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Recent Assassin's Creed Amazon leak was purposefully fake to show the rampant amateurism in videogames journalism

Lelouch0612

Lelouch0612

Member
Oct 25, 2017
21,200
A few days ago, we had all these big sites covering the news about a listing for AC and its Valhalla Edition appearing on Amazon Germany. Truth is, it was a fake, made in order to disclose the low level of profesionalism from several videogames outlets :





- The screen has been reused by about 50 videogames outlets around the world. None of which sourced their article !
- They didn't contact Amazon either to know if the listing was even real in the first place (it was not)
- A simple Google reverse image would have given the original tweet.



- At the opposite end of the spectrum, a small amateur outlet, XboxSquad, handled by passionates has been able to show that the listing was not correct. How ironic !
- Overall, he states that this story shows how most outlets are only interested in your clicks and not delivering information.

Really eye-opening in various aspects and makes you wonder how to properly incentivize reliable informations and punish unreliable media outlets (the fact that NintendoSoup is still sourced by other media outlets is beyond me for example).
 
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lowhighkang_LHK

lowhighkang_LHK

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Oct 25, 2017
5,876
Las Vegas
It seems some outlets are simply using twitter / reddit / or forums like resetera as a news source. Ultimately making your average resetera poster the start and end of this industry's reporting, and that's not a good look. Especially if said news is controversial and unverified. That's giving a lot of leverage and power to those who don't deserve it.
 
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Vinc

Vinc

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Oct 25, 2017
7,387
There's so little money to be made in actual games journalism, yet so many people that want to do it for basically no money, that it creates this situation where the quality is dilluted, and only a few reputable sources actually exist among the sea of fan sites and amateur blogs posing as authorities on video game information.
 

c bweezie

Member
Jan 8, 2020
717
I don't recall "big sites" running stories a few days ago specific to the pictured listing. But that's super interesting. Have any links?
 
Absoludacrous

Absoludacrous

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Oct 26, 2017
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That's the state of the world in 2020. You have to be fast or twitter and the other sites will take all of your eyes and money. It's basically devolved into report first ask questions later.

Sucks, but journalists saw it coming a decade ago and lamented it the entire time. There just isn't a good way to fix it.
 
rebelcrusader

rebelcrusader

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Oct 25, 2017
1,833
VIdeo gaming journalism has always been a joke

Also these kinds of leaks are like feeding chum to sharks - they can't help but bite
 

Espio

Member
Nov 9, 2017
37
Adding to the cynicism. Games Radar and Metro UK covered it... that's about it? It was clearly shady when I looked into it.
 
Lukar

Lukar

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Oct 27, 2017
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Today's episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily didn't age well.
 
AndyD

AndyD

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Oct 27, 2017
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lowhighkang_LHK said:
It seems a lot of outlets are simply using twitter / reddit / or forums like resetera as a news source. Ultimately making your average resetera poster the start and end of this industry's reporting, and that's not a good look.
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I mean sometimes I hear about stuff here before anywhere else. It's not surpsing reporters/media watch forums like this for insiders spilling some beans.
 

Deleted member 2229

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I mean...yeah?. Same shit has been going on for the past how ever many months with Elden Ring. A lot of journalists reporting on anything and everything that comes out of Reddit or 4chan while failing to source where they got said information or conclusions from. Then since it comes from a "legitimate" news outlet, people then take what they say as fact.

Elden Ring isn't a fucking norse game
 
Jessie

Jessie

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Oct 27, 2017
9,921
One time I made a fake Suicide Squad leak as a joke and it ended up being cited by mainstream news lmao.
 
Geek

Geek

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Nov 8, 2017
204
Damn, decimating my journalistic faith in the big websites [squints] uuuuuuuhhh Geeko and XboxSquad
 
Damn Silly

Damn Silly

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Oct 25, 2017
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I mean, it'd be helpful to know if any big/reputable sites reported on it.

From personal experience, I didn't see any.
 
Morrigan

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Oct 24, 2017
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c bweezie said:
I don't recall "big sites" running stories a few days ago specific to the pictured listing. But that's super interesting. Have any links?
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Geek said:
Damn, decimating my journalistic faith in the big websites [squints] uuuuuuuhhh Geeko and XboxSquad
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Damn Silly said:
I mean, it'd be helpful to know if any big/reputable sites reported on it.

From personal experience, I didn't see any.
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Well:
MegaXZero said:
My quick google search gave me this IGN article referencing the amazon listing.
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There's also Gamesradar, Metro UK, Gameblog, and Jeuxvideo.com. Those aren't small indie nobodies.

Edit: also Geek FYI, XboxSquad is an example of a good one, they actually did the research and saw it as a fake haha. Maybe that wasn't clear from the tweets if you aren't a French speaker, but yeah.
 
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salromano

salromano

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Oct 25, 2017
2,924
Septy said:
This has been happening for a while. Remember when Modern Warfare 2 Remastered got 'listed'?
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Are you referring to the PEGI listing of "Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered"? Because I'm the one that found that, it was actually listed. Nothing ever came out of it though.
 
LewieP

LewieP

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Oct 26, 2017
18,093
I feel less bad about sites that reported on it with a secondary source (ie citing IGN), since it's not unreasonable to have some degree of assumption that the other site has verified it, and a lot of reporting of rumours and leaks has a undercurrent of "we know this but are NDA'd or have another source we don't want to go public with, but now this has been leaked we can talk about the leak", but really everyone should be doing their due diligence.

Games is no different than other types of journalism though.

Publications that did not get duped will not get any credit. Sites that did get duped probably also do other good reporting.

If someone has a problem with how a publication reports on stuff, they should read and support other publications that they like.

Hard to get too mad at any individual when it's a system problem. Lots of people get in positions where they're making these judgement calls without really having been trained on how to best navigate them, and with pressure to deliver work to a tight deadline.
 
OP
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Lelouch0612

Lelouch0612

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Oct 25, 2017
21,200
c bweezie said:
I don't recall "big sites" running stories a few days ago specific to the pictured listing. But that's super interesting. Have any links?
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Biggest Videogame sites in France Jeuxvideo.com has even deleted the news :
Screencap :
EN2hpMXWAAAnDCC


The Sixth axis : https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/01/09/assassins-creed-ragnarok-amazon-gamestop-listings/

Trustedrviews : https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/assassins-creed-ragnarok-appears-now-deleted-retailer-listing-

Big Italian website, multiplayer.it :
EN2hn7HWoAIhcpz
 
aerie

aerie

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Oct 25, 2017
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If you work in video games journalism, you have X amount of time to produce Y content, and generally for a shit salary. That doesn't excuse journalistic integrity, but for something as trivial as a leaked games listing, I'm really not going to be put off by it.

Now for as trivial as this is, I'm far more questionable of the motivations behind the people who did this, and some claims they've made (they are rather broad, though perhaps a translation issue). As to me, all I see is this fuelling the people who want to denounce today's games press because they dared to start occasionally discussing social and minority issues while covering gaming.
 

Deleted member 1003

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Most VG "news" jump on the smallest details with nary a source or credit, just see a tweet or forum post and BOOM news.
 
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Lelouch0612

Lelouch0612

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Oct 25, 2017
21,200
The Woods said:
If you work in video games journalism, you have X amount of time to produce Y content, and generally for a shit salary. That doesn't excuse journalistic integrity, but for something as trivial as a leaked games listing, I'm really not going to be put off by it.

Now for as trivial as this is, I'm far more questionable of the motivations behind the people who did this, and some claims they've made (they are rather broad, though perhaps a translation issue), as to me, all I see is this giving ammunition to people who want to denounce today's games press because they dared to start occasionally discussing social and minority issues while covering gaming.
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You noticed that at the end of the OP, I put the debate on how to incentivize good journalism work. Today there are not a lot of incentives to go the extra mile and the rising number of outlets is making speed more valuable than reliability sadly.
 

c bweezie

Member
Jan 8, 2020
717
I wasn't quoting "big sites" to suggest there weren't any. I was adding emphasis to what i was looking for clarity on. The original post linked the french tweets; it'd be helpful if it also linked one example of an offending big site.

It's also unclear to me that IGN was citing the Amazon leak. It links to a 4chan leak that, at a glance, appears unrelated to the Amazon listing? Who knows. either way...

Thanks for Googling that for me. And with that information - yeah that's sad that ostensibly reputable outlets are failing even basic due diligence.
 
GUNDAM STARDUST

GUNDAM STARDUST

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Oct 27, 2017
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It's complicated. Many don't want actual journalism. Don't want to eat your veggies. We get lured in by rumor and speculation because it's fun. Most game sites don't have the budget or access to actually write good content regularly enough to drive traffic. We don't pay for the content either and even newspapers who have been a staple for over a century are going extinct. Democratization of information leads to this wild west if there is no oversight or accreditation system.
 
Raijinto

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On the one hand yeah they sure got them. It's at least a little embarrassing that something this simple tripped up so many journalists.

On the other hand though you have like games being leaked by a guy publicly browsing through his confidential information about his unannounced game on a train and like the entire Switch first hands-on games just being flat out spelled out by someone involved in organising it. That's not even going into the dozens of times that site listings have indeed been legit too.

So I'm not going to reflect on this too much as people are prone to silly/sloppy errors and it's not worth getting worked up or anything.
 
Altairre

Altairre

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Oct 25, 2017
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The Woods said:
If you work in video games journalism, you have X amount of time to produce Y content, and generally for a shit salary. That doesn't excuse journalistic integrity, but for something as trivial as a leaked games listing, I'm really not going to be put off by it.

Now for as trivial as this is, I'm far more questionable of the motivations behind the people who did this, and some claims they've made (they are rather broad, though perhaps a translation issue), as to me, all I see is this giving ammunition to people who want to denounce today's games press because they dared to start occasionally discussing social and minority issues while covering gaming.
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Yeah, can't wait for this to pop up in discussions completely unrelated to this.
 
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Lelouch0612

Lelouch0612

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Oct 25, 2017
21,200
Geek said:
Damn, decimating my journalistic faith in the big websites [squints] uuuuuuuhhh Geeko and XboxSquad
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Hmm I assume that you didn't read the OP ?

XboxSquad is the example of a small French indie outlet that went the extra mile and debunked the leak whereas big French outlets like Jeuxvideo.com and Gameblog reported the news.
 
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