Oh phooey. You may view this as petty or just me being a grouch. That’s fine. I just need to vent a titch. A scant few moments ago, I saw a breach of an NDA. It wasn’t a massive preview or smorgasbord of screenshots. Nothing that over the top. Just a simple tweet by a lucky gamer that got into the first Defiance beta, which kicked off earlier this morning.
@PaulFawcett2 dropped a short thumbs up on Defiance. “LOVING the game so far. Nice Job!” That’s it.
What’s got me annoyed is that the official Defiance Twitter account turned around and retweeted this breach of the Non-Disclosure Agreement. The agreement, in short, specified the limits of conversation we early players could have (emphasis by Trion Worlds).
* PLEASE NOTE – If you agree to the NDA you are NOT ALLOWED to discuss the game or your experience in public.
Digging a tad deeper, this wasn’t the only RT that @DefianceGame. The account has highlighted a trio of other positive tweets, even one that called out competitor FireFall.
The point is this. Trion Worlds, if you’re going to make people sign off on an NDA to help you develop the game you have one of two options. One, take the good with the bad. Allow your beta testers to talk openly and honestly, including us bloggers and journalist, and respond in kind. Or two, create and NDA to muzzle your players and police it to a reasonable degree.
Doing option #2 and then selectively retweeting those that break your NDA in your favor – even in the 140 character method – is bad form.
Most companies are fine with people saying that they got into a closed beta, just nothing more than that. Planetside 2 did the same exact thing.
The NDA’s main purpose is to control the image of the game so it’s kind of silly to get butthurt about something like this. Selectively enforcing it to further a positive image serves the same purpose of many of the restrictive clauses in an NDA.
@Aggh
Yes, but the whole problem is how selective they are with it, breaks legal trust. What if iTZKooPa wanted to write a very vague post about the beta that’s really positive and they decide to go after him? He’s in a legal distrust here.
It’s more of “I’m uncomfortable about the situation, because I don’t know where I’m at”.
Whatever, makes perfect sense to me to allow people to say theyre enjoying it with no further details. And its absolutely pointless to retweet any negative comments of an unifinished product.
I got in the Defiance alpha and beta, I like the game. I didn’t break the NDA by saying either one. I didn’t talk about my experience I said I liked the game. Further more, it is Trions game they can interpret their own NDA as they see fit. This post feel a lot like QQ “I didn’t get in” filler…..
Only the fact is I DID get in. I’m just abiding by the NDA and not talking about experiences or the gameplay.
I’ve signed multiple video game NDA’s and unless Trion’s NDA is a radical change from the norm none of those tweets break NDA. None.
It doesn’t really matter. Enforcement is entirely up to the company issuing the agreement. Most NDAs even specifically say that.