lots of things to say about that in the past! In one case he was even given promotional materials to use in his review, and the company used those very promotional materials to lay claim on his video - thus stealing all the revenue he would have made from it after having him spend 10 hours making the video. (IE: American office of company gave him the materials, then Japan office claimed the video. In my opinion, there's no difference.)
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Date: 2015-09-13 11:49 pm (UTC)I have to wonder how much it would cost this developer to actually have to hire a full-time marketing team to promote his game. I'm guessing it would be way more than $22,000.
(With that said, though, I can't think of a single "big" name Youtuber that would even be worth paying $22,000 to have them review a game in the first place. Not TotalBiscuit or Jim Sterling, definitely. Absolutely not PewDiePie, I don't care how many hojillion subscribers he may have. Not any of the other not-as-big-as-PewDiePie LPers either. Not even Angry Joe. Maybe James Rolfe (but not as the AVGN). If I had the coin to spend, and a game to spend it on, I personally might be willing to pay the Best Friends Play guys to do a review of said hypothetical game, but that's just me. I can't really even think of any other "big" name Youtubers that do games stuff, besides those. [EDIT] That's not to say that there aren't any, of course, just that I can't think of them, because I don't watch them. Game Grumps, maybe? JonTron? Hell, I don't know. [/EDIT] And that's assuming that the LP guys would even want to review a game in such a fashion in the first place.)
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Date: 2015-09-14 12:19 am (UTC)But regardless, so long as the paid review is clearly labeled as being paid for, I wouldn't think any worse of the youtuber whoever it is.
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Date: 2015-09-14 05:16 pm (UTC)I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who (inexplicably) believe that TotalBiscuit or Jim Sterling or whoever else would be a fine source to pay for said review (just look at some of the comments under the PC Gamer article, talking about how TB and Sterling are the only ones they "trust"). It's just that, for me personally, there's not really all that many that I would trust enough for it. I'd maybe trust them to entertain me, at best (and in the case of TB or Sterling, even that much is dubious), but not much farther than that, and certainly not $22,000 worth.
In any case, though, more power to whoever it may be if they can get devs to pay them for reviews like that, I guess. But, even so, if I was watching a video from someone and it said that it was a paid review for a game, I'd simply disregard it altogether, just as I disregard banner ads and whatever else (the ones that somehow manage to slip past adblock, at any rate). Most likely wouldn't even click play on it. At that point, it's no longer a "review" and is just a commercial.
I'm even skeptical of the videos that I've seen lately that admit that their video was based on a free copy of a game that they got from a developer who asked them to make a video about it, even if they weren't paid money in addition to that. A few of the recent ones made by the SBFP guys and by Mike Matei on Cinemassacre have been like that. I watched those, but they just had a different... I don't know... feel... to them, sort of, compared to the ones where they just picked games of their own accord to make videos about. It seemed like they were trying harder to be positive about said games than they otherwise might have been.
Paid reviews just seem very hinky to me in general, which is part of the reason why I no longer follow "mainstream" video games so-called "journalism (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/tag/video%20game%20journalism)" anymore, since that kickback shit is rampant there (e.g. Doritosgate (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/doritosgate), or the thing with Jeff Gerstmann (http://www.gamefront.com/jeff-gerstmann-finally-talks-about-gamespot-firing/)[1], or other such bullshit). If this sort of thing spreads to Youtube LPers as well, then I'll just have to start taking their videos with a grain of salt as well, if I continue to watch them at all.
[1] - Oh, and it looks like GiantBomb was bought by Gamespot several years ago (http://gamepolitics.com/2012/03/15/giantbomb-acquired-gamespot-owner-cbs-interactive), or, rather, both are owned by the same parent company now. I had absolutely no idea that this was the case until today, when I looked at that article about Gerstmann that I linked up there. Welp, so much for GiantBomb being "trustworthy" as so many have claimed, I guess. I never bothered with GiantBomb to begin with, so no real loss for me, but this would have been much more disappointing to me if I had.
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Date: 2015-09-15 07:43 am (UTC)lol. He's in just as weak a position now as he as back then. He no longer owns his company. If he doesn't do what the masters say, he's out just as easily as he was before. Not sure why they'd assume he'd have a stronger position by putting himself back in the same environment that axed him the first time.
Well, I suppose he has more money this time around, so if they axe him then he'll be able to start up a new competitor again even more easily. (Unless of course he's now under a Non-compete clause now.)