Pitchford Compares Borderlands 2 Leak with News of the World Phone Hacking
Time for some perspective all round.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has used Twitter to compare the leak of an announcement about the inevitable release of Borderlands 2 to phone hacking.
Pitchford's comments came last night following a Eurogamer story that stated that the sequel to 2009 Borderlands (reviewed here) would be released in 2012.
The story hit the day before the official press release hit.
This lead to Pitchford to state that, "I have long maintained that we will do more with Borderlands. Shoddy journalism is not an announcement."
The 'shoddy journalism' comment was met with a general feeling of surprise among the blogging, PR and journalistic community. This lead Mr Pitchford to up the critical ante via Twitter.
Rather than accepting that a press release - and probable agreed exclusive reveal with a bigger games outlet in the USA - of a sequel that was widely expected had been released early, he stated the following:
"But, well... News of the World - that's where uncouth journalistic practices lead us. You are better than that!" he said in an online debate with Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica, which had run its own critique of the Gearbox reaction.
And it didn't stop there, in fact Mr Pitchford took the notion of a game announcement getting out a day early via what he called a broken Non Disclosure Agreement (usually a pseudo legal document enforcing an honour system) to the same status as illegal phone hacking.
He tweeted,"The point: Where's the line? If it's broken NDA's or cell phone hacking, the intent and cost to integrity is real."
The line is, of course, that as far as we understand EG broke no NDA. If any NDA was broken it was by someone close to the Gearbox or 2K organisations who then spoke to someone within the games media on the record.
The bigger issue here appears to be that a game developer - no matter how respected - should compare the release of a video game announcement via a broken internal NDA to the hacking of a murdered teenager's telephone and possible police corruption.
It either highlights a literally awesome lack of perspective on the part of one man or that there is a wider perception that the games media should merely be part of the marketing department.
What's your opinion? What kind of gaming press do you want? Was Mr Pitchford correct? Tell us in the comments below.
Pitchford's comments came last night following a Eurogamer story that stated that the sequel to 2009 Borderlands (reviewed here) would be released in 2012.
The story hit the day before the official press release hit.
This lead to Pitchford to state that, "I have long maintained that we will do more with Borderlands. Shoddy journalism is not an announcement."
The 'shoddy journalism' comment was met with a general feeling of surprise among the blogging, PR and journalistic community. This lead Mr Pitchford to up the critical ante via Twitter.
Rather than accepting that a press release - and probable agreed exclusive reveal with a bigger games outlet in the USA - of a sequel that was widely expected had been released early, he stated the following:
"But, well... News of the World - that's where uncouth journalistic practices lead us. You are better than that!" he said in an online debate with Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica, which had run its own critique of the Gearbox reaction.
And it didn't stop there, in fact Mr Pitchford took the notion of a game announcement getting out a day early via what he called a broken Non Disclosure Agreement (usually a pseudo legal document enforcing an honour system) to the same status as illegal phone hacking.
He tweeted,"The point: Where's the line? If it's broken NDA's or cell phone hacking, the intent and cost to integrity is real."
The line is, of course, that as far as we understand EG broke no NDA. If any NDA was broken it was by someone close to the Gearbox or 2K organisations who then spoke to someone within the games media on the record.
The bigger issue here appears to be that a game developer - no matter how respected - should compare the release of a video game announcement via a broken internal NDA to the hacking of a murdered teenager's telephone and possible police corruption.
It either highlights a literally awesome lack of perspective on the part of one man or that there is a wider perception that the games media should merely be part of the marketing department.
What's your opinion? What kind of gaming press do you want? Was Mr Pitchford correct? Tell us in the comments below.
Companies:
Gearbox
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