Bizarre: TrustedReviews Pulls Website Reporting on 'Red Dead' Leak, Pays More Than A Million To Charities Of Rockstar's Choice
from the whuh? dept
When it comes to the private sector, it's not rare thing to see lawsuits over press leaks. Typically, those lawsuits target the person or entity responsible for the leak itself. While the real irritation in these leaks for companies comes from seeing them reported in the press, suing the press for reporting on a leak is fraught with statutory barriers.
Which is what makes it so odd to discover that TrustedReviews, a website that publishes news and reviews in the video game industry, disappeared an article it posted months ago discussing leaked information on the now released Red Dead Redemption 2. Oh, and it agreed to pay over a million dollars to charities of Rockstar's choice.
The British website TrustedReviews today pulled an article, apologized to publisher Take-Two Games, and said it was donating 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) to charity after publishing leaked information about Red Dead Redemption 2 in February of this year. It’s a radical move that raises serious questions about editorial independence and legal threats against the press.
TrustedReviews, which is owned by TI Media (formerly Time Inc, UK), is a technology website that publishes deals and reviews. In February, it published an article, sourcing a leaked internal Rockstar document, that listed details from Red Dead Redemption 2, which would come out eight months later. The article contained a list of bullet-points that claimed, among other things, that you’d be able to play all of Red Dead 2 in first-person (true) and that the online component would have a battle royale mode (to be determined).
Reporting on leaks of this sort is common, of course, particularly in the entertainment industries. While content companies have attempted to sue over everything from leaks to publishing spoilers, these threats and suits rarely go anywhere. If press freedoms in a given country are at all a thing, reporting from confidential sources on leaks is almost always included. The UK has its "State Secrets" nonsense, but that doesn't apply here.
Which makes all of this bizarre. Adding to the whole thing is TrustedReviews bending over backwards to fully apologize publicly, not in any way lamenting this outcome.
“On February 6, 2018, we published an article that was sourced from a confidential corporate document,” the website now reads. “We should have known this information was confidential and should not have published it. We unreservedly apologise to Take-Two Games and we have undertaken not to repeat such actions again. We have also agreed to donate over £1 million to charities chosen by Take-Two Games.”
Nothing about this makes sense, unless TrustedReviews was somehow involved in the leak itself, rather than simply reporting on it. There is nothing publicly suggesting that is the case, so we're instead left to assume that the site simply didn't want to engage in a costly lawsuit brought by Rockstar, who we have to assume threatened one. On the other hand, a $1.3 million payout isn't exactly peanuts either.
Frustratingly, everyone appears to be in the dark here. If only another press outlet could obtain a leak of what exactly the hell is going on here, we might get some clarity.
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Filed Under: fines, free speech, leaks, red dead redemption 2, reviews, uk
Companies: take-two games, trustedreviews
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it is odd.
But the apologies and money do seem to suggest they did something nefarious, maybe not illegal but questionable ethically.
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Gaming journalism magazines and websites have been receiving similar threats for years and years. One of my favorite examples is classic gaming magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly, which received two separate “we will pull our ads” threats from publishers as retaliation for low review scores (Acclaim for Total Recall [NES], Capcom for Super Street Fighter II [SNES]). To its credit, the EGM editor-in-chief let the companies pull their ads to send a message: “You can’t buy a good review from us.”
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Don't TrustedReviews get all the benefit of this donation? Take-Two chooses the charity, but that wouldn't entitle them to any tax credits, and unless they're running a charity-scam they don't get any of that money; whereas TR presumably get tax credit for the donation.
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How dare you do your job and ruin our surprise!
As if I really needed another reason not to touch that game with a ten-foot pole...
Threatening journalists for doing their gorram jobs, as though said journalists owe the publishers anything like that. Well, guess I've got two more companies to add to the 'Avoid if at all possible' list.
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Why? Future earned trust.
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Re: Why? Future earned trust.
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NotSoTrustedReviews
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But only for a little while, then that explanation would itself be memory-holed.
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