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Shenmue 3 release date is November 19th and review embargo is launch day for US and November 21st for UK (and possibly EU)

master15

master15

Member
Nov 28, 2017
1,208
I am playing Shenmue 3 right now. If you enjoyed the previous Shenmue games, you will find a lot to love about this. It's abundantly clear it's a faithful follow up and what Suzuki and co have been able to produce in terms of scale, size and detail on the budget they had is nothing short of amazing.

There's a few technical oddities and I'm certain it won't appeal to everyone but last 3 days I've been engrossed and happily stepping back in Ryo's shoes.
 
ShinobiBk

ShinobiBk

One Winged Slayer
Member
Dec 28, 2017
10,121
The majority of people getting this day 1 are huge fans of the series and won't be deterred by any reviews. So, I don't think it's a huge deal but it's still scummy. I think all embargoes should lift at least 24 hours before launch.
 
LewieP

LewieP

Member
Oct 26, 2017
18,099
weblaus said:
Come on, let's be honest here: Yes, legally speaking this might be correct and the person sending out the code might have screwed up be giving it before, but a lot of things based in this business are based on respecting things like emabrgos set without lawyers drawing up domunetation before hand. In fact, I'd say most review codes, be it from indie devs or big companies are provided with having to sign domcumeents because both parties can depend on respecting the procedure.
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I think you're confused, an embargo is not a legal document, it is just a formalised hand shake agreement. You are thinking of an NDA.

It is absolutely not standard practise to send out review code, then after the fact insist on embargo terms without the publication having any chance to agree/disagree.

Edit: I took a second to google this since many folk in this thread seem to be struggling to grapple with the difference between an embargo and an NDA
 
Ryuman

Ryuman

Member
Nov 1, 2017
1,595
LewieP said:
Seems to me that it was obviously Yu Suzuki's responsibility.

Either he made the decision.

Or he made the decision to let Deep Silver/Koch Media decide this kind of thing.

Either way, the buck stops with him.
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You seem to misunderstand. If this were some poor attempt at mitigating spoilers from Yu, that's still stupid. You can forgive me for considering a company currently at the helm of making business decisions is at fault.

weblaus said:
Funny thing is, I actually do.
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Good, discussion could benefit greatly from the info you have. It'd be great if you could share it.
 

Deleted member 3017

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
17,653
LewieP said:
"NDA" describes a legal contract that you would have signed, and breaching it would open you up to litigation.
An embargo would be a handshake agreement. Breaking it would not result in any legal consequences.

Which of these scenarios were you intending to describe?

And for what it's worth there was neither and NDA signed or an embargo agreed to in this scenario.



They sent the email discussing an embargo after they sent the review code. If an embargo hasn't been agreed by both parties, it's meaningless.

Which I imagine is part of why Kirk publicised this in the manner he did. Had they Koch agreed an embargo before sending review code it would be a pretty different scenario.
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I used "NDA" and "embargo agreement" interchangeably, as I (incorrectly) assumed an "embargo agreement" was simply a (lesser) type of NDA and therefore fell under the same umbrella. So, replace "NDA" in my previous post with "embargo agreement" and you will see my intent.

However, if no agreement was actually made prior to codes being sent to outlets, that would obviously change matters.
 
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weblaus

weblaus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
933
LewieP said:
I think you're confused, an embargo is not a legal document, it is just a formalised hand shake agreement. You are thinking of an NDA.
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I'm not, thank you. Maybe my thoughts came across a bit wrong, but Englisch isn't my mother language. My understanding of embargos and NDAs is very much the same as what your posted link states.

LewieP said:
It is absolutely not standard practise to send out review code, then after the fact insist on embargo terms without the publication having any chance to agree/disagree.
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We don't know the exact way that review code ended up in the mailbox of the guy, I highly doubt it was just sent out witout any prior talks about it.

I don't know you, but I've been working in the industry for a very long time now and frequently embargos are not discussed in detail before, often they're supplied along with the review code along the lines of "if you intend to use the code in this email, you do agree to this embargo date". Sending it afterwards is indeed not that usual, but does happen sometime because someone forgot it originally or something like that. My guess would be this may have happened here and sharing that bit is really pointless (unless you want to flip off Deep Silver).
 
Pharaoh

Pharaoh

Unshakable Resolve
Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,675
master15 said:
I am playing Shenmue 3 right now. If you enjoyed the previous Shenmue games, you will find a lot to love about this. It's abundantly clear it's a faithful follow up and what Suzuki and co have been able to produce in terms of scale, size and detail on the budget they had is nothing short of amazing.

There's a few technical oddities and I'm certain it won't appeal to everyone but last 3 days I've been engrossed and happily stepping back in Ryo's shoes.
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I'm glad to hear it. I've finished Shenmue I again a few days ago and I'm currently replaying Shenmue II and I was reminded just why I love this series so much. A faithful follow up to that is all me and other Shenmue fans ever wanted.
 
weblaus

weblaus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
933
Ryuman said:
Good, discussion could benefit greatly from the info you have. It'd be great if you could share it.
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Unlike other people, I actually do respect embargos and/or NDAs, so I can't (orbetter said, won't).

I do have my thoughts about the intentions behind the tweet in the original post, though, and they pretty much fit in with what I feel about what website in question has turned into over the last few years
 
ket

ket

Member
Jul 27, 2018
12,974
weblaus said:
Unlike other people, I actually do respect embargos and/or NDAs, so I can't (orbetter said, won't).

I do have my thoughts about the intentions behind the tweet in the original post, though, and they pretty much fit in with what I feel about what website in question has turned into over the last few years
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nah this embargo in particular is dumb as fuck. i usually respect embargoes after agreeing to them but setting an embargo two days after launch is bush league shit.
 
weblaus

weblaus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
933
Sumio Mondo said:
Fair enough, got mixed up, my bad. Still, regardless, was there outrage then too when the reviews were delayed for Bloodstained?
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I honestly don't remember exactly. I do know some outlets got their review codes late because of organizational screw-ups on the publisher side, but the reception of the game in general was pretty good, wasn't it?
 

Deleted member 17210

User-requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
11,569
Review embargos are lame. I always expected mixed or low scores for this, especially if it is faithful to the old games. It's mostly different people (a younger generation) in the mainstream media than it was in the DC era.

I'm glad fan of series playing it early have had positive impressions. I hope my Kickstarter copy arrives on time.
 

Neilg

Member
Nov 16, 2017
711
OrbitalBeard said:
They can enforce it towards any outlet that receives a review copy at no cost.
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I feel like the last time a publisher tried this, and I can't remember what it was, I read a lot of reviews which said they refused the free copy from the publisher and went out to buy their own in the opening paragraph.
 

Mad_Rhetoric

Banned
May 7, 2019
3,466
Oof, I mean they know the game looks rough as hell. This is a niche game only for shenmue fans, I dont think a lot of people who dont read about games even know this exists.
 
Sumio Mondo

Sumio Mondo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,935
United Kingdom
weblaus said:
I honestly don't remember exactly. I do know some outlets got their review codes late because of organizational screw-ups on the publisher side, but the reception of the game in general was pretty good, wasn't it?
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Okay, so to just to clarify I'm not agreeing with the way Deep Silver has done this at all, I was looking forward to seeing the reviews actually (big fan of Shenmue) but thought Bloodstained was getting a free pass at the time, the Switch version was a mess at launch, don't know about now (PS4 version seems to be fixed now). I think Shenmue 3 was getting a sizeable day 1 patch but nobody confirmed when I asked in the other S3 topic.
 

Deleted member 3017

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
17,653
Neilg said:
I feel like the last time a publisher tried this, and I can't remember what it was, I read a lot of reviews which said they refused the free copy from the publisher and went out to buy their own in the opening paragraph.
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Yeah, that's certainly an option and I've seen outlets do this in the past.
 
Spaghetti

Spaghetti

Member
Dec 2, 2017
2,740
weblaus said:
So you know fore sure that engargo date is entirely the fault of Deep Silver and Yu Suzuki had no say in it at all? Interesting. And very likely not true, but clearly nobody wants to even entertain that though.
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Well the power is going to reside with the publisher in this dynamic. Ys Net are making a niche game with an IP they don't own, and were looking for someone who could provide further development capital (probably $3 million or so) alongside taking over marketing and publishing duties.

Ys Net also weren't going to get their hands in the dough when it came to the specifics of press policy, etc. Why would they when they were literally looking to hand that stuff off to someone in the first place so they could concentrate on development? They're not really equipped for that in-house, which is why they wanted to defer in the first place.

I don't think Ys Net weren't consulted on any of this, but there's a reasonable question of whether the only real way you can respond to your publisher telling you to jump is - "how high?". The EGS situation earlier this year was a good litmus test for the publisher potentially strong-arming Ys Net in certain things - given there's reasonable evidence it was not Yu Suzuki's decision, and they were left holding the bag regarding what it meant for the Kickstarter. More than once a Koch rep stopped Yu commenting on it during interviews. Take that as you will.
 
weblaus

weblaus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
933
Neilg said:
I feel like the last time a publisher tried this, and I can't remember what it was, I read a lot of reviews which said they refused the free copy from the publisher and went out to buy their own in the opening paragraph.
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Which is perfectly fine, of course. Just not what seems to have happend here.
 
IrishNinja

IrishNinja

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,837
Vice City
nightstalker962 said:
So you're saying it will review well no matter what?

that's news to me.
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how exactly did you parse that from what i said?
i was clearly commenting on the crowd dying to see this fail; it went from
"let it go, it's not going to happen"
*kickstarter is announced to much joy*
"lol only a handful of people care about this"
*kickstarter breaks all records despite awesome japans fuckery*

now we're on review scores...about a sequel nearly 2 decades late to one of the most polarizing franchises in gaming
during a time when the weirdos who worry about these things usually consider anything shy of a 7-8 to be a 0

in conclusion: yes it'll be a 10/10 everywhere forever is what I'm saying here
 
Lothars

Lothars

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,765
Spaghetti said:
When you start relying on a strawman to reinforce your point, it just makes you look like you've been stumped by something you can't refute.

Maybe I just don't really see the prestige attached to reviews when; people already have the game (and will hopefully be posting spoiler-tagged impressions when the OT goes up Sunday) - backers have had a demo version since September - the game has been playable at 5+ public and press events since June - and the game just came off a pretty respectable preview cycle. All of these things are facts.

But rail against me if you want. You're as guilty of exhibiting a pattern of behavior as I am, by those metrics.


You were never really good at concern trolling. Don't quit the day job.
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Well I'm not trolling but you sure are, I'm sorry that we are insulting your previous whatever but keep failing at it.
 
Ryuman

Ryuman

Member
Nov 1, 2017
1,595
weblaus said:
Unlike other people, I actually do respect embargos and/or NDAs, so I can't (orbetter said, won't).

I do have my thoughts about the intentions behind the tweet in the original post, though, and they pretty much fit in with what I feel about what website in question has turned into over the last few years
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Well, that's a shame. Would've been good to know the actual reasoning regardless of who put it forward. Not exactly the biggest issue in the world, but definitely a very stupid one that the game could've gone without.

It's not as if this is my primary issue with Deep Silver on the project though. My sentiments remain the same.
 

Neilg

Member
Nov 16, 2017
711
Anthony Hopkins said:
If people recieve the game early and they make a review is that breaking the embargo?
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Only if the publisher gave them a free copy. By accepting the copy you essentially agree to the contract. This is why some reviews make a point of saying they refused a free copy and bought their own.

Large corporations do a similar thing with employment contracts - often they'll update a senior staff contract to be way more restrictive but accompany it with a potential bonus - where accepting the bonus means you agree to the new terms.
 
LewieP

LewieP

Member
Oct 26, 2017
18,099
weblaus said:
I'm not, thank you. Maybe my thoughts came across a bit wrong, but Englisch isn't my mother language. My understanding of embargos and NDAs is very much the same as what your posted link states.



We don't know the exact way that review code ended up in the mailbox of the guy, I highly doubt it was just sent out witout any prior talks about it.

I don't know you, but I've been working in the industry for a very long time now and frequently embargos are not discussed in detail before, often they're supplied along with the review code along the lines of "if you intend to use the code in this email, you do agree to this embargo date". Sending it afterwards is indeed not that usual, but does happen sometime because someone forgot it originally or something like that. My guess would be this may have happened here and sharing that bit is really pointless (unless you want to flip off Deep Silver).
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It is absolutely not standard practice to send review code, and then after the fact insist on an unreasonable embargo three days after release. If you can tell me of any other examples where this happened that you've seen during your time in the industry, I'd love to hear about it.

Kirk literally said that he was sent the review code, and then after the fact another email stating that it was embargoed until three days after release. Not sure if you don't believe him or what, but I don't see any reason to doubt this.

"if you intend to use the code in this email, you do agree to this embargo date" would be far less noteworthy. I imagine that if that's what they'd done we wouldn't have a thread.

My guess is the reason he has publicised this is to generate backlash and pressure Koch to backtrack on this ridiculous embargo, so he is able to provide better coverage to his readers.

When Double Fine tried similar with Broken Age, the backlash resulted in them cancelling their post-release embargo, which I think was a good outcome, I'd like to see similar happen here.
 
SNRUB

SNRUB

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,009
New Jersey
I'm out of the loop but isn't Sega the sole proprietor of the Shenmue IP? Or are they licensing it out to Deep Silver to publish?
 
weblaus

weblaus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
933
Spaghetti said:
Well the power is going to reside with the publisher in this dynamic. Ys Net are making a niche game with an IP they don't own, and were looking for someone who could provide further development capital (probably $3 million or so) alongside taking over marketing and publishing duties.

Ys Net also weren't going to get their hands in the dough when it came to the specifics of press policy, etc. Why would they when they were literally looking to hand that stuff off to someone in the first place so they could concentrate on development? They're not really equipped for that in-house, which is why they wanted to defer in the first place.

I don't think Ys Net weren't consulted on any of this, but there's a reasonable question of whether the only real way you can respond to your publisher telling you to jump is - "how high?". The EGS situation earlier this year was a good litmus test for the publisher potentially strong-arming Ys Net in certain things - given there's reasonable evidence it was not Yu Suzuki's decision, and they were left holding the bag regarding what it meant for the Kickstarter. More than once a Koch rep stopped Yu commenting on it during interviews. Take that as you will.
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I understand your line of thought, but from what I know in this case (aside the EGS stuff as that didn't involve the console version, obviously), not much happened without Ys Net signing off on it.
 
Ryuman

Ryuman

Member
Nov 1, 2017
1,595
Sumio Mondo said:
Okay, so to just to clarify I'm not agreeing with the way Deep Silver has done this at all, I was looking forward to seeing the reviews actually (big fan of Shenmue) but thought Bloodstained was getting a free pass at the time, the Switch version was a mess at launch, don't know about now (PS4 version seems to be fixed now). I think Shenmue 3 was getting a sizeable day 1 patch but nobody confirmed when I asked in the other S3 topic.
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Honestly having taken a look at the Bloodstained KS page, it felt a lot like the Shenmue 3 one pre-refund.
SNRUB said:
I'm out of the loop but isn't Sega the sole proprietor of the Shenmue IP? Or are they licensing it out to Deep Silver to publish?
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Sega are licensing it out for Yu Suzuki to use.
 
weblaus

weblaus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
933
LewieP said:
It is absolutely not standard practice to send review code, and then after the fact insist on an unreasonable embargo three days after release. If you can tell me of any other examples where this happened that you've seen during your time in the industry, I'd love to hear about it.
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You are moving the goalposts here with now adding the "embago after the release date" bit. Of course that's not standard practice. I also never said it is standard practice to add the emabrgo later, but that can and soes happen sometimes, usually when the PR person forgot to put it in the email with the reviww code.

Other things that also sometimes happen: An embargo date gets moved back later on because circumstances have changed. Now you could probably insist to stick to the original date set and legally nobody could do someething about it (no written agreemeent etc.), but that's terribly bad form.

I want give examples by name, and I think that should be understandly, but everything I mentioned has at times happened.

LewieP said:
Kirk literally said that he was sent the review code, and then after the fact another email stating that it was embargoed until three days after release. Not sure if you don't believe him or what, but I don't see any reason to doubt this.
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I can absolutely believe that. I feel it's bad form to make it public, but that's another matter.

LewieP said:
My guess is the reason he has publicised this is to generate backlash and pressure Koch to backtrack on this ridiculous embargo, so he is able to provide better coverage to his readers.
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I have my doubts about that.

LewieP said:
When Double Fine tried similar with Broken Age, the backlash resulted in them cancelling their post-release embargo, which I think was a good outcome, I'd like to see similar happen here.
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I wouldn't count on it, but think it might well happen given that the game has shown up in various stores already. But to be honest, I do hope it's not because of his tweet, because in my opnion that main motivation of that to make himself and/or his site look good. I mean, if you look at the place, nowadays apart from postling lots of guides, the most notable stuff usually is stuff written in a way to rile up people or appear. controversial
 
HotHamBoy

HotHamBoy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
16,423
Wow, this game comes out so soon and I had no idea.

This game, this gaming white whale, is about to finally be a reality after decades and I feel like the vast majority don't know and don't care.
 
weblaus

weblaus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
933
HotHamBoy said:
Wow, this game comes out so soon and I had no idea.

This game, this gaming white whale, is about to finally be a reality after decades and I feel like the vast majority don't know and don't care.
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Well, back in the days the vast majority didn't care about parts 1 and 2 either (twice, including the Xbox release) otherwise we might have seen the whole saga completed a while ago and Sega would still be producing hardware... so that can't honestly be much of a surprise.
 
Spaghetti

Spaghetti

Member
Dec 2, 2017
2,740
Opinions from someone who got the game today:

Hey everyone, so I'm 3 hours into the game, taken it slow and I'm now at the demo point so we all know what that is in terms of story etc.

Thoughts:
It's 100% Shenmue, the colour, music and vibe is amazing.
Bailu is massive
Controls have been tightened up, fighting has much better hit detection
Mini-games so far are fun, need to earn more money to blow on them
Herb collecting is great.
English dub is good, fuck knows why Corey is getting any shit for it.
Digest move is excellent.
Runs well on PS4 Pro, generally 60fps with some minor drops but nothing major.
Trophy list is bigger than expected.
Oh and I'm playing on Hard mode and the training progression is slower but that's fine.

The fade to blacks are a little odd but you get used to them.

Negatives.... I'd be nit picking so fuck that shit. This game is fucking ridiculous for the budget. It's fun and you can easily lose yourself in the game.

One piece of advice, I found the music a little too loud so I turned it down in the options and turned the voice and SFX up.

SNRUB said:
I'm out of the loop but isn't Sega the sole proprietor of the Shenmue IP? Or are they licensing it out to Deep Silver to publish?
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Long answer:

SEGA owns the IP. They licenced it out to Ys Net to produce Shenmue III + further games in the series.

Shibuya Productions are co-producers and the initial private financing partner, but couldn't cover the game's budget themselves, and wouldn't be able to release funds without the successful Kickstarter.

Sony is a marketing partner and at the time of the Kickstarter was set to be the publisher of the PS4 version if the KS was successful. Shibuya Productions were set to publish the PC version.

In 2017, Ys Net signed a publishing deal with Deep Silver, which included additional development capital. Sony and Shibuya stepped aside as publishers, but remain marketing partners.

SEGA are publishing the game in Japan. WeGame and Oasis Games in China on PS4/PC. Deep Silver and associated distribution partners everywhere else, I believe.

weblaus said:
I understand your line of thought, but from what I know in this case (aside the EGS stuff as that didn't involve the console version, obviously), not much happened without Ys Net signing off on it.
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Again, which is why the question is posed about if there's any answer other than "yes" when dealing with the people holding the purse strings. Is it just a rubber stamping exercise? I don't know.

Further to that, we don't know the motivation of placing the embargo date on the 21st. This whole thread is weirdly automatically predicated on that being a bad thing, despite people having already received the game early, the game having been playable at events for months, and backers literally having had a demo since September. Because apparently only reviewers opinions count?
 
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