Techdirt. Stories about "sega"

Sega Offers Half-Hearted Non-Apology For Massive Youtube Takedown; Promises Not To Do It Again (With Caveats)

Tim Cushing — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:48:55 PDT

Remember last December when Sega was priming itself for a PSP Shining Force game and thought the best way to advertise the upcoming release was to take down anything and everything Shining Force-related on Youtube? Good times those, what with the takedowns and strikes against accounts and the hundreds of videos (some of which didn't even contain footage of the game) replaced with the well-known slash-mouthed emoticon and a quick "Sorry about that."

Now that the Shining Force game has been released, it appears that Sega is going to let things return to normal, or at least as normal as things can be after a massive takedown effort. Sega of America's Brand Manager offered the following ~~apology~~ diversionary statement of ~~contrition~~ half-hearted thanks and not-quite-promises.

Hey everyone,

Thank you to all of our fans for waiting while we worked hard to get this issue solved. While SEGA may need to remove videos in rare cases, we’re happy to confirm that there are no further plans to remove Shining Force videos uploaded to Youtube by users living in North American and European territories. Additionally, if you live in these territories and your video was removed, please get in touch with us at communityteam@sega.com so that we can look into it for you.

SEGA believes strongly in our fans and we apologize for any inconvenience. You all are what keep us going – thank you!

"Issue solved?" There was really no issue until the massive takedown effort began. Before that, everything seemed to be running fine. "Solved?" Once again, the issue was Sega's own making. It hardly seems proper that it take credit for "solving" it.

And bully for "no further plans to remove Shining Force videos." That's rather specific, innit? "We have no further plans FOR THIS PARTICULAR TITLE, but we reserve the right to remove other videos of other games, but in rare cases only, mostly because our release schedule isn't quite as packed as it was 15 years ago."

This announcement was conveniently buried on the 28th page of the Sega forum post discussing the video takedowns. Not exactly shouting it from the rooftops, but I suppose whoever's manning the Sega email inbox is probably not in any hurry to be bombarded with demands SoA un-strike their Youtube accounts.

All the damage done by Sega's short-sighted IP March to the Sea isn't going to be undone by a half-hearted non-apology that refers to Sega's own destructive actions as an "issue" to be "solved." Someone needs to inform those further up the chain of command that promoting a new game in an established series generally works better when you don't antagonize fans of the previous games. Not only that, but Sega needs to start seeing these uploaders as useful allies, rather than the only thing standing between it and a successful video game release.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Sega Goes Nuclear On YouTube Videos Of Old Shining Force Game

Timothy Geigner — Fri, 7 Dec 2012 07:32:34 PST

Sega has a history of being less than friendly to their fans and customers. Recall that they were unable to respond to one customer's concerns about SOPA, other than to ramble on about reboots and hard resets. Then there was their DRM fiasco when an iteration of their popular Football Manager franchise had DRM every bit as functional and effective as Congress.

Pictured: Constitutional DRM
Image source: CC BY 2.0

Well, Sega has apparently decided to buck their trend of being mildly annoying to their fans... by upping the ante and going full-blown fan-screw-crazy. They have apparently been going on a YouTube video take down blitz for anything related to their Shining Force franchise to somehow protect an upcoming PSP release in the series from being... well... maybe they think that... no, that doesn't work... you know what? I don't know what the hell they're afraid of, but they're pooping all over a bunch of fan videos.

Many YouTube channels have already been hit, including that of popular game critic TotalBiscuit, who has since removed all Sega content from his page out of disgust. No type of content was spared -- Let's Plays, walkthroughs, and random gameplay clips all got flagged. Hell, even videos of fans just talking about the Shining series with no accompanying game footage whatsoever are apparently copyright violations!

If you've spent ten seconds searching for any game on YouTube, you know that the plethora of fan videos, playthroughs, and Let's Plays are more abundant than gold rings in a Sonic game. And if the rest of the gaming world is anything like me, and there's a frighteningly good chance that it is, they use those kinds of things to either influence whether they purchase a game or not or to enhance their gaming experience via the walkthroughs. Either way, Sega, yanking those videos offline in some misguided attempt to avoid confusion with a new upcoming game (because everyone knows how easily fooled the rabid fanbase of an RPG franchise is), can only cause anger in established fans/customers and ward off purchases by potential customers who can no longer get a glimpse of what they would be buying.

At this point, I would usually make some kind of grand statement mixed with a little vulgarity to wrap all this up into a fine point, but the afore linked Destructoid does it as well or better than I could, so I'll give them the final word:

Remember earlier this year when the Internet took a stand against SOPA / PIPA? This was the kind of nonsense we were fighting against. This is unbelievably bad form. It makes no sense either, because why are just the Saturn Shining games catching most of the heat? Why isn't Sega going after the whole pie? If you are going to be a dick, don't stop in mid-f*ck.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Sega Gets It Right About SOPA: It's Time For A Hard Reset On Copyright Law & Congress

Zachary Knight — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:02:28 PST

With the news that the ESA supports SOPA, thus representing all its member companies on the matter, many gamers have taken to writing to ESA member companies asking for their input on the matter and especially asking them to oppose the legislation. As Kotaku reports, one such gamer has received word back from Sega after writing a very nicely worded letter outlining his concerns over SOPA.

Generally these issues are caused by bad installs or junk data that's stuck in the system memory. The first suggestion would be to perform a hard reset on the device. It's best to attempt this any time you experience performance problems with your device or have an app crash. If it doesn't work, its suggested that you uninstall the app, perform a hard reset, reinstall and then perform one more hard reset before launching the game.

If you're problems continue, please let us know.

While Sega does not come right out in opposition to SOPA, it does give some great advice for dealing with the problem. As we all know, there have certainly been some bad Congressmen and Senators installed into Congress. This has led to a lot of junk data build up in Washington. The best solution, according to Sega is to uninstall those Congressmen and Senators and start fresh. While a hard reset might not be the easiest way to deal with the problem, the threat of such a reset would certainly get the attention of those in Washington. We have already seen some of the fruits of Reddit's attempts at just such an uninstall and hard reset. So let's all follow Sega's advice and work on clearing out the bad installs and hard reset Congress. In a follow up to this advice, Sega also put together a video:

Now, let's see if Sega comes out with an actual position on SOPA.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Tons Of Companies Sued Over Broad Patent On Controlling Workstations In A Computer Network

Mike Masnick — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:48:51 PDT

As we keep waiting for a Supreme Court ruling in the Bilski case (any day now...), Glyn Moody points us to the news of a lawsuit that has been filed against 26 different software companies for violating an incredibly broad patent (5,832,511) on "Workgroup network manager for controlling the operation of workstations within the computer network" (say that 10 times fast). The list of companies sued is a who's who in software:

Apple, Activision, Adobe, Autodesk, Capcom, Citrix, Corel, Dassault, Delcam, Square Enix, Electronic Arts, Frontrange Solutions, IBM, Intuit, Konami, Digital Entertainment, Maximizer Software, Nuance, Parametric Technology, Sage Software, Sega, Skype, SPSS, Teradata, THQ and Legacy Interactive

I'm sure none of those companies could have possibly come up with a system for controlling the operation of workstations within a computer network without this patent. At some point, isn't the fact that such a vast number of companies appear to have come up with the same basic thing independently a perfect prima facie case of obviousness?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Sega Apparently Learned Nothing From EA's Spore-DRM Mistakes

Mike Masnick — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:19:00 PST

You would think that, given the widespread negative publicity generated by EA's choice to use draconian DRM with the release of Spore, that other video game companies might recognize that they'd be better served going in a different direction. Unfortunately, that's not the case with Sega, whose Sports Interactive subsidiary has released the latest copy of its incredibly popular Football Manager product, only to find that many, many legitimate customers are discovering they cannot activate the offering because the DRM is not working properly. And, not surprisingly, this is now leading to numerous negative reviews on Amazon, as people point out how the DRM has stymied their ability to actually play the game they've purchased (while some have noted that cracked copies of the game are already widely available). Congratulations, Sega. Not only have you failed to stop piracy, you've also pissed off many legitimate paying customers, and made sure that the game is poorly rated on Amazon. What do you plan for an encore?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story