Gamespot Once More Lowers The Bar For Video Game Journalists Everywhere!
October 1st, 2008
UPDATE 4: It is confirmed that the beta keys mentioned in update 3 were definitely from GS. In the end, they did make good on their promise, and that’s a good thing. At some point along the way they may very well have been fibbing to the community, and that’s not such a good thing. I guess the moral of the story is to keep your eye on GS. Don’t take everything they tell you at face value. They’ve been around a long time, but that doesn’t make them above mistakes, and this situation is proof of that. They delivered the beta keys, but they still handled the situation poorly by misinforming (deliberately or accidentally) the community every step of the way. Take what Gamespot says with a grain of salt…. but you probably already knew that.
UPDATE 3: Some people on the GS forums are now claiming to have received codes from Gamespot. There’s even a screen shot of someone’s email, however, the email does look a little suspicious. The word “beta” is spelled “bet”, and Kristin says “Please only use this once as it will delete your copy if you try to use it multiple times.” possibly referring to the fact that your key will become invalid if you attempt to use it on two different PSN accounts. Despite the grammatical short comings of the email, it does seem possible that it is legit, which once again raises the question “What took so long?” Did they just get the keys from Sony? Did they have them all along? As answers surface, I’ll continue to update. Thanks to A Voice for pointing this out.
UPDATE 2: It now appears the codes mentioned in the last update were actually related to the official LBP website. Kristin did suggest that codes would be going out in the very near future, and that if you don’t get a key, watch this weeks episode of On The Spot for another chance to win one as they will have 2,000 more. So in summation, no keys have actually gone out from GS yet, but they’re promising 2,000 additional keys as prizes.
UPDATE:Some Gamespot users are reporting that they are receiving beta codes from Sony. It is unclear at this point whether they are directly related to Gamespot’s contest, or the littlebigplanet homepage’s contest. While it is good to see people getting their codes, this would sort of support the theory that GS was not up front with gamers when they said they had the codes in hand to give out as prizes. As info becomes available I’ll update this post.
Gamespot is at it again! You may remember earlier this year when GS got themselves in a sticky situation when Jeff Gerstmann was relieved of duty under suspicious circumstances. Long story short, there were Kane and Lynch ads all over GS when Gerstmann’s negative review of the game went up. Shortly thereafter, he found himself in the unemployment line.
Well, it looks like GS is getting into new shenanigans this week. This time it’s all about littlebigplanet beta codes.
The story starts last Thursday when Gamespot announced they’d be giving away 2,000 littlebigplanet beta codes Thousands of gamers tuned in in hopes of getting one of those golden codes. There was some confusion at the end of the show - they sort of skimmed through the rules for entering, and the comments exploded with confusion. When the dust settled, Lark Anderson commented on the On the Spot page letting users know that they would be receiving their beta codes shortly…. which was later updated to inform all their viewers that he didn’t actually have an ETA
Update:
Unfortunately I can’t give you an ETA on the beta codes. I can say that we are working to verify entries, and that upon verification winners will receive a confirmation email and a follow-up email with their beta key.I posted here earlier that you would be receiving them “shortly,” but that was based on an earlier conversation I had and was perhaps a poor choice of words. As someone not directly involved in this task, I cannot really comment on it much further, but it is most likely unrealistic to expect to see confirmation emails until Monday. Please rest assured that we are working this out as fast as possible.
I apologize for any undue stress caused by not being able to play it over the weekend.
Kristin later updated with:
Update #2
The winners will see an email at some point on Monday. I’m personally paging through all these emails and picking out the correct answers. I underestimated how long this would take (or the response we would receive). I’ve spent this weekend compiling the winners email addresses and trying to ensure there weren’t duplicates of email addresses. Thanks for your patience and understanding!!
Oh, so they did have an ETA after all, cool…. except it turned out to be a goal they couldn’t meet. A few days later they mentioned in the forums that the ETA was actually going to be Tuesday or Wednesday. By this point all the entrants into the contest were becoming restless as this thread on their forums demonstrates. In fact, that thread covers the whole situation from start to finish. It’s long, so if you’re going to read it in it’s entirety, I recommend getting a sandwich and something to drink first. The final blow came when Kristin made the following statement on her GS blog:
Our list has been into Sony since yesterday. It’s up to them when they get them out. We don’t phyically have the keys. We sent the list of winners to Sony, Sony will be emailing the keys out. If you have a complaint, email Sony.
BWAAAAHHHHH????? They didn’t actually have the codes that they claimed to have from the start? The blog post she originally made that statement in has since been deleted. That quote came from the google cache of a GS forums thread - apparently the moderators on the forums also set out to remove all trace of that statement ever having been made. While all I have as proof is a google cache of a forum post, I did personally see that blog post before it got assassinated by the GS ninjas. I want to be clear here - I’m not pointing a finger at Kristin with any of this - I suspect she was just as frustrated as the community was, and that’s what prompted her statement. We don’t blame her, and we hope her job security isn’t in question because of her honesty.
So, the bigger picture here is that Gamespot had a contest where they drove traffic to their site by promising a prize they didn’t actually have in hand. Here we are on Wednesday, and no one who entered the GS contest last Thursday has received a beta key yet. Perhaps it’s all some sort of misunderstanding. Perhaps Kristin was misinformed when she made her statement. We just don’t know - we were unable to reach Gamespot for a comment on this issue, but we’re more than willing to hear them out if they decide they want to talk to us about it.
-Mike Kurz
Tags: beta, fans, featured, Game Industry, gamespot, Little big planet, scandal
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October 1st, 2008 at 4:36 pm
mah fuk dis
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October 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
good stuff
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October 1st, 2008 at 5:57 pm
So they got their information wrong, and are working out the problem… how does this lower the bar for game journalists everywhere? You’re saying because they ran an incorrect story/feature, all game journalism is taking a hit? I’m sorry but gamespot is not the be-all-end-all of gaming news out there. If I’m reading your story too deeply, please comment, because I think this article is a crock of shit.
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Mike Kurz reply on October 1st, 2008 6:13 pm:
It doesn’t appear that they got the info wrong, it appears they said one thing and did another. If a large site can be allowed to get away with generating high volumes of traffic based on what is essentially a lie, I’d say that’s lowering the bar. Like I said, if they want to set the record straight, I’m all ears - I’d love to hear their side. At this point, it looks like they mislead everyone - not that they got their information wrong.
Granted, that’s speculation - but it seems to be where the facts are pointing. If that is the case, then yes, it belittles us all. Enthusiast press outlets have to struggle for recognition as proper journalists, as do websites. GS is both, and they’ve been doing some really underhanded stuff throughout the past year.
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UKNOWWHO reply on October 1st, 2008 10:49 pm:
Um, well, their much more succesful than both our sites, and it lowers the bar when one gaming site cant find enough stories so they nitpick another site. Yeah, GS is great, probably the best just under IGN.com, so put your jealousies to good use and maybe give us all a more refined website.
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Mike Kurz reply on October 1st, 2008 11:03 pm:
Here’s the thing: GS is one of the oldest gaming sites around. As such, they should be setting an example for the community at large. In the past year it’s been one ugly mistake after another for them. The dishonesty and shoddy business practices they’re using belittle video game journalism as a whole. If one of the largest video game news sites can’t conduct business in a professional manner, what hope do the rest of us have of being taken seriously?
As for the quality of CYH, we don’t aim to regurgitate the news every other site is posting. That’s not what we’re about. It’s not a lack of stories that prompted this article, but the fact that no one else was writing this article. No one else was drawing attention to GS’s wishy washy explanations of why they weren’t handing out the beta keys, so I wrote this piece. If you don’t like it, that’s fine by me - no skin off my back.
CYH is more heavily focused on editorials / opinion pieces / amusing anecdotal pieces. We’re not just another blog posting the same news everyone else is, and we’re happy with who we are. I’m not saying CYH is the best site on the internet, but we’re honest, and our content is original, so we’re doing what we set out to do, and that’s all I want for this site.
GS may be doing well for themselves, but if they really did lie about the beta codes, it shows that they are prone to dishonesty, and the gaming community deserves to know that. As I’ve said before, I’m willing to accept the possibility that this is a misunderstanding, and if someone from GS wants to talk about it here or anywhere else, I’m all ears. Until then, I’m going to report what’s going on with this story to the best of my abilities.
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October 1st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
This is the biggest bullshit story that I have read in a while, you say GS lowered the bar but you are trying to profit off their misery. What is worse here, what GS did or you trying to feed into the distruction of those involved to raise the traffic at yours. Get a lif you pathetic half assed journalist, you short sighted fucking retard of an errand boy fuck off!
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Mike Kurz reply on October 1st, 2008 8:35 pm:
They did a crummy thing, and I reported on it. It got up on N4G, and it spread around the internet from there. If GS didn’t do anything wrong, there’d be no story to write about. Gamespot brought their troubles on themselves by practicing shoddy business tactics. I just reported on it.
….. given your strong reaction can we assume you work for GS?
I don’t really want to see anything bad happen to, say, Kristin or anyone else involved in On the Spot - if I had to take a guess I’d say they probably had nothing to do with the decision to offer a prize they didn’t have. That’s a marketing decision right there. The journalistic staff at GS has to deal with that bad decision - and you know what/ That sucks. It doesn’t change the fact that the company they work for did a bad thing.
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October 1st, 2008 at 8:45 pm
No you brought into the argument the idea of journalistic integrity, like there was ever such a thing, then you show that you have little to none yourself by reporting the demise of others to further your own career, like I said an errand boy, and no Im not a journalist nor do I work for GS.
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Mike Kurz reply on October 1st, 2008 8:52 pm:
Journalistic integrity comes down to one thing: tell the truth. While we’re on the subject, yes, journalistic integrity does exist. Sure, some of the big blogs make missteps once in a while, and jump the gun on reporting a rumor, but they all issue a correction when they’re wrong.
All I’m doing is reporting the truth. These are the events that unfolded over the past week as I observed them. Nothing less, nothing more. If I’ve gotten anything wrong, I am one hundred percent open to having an unbiased conversation about it with someone from GS so we can get the record set straight. That’s what I want out of this - to set the record straight. When GS offered a prize they didn’t have, they did something dishonest, and people have the right to know when the journalistic outlet they get their gaming news from is prone to lying. After Gerstmanngate, some people were willing to give them a second chance. Here we are just a few short months later faced with another situation where Gamespot lied. If it came into the public light that MSNBC were prone to lying, more people would switch to CNN. This is the same thing, except with video game journalism.
Note: I don’t think MSNBC lies.
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UKNOWWHO reply on October 1st, 2008 10:54 pm:
I am a journalist, for gamealmighty.com (check out the site, i just feel like nitpicking on a 3rd rate website that must disturb a top tier website.) obviously they had a deal, jackass, they made the deal with sony to submitt winners and there must be some technical problem at sony involving giving those beta keys out. THEY OBVIOUSLY CONTACTED SONY PREHANDEDLY AND GOT THE OK TO HOLD SUCH A CONTEST
! woooooopdydo, n4g, noone really cares, mike, eat a dick, seriously
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Mike Kurz reply on October 1st, 2008 11:13 pm:
I’m sure some sort of deal was hammered out ahead of time - I maintain my position that they should have waited until they had the codes. If the terms of the agreement stated that it was OK to give the codes out before they had them in hand, then they should have been up front with the community and said “we’re giving out codes on Sony’s behalf” not “We have thousands of codes to give you!!”. They could have been clear about it from the start, but they weren’t. That’s shady IMO.
If you want to talk about 3rd rate sites, yours isn’t even loading. Maybe your servers can’t handle the traffic you’re drawing to your site by trolling the CYH comments, I dunno, but you might want to look into that with your host.
Not really sure why you’re in such a hurry to defend GS here. They did something shady - whether it was a mistake, or deliberate dishonesty, they messed up somewhere along the line, and they shouldn’t get a pass on it just because they are a large site. Just my two cents.
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October 1st, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Yeah, I was one of the people who entered Thursday’s contest. Thankfully, I got a beta key elsewhere, as many have. But still no E-Mails from Sony OR Gamespot with any info at all! Definitely frustrating.
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October 1st, 2008 at 9:59 pm
GameSpot is BULLSHIT. On their forums where many of us who entered this contest were talking and helping each other out if we ended up getting an extra beta code from one of the REPUTABLE websites contests we entered some of us got BANNED for being nice and giving away our extra beta codes to other people for free! See my below ban email where the state some policy link that says nothing about what they are accusing me of:
MIILUVWII11 wrote:
did 1up.com stop sending the emails or not yet????
kidqwik wrote:
Ok. I’m going to start playing. I’ll bring the laptop with my in the living room and hit refresh on my 1up page every so often. I’ll let u know when it does. Hopefully sometime SOON.
MIILUVWII11 wrote:
thank you soooo much thank you
kidqwik wrote:
You’re welcome. Like I said while I was waiting for the code to show up on 1up, I got an email from Chris Roper with a code from IGN and since I kept seeing your evil Sonic face all over the place here I’m giving you the code. If you get a code before 1up shows up with theirs please let me know with a msg on the PS3. Also if you don’t get one 2nite and I give you the 1up one you have to PROMISE to give any extra codes you may get after you get the code from me to others who have been suffering all these days like we have.. Deal?
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October 1st, 2008 at 10:00 pm
kidqwik
Level 3
Mediator
Posts: 24 Sep 30, 2008 7:16 pm GMT
[This message was deleted at the request of a moderator or administrator]
Edited Oct 1, 2008 11:40 am GMT Edited total 1 times.
Moderation Log
Regarding user suspended(375)
PM #31423097
Successfully took action (Delete Msg) on 2008-10-01 11:40:31(gmt)
Moderation ResultsReason:
Moderator Discretion — Do not ask for beta codes here
Action taken (item)Delete Msg
Action taken (user)Suspend User for 1 days
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October 1st, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Grow up. . . this article was uncalled for. What are you like 14?
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Mike Kurz reply on October 1st, 2008 11:26 pm:
Sorry you feel that way - care to elaborate?
See, I think it’s only fair for gamers to know when one of the largest online video game news outlets may be using some shady marketing tactics. Dishonesty is a terrible trait in a journalistic outlet, and the events that have taken place seem to imply that GS was less than honest with the community. Now, as I’ve said before, if GS makes a public statement explaining the situation and clearing up this mess, I’ll update this post accordingly. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it, but the bottom line is that when a large news outlet gets caught with their pants down, it’s news, and I treated it as such.
If you care to provide a counter point instead of throwing around insults, I’m all ears. Exactly why is this post uncalled for? Should GS get a pass on stuff like this because they’re a bigger site? They should just be able to do and say whatever they feel like? If you feel that way, explain it.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 4:38 am
Wow what a lot of stick for reporting something! Good on you Mike, keep it up
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October 2nd, 2008 at 6:42 am
What’s wrong with reporting on this? Nothing. If a large site like GameSpot get away with this kind of thing it definitely should be followed up and reported on.
Do newspapers and other sites only report on the jolly things in life, or do they criticise and inspect others for what they have done? The answer is obvious.
Criticising Mike for writing about this is childish, just because GS is a big site doesn’t make it immune to mistakes and lies, in my opinion small sites are often much more truthful than the behemoths in the industry, as they still need to build up a reputation which they don’t want tarnished early on.
At the end of the day, it’s an article simply reporting on something that should have been reported on. Letting GS get away with something like this doesn’t exactly set a good example for other sites to follow.
Lucca
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October 2nd, 2008 at 7:30 am
I don’t know why your getting so much flak for this article, I thought it was well thought out and written very well. The people that resort to insults instead of stating a counterpoint are the childish ones. Without reporters like you the public would never know the truth. Just remember big brother is watching.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 am
Great article Mike. Looks like Gamesalmighty.com just lost a reader……Me.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Good article, someone should call GS out on their bullshit.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Ignore all the negative posts Mike, I joined gamespot specifically to get a key and I even paid a subscription to them just incase that was one of the requirements. Stories like this deserve to be published so people like me and any other paying member can see how shady the company really is.
Thank you.
P.S Did you try to contact sony to have them confirm they are indeed sending keys? We have a right to the truth and a right to know!
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Mike Kurz reply on October 2nd, 2008 3:40 pm:
Our site’s not that big - Sony doesn’t really talk to us about stuff, but I’m hoping now that we’ve stirred this up someone from either GS or Sony will step up and say something about what’s going on here to clarify things for the community.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Update: This way very well be a rumour but people on that thread at GS claim to have recieved keys and they came from Kristin.
Link:
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=26607564&page=57
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