EA Streisands Leaked ‘Skate 4’ Footage Into The News
from the how-the-internet-works dept
It really feels like we shouldn’t have to have discussions about how companies should handle information that leaks onto the internet in 2022. Or, to be more precise, we should at least not have to remind them that attempting to re-bottle the leak-genie just isn’t going to work and will almost certainly have the opposite, AKA Streisand, effect. Every time we go through this, some company doesn’t like some information or footage that gets leaked out, tries to bury it with takedown requests or IP bullying, and ends up shooting news coverage of the leak into the stratosphere.
And yet it’s a lesson that continues to be taught, apparently. Most recently, EA has been dealing with a leak of very early footage for the forthcoming Skate 4 video game by trying to disappear the leak from the internet... which is not how the internet works.
Early—and I mean really early—footage of Skate 4 looks to continue that tradition, kind of. Rumblings about a Skate playtest circulated earlier this week. (Kotaku was not invited by EA to participate in the test.) Yesterday, one user who appears to have been in a session uploaded a 33-second clip to Odysee, the video platform. That link now leads nowhere, the footage gone…but not before GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb cross-posted the clip to Twitter, where it’s gone on to rack up nearly 200,000 views as of this writing.
It’s also, you know, everywhere else. It seems pretty clear that EA has been going around trying to get the footage taken down, but it keeps popping back up and getting shared all over the internet. And because this is the internet we’re talking about, news of the leak staying in the headlines specifically due to EA trying to make it go away is further propelling the leaked footage, such that now there are entire Reddit threads and a zillion YouTube videos of it floating around.
Now, someone in the comments will show up and insist that this is what EA wanted all along. Look, they shall say, they even have you talking about and unwittingly promoting the game for them. Respectfully: nah. This footage is rough and, whatever excitement or buzz it might generate, is almost certainly not what EA wanted the public to see. Fans of the series are geeking out a bit on the physics and all that, but the graphical modeling is pretty barebones.
And the overall point is that there was no point to firing the first shot if you’re EA. The war was lost and lost quickly. Now EA just ends up looking dumb.
Filed Under: leaks, skate 4, streisand effect
Companies: ea
Comments on “EA Streisands Leaked ‘Skate 4’ Footage Into The News”
I insist that this is exactly what EA wanted!
Mainly because if you consider how badly doing what they wanted has gone wrong at times, this would be par for the course.
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No doubt their marketing department are feeling a “Sense of Pride and Accomplishment” right now.
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No doubt their marketing department are feeling a “Sense of Pride and Accomplishment” right now…
My prediction:
In a decade or two, when the majority have forgotten the case that led to the coining of the term ‘Streisand effect’, this bringing mass attention to petty things by suing over them will be called the ‘EA effect’.
Re: Heh
Feels like an obvious case where they’d want it branded the “Mass Effect”….
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ROFLMFAO!!!
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I’d like to know how the majority will stop using the term, not SEVENTEEN YEARS after it was first coined, but “in [another] decade or two”.
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I didn’t say the majority would stop using it, I said they are likely to replace it. You know, kind of how most people say ‘obtain’ instead of ‘acquire’. Language evolves; don’t bitch at me if you get left behind.
Ea looking Dumb... and Dr. Matthew
Re: NOW? Just now they are looking dumb?
I protest. EA has done many things over the decades, and quite the number of them are dumb. Dumb in dealing with their customers, and downright nasty/dishonest dealing with various video game studios.
Not a trustworthy company, and one that has proven capable of screwing up good ideas one right after the other. So, EA continues their present course of being dumb. That is true.
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They’ve been dumb since before these shenanigans. I was the one who recognised that any game with microtransactions isn’t free and complained to the ASA.
(> _ <) =3
(> _ <) =3