What is the timeframe in the contract? The quotes only show a tiny excerpt of the whole contract.
I don’t see anything unreasonable about this if the terms expire when the game releases or the review embargo lifts. Reviewers can’t review pre-release copies of games until the embargo lifts.
If the non disparagement clause remains in effect after release, that’s very bad. Impossible to tell which it is from the tiny excerpt provided.
I’ll tell anyone who will listen not to buy a car thats been developed on a new platform for at least 3 years to give them time to find faults in the design in real world conditions. If your playtesting or in early access you are literally playing a prototype, a bunch of content creators spouting off about how its a buggy mess could put a stink on the whole project that people will remember even if its perfectly polished by launch.
While I agree in principle you will never catch 100% of the bugs pre-launch, has there ever been a game that didnt need at least a few patches in the last 20 years?
Id be keen to read the exact wording of the clause “Dont say anything negative” and “dont say anything negative without talking to us first” are very different statements. I can understand the devs wanting a chance to say “Yep, we know about that and it will be fixed pre-launch” or “Ill put in a ticket to get that looked at ASAP” to the playtesters before they trash the game publicly.
So, even at full release, there could be bugs. That makes the suppression of actual opinions worse. If people didn’t call out unfinished projects, they would not get fixed. If they want preorders, stop making buggy mess games.
If its ready to play, just release it, what’s the point of a playtest if not to test it. Yeah there’s the publicity too, but are we going to pretend that it can’t do both.
Employees do testing, already covered by an NDA. Content creators do publicity. If they are restricted to no negative publicity, then they are not reliable and it’s dishonest.
Playtests typically involves a full on NDA for this reason. If your playtest is aimed at creators that are allowed to stream it’s not a playtest, it’s a marketing exercise.
The content creators should work together to make a single bland “it’s fun 😶” video that all of them post. It would technically comply with the restriction.
Didn’t they say that a PSN account won’t be required for the single player content? Seems kinda like they’re getting ready to shoot themselves in the foot again.
“Check out the confirmed list of countries that are technically restricted from purchasing the game due to its PSN account requirement (these countries officially isn’t supported by PSN).”
I thought they came out and specifically said it didn’t have these requirements after the helldivers stuff.
edit: I see it’s for the multiplayer sections and I do recall the prior announcements being about no PSN required for single player.
If true, why? They had the formula for the game they wanted in BC2, BF3 and BF4. They should have spent time studying what people liked about them games not asking streamers what they think. Oh and let me tell you, removing the class system was not the correct play, but it's a fucked up microtransaction world now, so it was never going to succeed.
I think the counter arguments from the reddit threads are pretty big points.
Good Battlefield plays like something different than the other major offerings. BF2, BC2 and BF4 are all modern military shooters but they “feel” way different than a CoD or Counterstrike or anything else.
The scale is important but so is the struggle of a tight pitched rush push with limited tickets left. Sure, a good pilot is a pain in the ass, but it’s part of what makes Battlefield work. Same with tanks. Man, Golmud and the fucking tanks…
Anyways, just because someone is paid to do something doesn’t mean they’re an expert in all the relative disciplines. I don’t really follow any streamers, but I do work in a pretty specialized industry and know that just because a peer and I are technically in the same field, what we bring to the table, how we approach problems and the way we implement solutions can be wildly different.
Don’t ask him the best strats for Quake 3 and don’t ask me anything about Counterstrike. Otherwise, you’ll be sadly disappointed and end up with a worse experience overall.
I’d like to believe Dice made the best call here, despite what a shit show BF2042’s launch was (even if basically every BF launch from 3 on has been fucked). They set the standard for rough launches years ago and yet every new release comes with doomsayers predicting the studio being closed and the game dying. Yet the reality is, they almost always, eventually get their shit together and patch things up to the way it should of been at launch. Just like most other major devs at this point.
If what you say is true, best case scenario, that suggests DICE has no idea who has the necessary expertise which is bad in its own right. Like… if someone paid 60 people to help design something/offer their two cents and then turns around and ignores every single one of them with the rationale that they dont have the expertise needed, that person’s judgement is still shit because by their own standards theyre terrible at recognizing who actually has the necessary skill set.
That’s assuming the person paying and the person receiving the input are the same people. Which in larger companies they most certainly are not.
Some manager or top-level “franchise designer” had the brilliant idea of asking streamers (of all utterly unsuited people!) for advise. Someone in the actual dev team then got all the input, and promptly decided that just asking a magic 8 ball would be far more useful and binned it. Sadly they did end up asking said ball, but eh, at least they ignored the streamer advise.
It not being the same 8 ball that Bushnell and those Atari guys consulted back in the day may be the greatest failure.
But in all honesty, I think that’s a great analogy. There’s no harm in bringing in competent consultation, but you have to choose wisely. This is more akin to a movie screening. It just so happened to be a test audience that has traditional been compensated for their opinions…
If they were to do that, and have cross platform purchases/saves (provided I could make it work reasonably on Linux), I would be way more likely to think about buying games from them.
The PS5 is a nice piece of hardware. You can do a lot of stuff better on PC, but the loading tech is still legit. But I'm not buying multi platform games on PS5 over Steam for a bunch of reasons (steam deck being the biggest, steam input being another, just generally the fact that my PC gives me a lot more future options and modding potential).
Even if they did the UWP locked file shit, being able to bring games from PS5 to Steam Deck to desktop would make them pretty competitive. And I'd start using them regardless for the library I already have.
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