Valve gives you access to a game and tells you not to spew your mouth off. A gentleman’s agreement if you will.
You spew your mouth off and valve takes access away.
shocked pikachu face
This is a non-issue of you ask me. A person, who happens to be a writer, got access to the game through a steam friend and was asked not to talk about it but thought they could just not agree to a warning and write about it anyway? I got access too and i didnt write about the game. I get to go back and play it today, they cant.
So what. They already have their article and it will be out anyways within like two years latest probably. The value of talking about deadlock is much higher and valve profits from this advertising as well.
The so what is that this writer for the verge will likely never be trusted with NDA type pre-release access for any other games going forward, and this may even impact all of the Verge.
This isn’t just a one and done kind of issue, this will be seen by the entire industry as a “can’t trust that guy with pre-release access”
The Verge isn’t pulling the article and they are currently backing their journo. The whole site is blacklisted at this point.
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They didn’t get an NDA.
Sure they don’t have any trust from the industry anymore.
It doesn’t have to be a legal document for there to be consequences.
The rest of the industry uses embargo agreements with mutual consent if they have private information. This doesn’t change anything for other game companies, unless they also want to do private-but-not-private beta tests.
Sure, and they proved that they won’t respect valves wishes unless legally required to do so. Valve is now in a position where if they want to do future play tests they will have to manage NDAs for everyone which is probably more trouble than it’s worth. The general population is now less likely to get an opportunity like this because the verge wanted to get some easy clicks. It’s pathetic of them to sell us out like this.
Except this is a game industry reputation ruined. It isn’t just valve, why would any dev ever give the verge access again knowing that they will not only disrespect your requests but bitch and moan if you hold them to it.
It’s a full rep killer. They will never have early access again for any company.
That’s not how this works. The Verge didn’t break an NDA or embargo because they didn’t get either of those things. Valve allows random people to invite other random people to play, with just a “pretty please don’t talk about this game” warning. There was already people talking about it online and leaked footage.
They didn’t break any laws, they broke trust. Random people can leak all they want, they don’t have institutional standing and respect. If what you said was true then it’d be pretty weird that every other institutional news, even gaming focused ones, have honored that request. Because doing otherwise is a dick move that kills your reputation, and the gaming industry is legendary for blacklisting for far less disrespectful moves. Downright petty with it.
even if it doesn’t, they lose consumer respect as well, I personally won’t engage verge anymore because as someone who wants to go into the development trade, it puts a bad taste of any platform to blatantly disrespect a creators wishes like that.
If Valve wants to be shitty about it, that’s within their right (unless they want to sue, which would be difficult to defend in court without a written legal agreement). It is also true that other outlets are free to do handshake agreements to not cover the game. The Verge didn’t break any rules, and Valve already maintains a minimal relationship with the press, so not talking to The Verge probably wouldn’t change anything.
I see you subscribe to the moral theory of “I didn’t click okay, I hit escape”.
Oh you have access? You got any spare referals? Asking for a friend with the friend code 998621885
I’m sort of confused about why Valve even care that much. Surely they know that “leaks” are the best way to build hype for a game.
Although Valve are making a game again, so I’m not sure how much hype they really need.
Closed playtests are usually with very in-development builds. People post the barely functioning game to social media and the game gets bad press. Release day rolls around and no one buys it because “that was that one game that looked bad a while ago”
This seems like a stupid train of thought but a lot of people think like this
Others have pointed out the concerns around negative reviews of things still subject to change, but the other aspect is just the relations with media.
I’m sure tons of journalists have been playing. And probably even working on content covering the game, but not publishing it yet. Once valve is ready for coverage they’ll have polished content ready. And valve can control the timing so that coverage happens right when they want the hype like maybe a few days before an open beta.
By covering it early you encourage other journalists to do the same, rushing out low quality content to get the views before others do. And for valve to not let any journalists see the game early to avoid this.
The biggest thing would be that a game under playtest is likely to undergo drastic balance changes and potentially even changes to core gameplay, a review of a game in that early of a state would likely not reflect the finished product, and is unlikely to be updated or taken down when the game is released, this possibly poisoning public opinion with content that doesn’t reflect the actual game.
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I can’t believe their secret game they gave to 10 thousand people got leaked
I think the thing everyone is forgetting is that valve isn’t stupid, there’s no way they didn’t realize you could work around accepting the (legally unenforcable) NDA, and it’s open invite.
Valve 100% knows that keeping it “secret” is good for hype and was expecting this to happen at any time, and the nominal ban was expected, but nobody is gonna get sued either.
More people are talking about Valve’s “secret” new game because of this than would be if they openly announced it.
Yeah exactly. It’s quite likely they didn’t really blacklist The Verge anyways, just won’t send them invites any more for this particular game. Best kind of marketing is hype marketing, and this is how you fuel the hype.
Yep, tech and game companies use invite-only systems to generate hype constantly. Bluesky is another recent example.
What was so secret about it?
So apparently they had a bit asking players to not share info about the game, but you could technically back out of it without agreeing so legally they can post whatever they want. It feels like a case of “this is legal to do but maybe kinda shitty and valve might be upset”. Basically the agreement was informal and not enforceable and the verge just said fuck it. They did get banned afterwards, but I think that and not working with them in the future is all valve can do.
Edit: didn’t even require agreement, so honestly it’s kinda fair game. I was a bit hostile calling it shitty, I felt like it was a loophole or something but it’s more Valve just saying “hey pls don’t” and the verge replying “no thanks”, and eating the game ban since that’s all valve can really do.
There isn’t even an informal agreement. It simply says not to share anything. Not even “by playing this, you agree not to share anything”. It’s just “please don’t share anything” without any action required by your side.
Yeah, gaylord_fartmaster let me know. I thought the message was one of those “scroll down and click agree on this eula” things but its just a pop up box, so it’s def not enforceable.
Nobody is saying it’s enforceable. It’s just a shitty thing to do when someone shows you something in confidence, asks not to share it, and you publish an entire news article about it. It’s just a dick move. Obviously nothing illegal about it.
Valve got burned many ages ago with Half-Life 2 and they only go to press about a game when it’s in the final phases of development, to release.
Bullshit. The actual reason will be that this is far better marketing once you’re at a level of Valve. Shit gets leaked anyways, might as well make it intentionally so to fuel the hype cycle.
Clickbait title. I can’t find any justification for calling a player being banned as The Verge “under fire”.
It’s just bad faith reporting. It reminds me of Kotaku sneaking into conventions before they opened to report what games were there.
It lowers my opinion of The Verge, I used to think they were at least reputable with standards, but that’s a real tabloid move.
they were at least reputable with standards
I think you must be talking about a different website?
They literally included a screenshot of valve asking to not share information about the game with a little quip about how they pressed escape instead of ok. Blantant disrespect to valves wishes even if it’s not a legally binding agreement.
They chose getting clicks over doing right by valve. Shame on them.
I used to think they were reputable until they came out with that PC building video
LTT posted a do-over video with Stefan. He seems like a decent guy. Have followed him since then. https://youtu.be/QKzmYsySGFQ?si=AlEpsycL5ifF3RxD
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20,000 people are playing it at a time. Not exactly a secret. The way they’re testing this game is radical and newsworthy in itself. I’m glad Verge reported on it, and they don’t seem mad they they were banned
The verge has been paid advertising disguised as tech news for decades now. Arstechnica too.
Isn’t it like just over ten years old?
Why wouldn’t they just put journalists they gave access to under embargo?
It’s not clear if he actually got access from Valve or from a friend or someone else. The article simply states
Earlier today, I received a no-strings-attached invite to play Deadlock on Steam.
Ok - but they all originate from Valve, right? They couldn’t just put it behind a paywall or “NDA”wall?
From my understanding users of the beta can then invite others to join as well, Valve isn’t necessarily directly choosing who has access. So if Valve didn’t send the invite themselves they wouldn’t know to specifically put someone under a more strict NDA or whatnot because they’re a journalist. Could they have done more to restrict all users from sharing information? Yes, since apparently you just have to hit escape to bypass the agreement pop up, and there’s no other sort of NDA or contract or w/e in place upon joining.
I’m just speculating, but I think they chose not to do that so people could openly get their friends playing with them instead of going through waves of sign ups and hoping to get in together, or otherwise risk people losing interest when they can only play with randos. I could also see a line of thinking where you assume people want to talk about the game, so let them bring others in to play with them and that gives them someone to talk to about it too instead of just spilling the beans for randos on the internet.
That’s all I’m saying. Valve is the gatekeeper and left the gate wide open. They blew it and they’re looking for someone else to blame.
Valve fucked up but the Verge still broke the social contract regardless of whether they’re legally in the clear or not.
Doing something just because “it’s legal” doesn’t make it a moral justification. My wife and I have a joint bank account. It is legal for me to take money from it and gamble it all away, the gate is “open” but that doesn’t make it morally justifiable.
Meh, I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with what he did. What he did wasn’t just legal, it’s literally his job. The only issue is that Valve is now angry at him for their own failing.
To continue the same analogy, they didn’t just leave the gate open, they literally invited a bunch of people and told them to invite other people. I’m not sure what they expected if not this exact situation.
Valve isn’t really angry as far as I can tell, or have heard. They’re about as angry as any other person which goes and posts this stuff online: revoking access. If Valve wanted to expand their testing userbase without people leaking it online, they would have sought NDAs and other legally-binding agreements with testers and - by extension - journalists who can test the game.
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The social contract exists always. It isn’t a paper contract but a societal consensus about what constitutes acceptable behavior. Gambling joint money without agreement is not socially acceptable behavior. Bypassing a eula/nda for a beta version of a thing and then spreading the info just because you’re legally in the clear is not societally acceptable behavior. It doesn’t matter that it shouldn’t have been so easy to do so or that they won’t face legal consequences.
At the end of the day, the editors will have to answer to not receiving access to Valve for statements or tips moving forward.
Honestly I don’t think valve is as mad as you would think
Valve barely talks to press anyways, in a very similar fashion as Apple. At worst, maybe The Verge won’t get a Steam Deck 2 review unit ahead of time or something.
Too bad the game itself doesn’t sound very interesting.
Oh but it is very very fun. Addicting even. Full time job and business owner and in the last 5 weeks I’ve logged 125hrs.
125 hours already?! No wonder I sometimes play against people that feel like they’ve been playing it their entire life.
I have a lot of dota experience too and a lot of the abilities and stuff carry over.
Domt worry about being bad if you’re having fun stick with it and you’ll improve.
It’s a MOBA at heart. I don’t like MOBAs, so I couldn’t stick with it.
And at the end of the day…it’s just an ok game.
Have you tried it? Genuine question, since we’re free to talk about it I’d love to hear why you think it’s mediocre, so far all the talk is always hype so I’m eager for some less positive takes.
Preface that it is an early alpha build and everything can change.
Yes, I have played it. It is literally just a moba. It feels like they took Dota and slapped 5% of an fps to it. The matches can be way too long, and it suffers from the snowballing effect that if you don’t get a good start, it is really hard to be effective. If you are 10 mins in a match and getting outplayed, you probably arent going to enjoy the remaining 20-30 mins. If you took Dota and modded it with 1st person controls, you’d be almost there with this game.
There is some good. The vertical elements do help, and the jungle aspects, along with destroyables, do help somewhat to make up lost ground in your build. The art design is pretty good for being alpha, and I do enjoy the map. There are lots of crisscross paths and hidden areas. There are also some map mechanics that are fresh, like 1 way viewable smoke screens.
If you don’t like mobas, I’d almost guarantee you won’t like this. It’s not a new, genre defining experience, and it doesn’t pull enough fps features to make it different. 4/10 as it sits.
Oh interesting, so it’s not at all like early Overwatch 1 which was way more FPS and was only compared to a MOBA because of the comparatively mild focus on abilities?
That’s both good and bad to hear, but yeah, sounds like overall it has a long long way to go.
I’ve only had the chance to play a handful of matches but I can echo those sentiments so far, I think. Another disclaimer though is that I’ve only played random matchmaking, not any premade stacks or squads.
The resource battle sets the gameplay experience apart from stuff like Overwatch or TF2 - and not really in a good way (so far). It does get very snowbally, but if it’s intended to be a team-oriented game like Dota it’s possible I’m not seeing all the intended catch-up mechanics. It does seem like whichever team gets the best start just wins on stats, which makes the quality of matchmaking impact your fun a LOT. Uneven teams lead to very boring matches. I’ve also run into the classic Dota problem of “finish plz” - where a dominant team farms kills outside your base instead of finishing the game.
All aspects of the game are clearly alpha though - and there is potential here. Like highlighted the map is great and I think the hero designs are good (both visually and mechanically). With both four abilities and four slots for active items the game looks to be making its niche complexity and high skill ceiling - much like Dota (unsurprising given Icefrog is designing this).
I also think the MOBA aspect of pushing and farming isn’t necessarily a bad concept as it does introduce a bunch of micro-objectives which drive player movements and create emergent gameplay. It just needs better balancing I think.
I have 125hrs and it’s amazing fun, has a high skill ceiling, isn’t an overwatch clone or anything remotely like that game.
It’s a moba first third person shooter second. Basically dota with guns, or (a better) smite with a y axis (flying around, climbing, high spots, low spots) and guns.
Is Dota 2 with some shooter mechanics. If you like Dota 2 you probably like it, if you prefer a moba like LoL maybe you’ll not like it.
I played a couple of matches and to me the match go for too long.
Wait, why would a league player not like it?
They would don’t listen to this person
LOL, ok…
Have you played it? I have. I like LoL, I like deadlock.
Have you played it?
Yes
I played a couple of matches and to me the match go for too long.
And I said:
maybe you’ll not like it.
If you like dota2 and LoL ok, if you like dota2 ok, if you like LoL and don’t like dota2(like most league players) I find really difficult to like deadlock.
I played league since s2 and a played some Dota2(+80hrish), the things that I don’t like in dota2 is present on deadlock, for example, like I said before, the length of the matches is too long for me.
Because is played more like dota 2 than league and so far as I know league players don’t like much how dota 2 is played.
“Leaked”.
All leaks are deliberately orchestrated to fan the hype train.
Lol no definitely not all
Eh. I find it difficult to have any sympathy for Valve. Sounds like it was only a matter of time before someone did this. If anything this is just free marketing.
