The Terraria vs. TheBestGamers Crybaby-Fest
By Lo-Ping - Sat May 21, 10:41 am
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Ah, the world of games development: Where ideas are presented and expanded upon, and creative freedom is expressed in interactive form. And with the aide of the internet, now these ideas can be shared at near-instantaneous levels! So is it any wonder that along with the spread of IPs comes the spread of controversy? Case in point, the current mudslinging between a member of the Terraria dev team and website TheBestGamers.
For the uninformed, Terraria is an independently developed 2D adventure/explorer sidescroller that allows players to interact with the environment they’re placed in via digging and collecting of materials, in addition to exploring dungeons, crafting items, and building structures. You may be thinking to yourself, “Gosh! This sounds an awful lot like Minecraft, an independently developed adventure/explorer game that allows players to interact with the environment they’re placed in via digging and collecting of materials, in additon to exploring dungeons, crafting items, and building structures!” Well you’re not alone…
Along comes the second player in our little play. TheBestGamers, a KNOWN videogame review satire site, posted a video pointing out just that, including a sort of meta-example referencing one of its earlier reviews of calling MineCraft a rip-off. The link for the review on their site is as follows:
In addition to posting on their website, they uploaded the video to their YouTube channel. Apparently the devs of Terraria didn’t think so fondly of this review, and filed a complaint with YouTube. The video was then removed and viewers were greeted by the familiar “VIDEO NOT AVAILABLE DUE TO” screen.
Now here’s where it gets fun…
Understandably, TheBestGamers didn’t take too kindly to having their video removed. So they did what any rational person with a deep understanding of social norms would do: They e-sleuthed information about one member of the dev-team and proceeded to slam him online. On this canvas of shame, they find his DeviantArt account and lampoon his poems about touching women. They then find every social networking/dating site the man is enrolled in and paint the him as a sexual predator of sorts with a tactile fetish.
For reference, the article deals mostly with Blue
Their virtual pillory for him can be seen here. Now, here’s where the editorial starts:
Look, I’m all for freedom of expression and all that jazz. Criticism, constructive or otherwise, is your right as a consumer/connoisseur/whatever. But at some point, you have to draw the line. Yes, we’re aware it’s satire. Yes, it was a bit of a dickish move on their part to have the video remove. You might argue that this sets up the very bad precedent that game makers should be allowed to get negative reviews off YouTube. But doing this in retaliation? Bad form…
I would hate to have a whole bunch of people on the Internet personally attacking my looks, interests and occupation. I mean…you guys are real dicks. What possible reasons do they have to hate him other than being bullies who want to make themselves feel good by hurting someone else? I genuinely like the game. And as long as they keep working on it and at least add a few more features, I’m happy. But seriously, this is taking it too far.
You poor bastard...
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If they really wanted to have their legitimate satire video taken seriously, they should've done the right thing and talked with the Terraria devs. Instead they resorted to slander and this immature crapfest of harassing the game's creators which is now causing Terraria's legal team to reconsider their guidelines — which of course, hurts ALL the YoutTube video creators.
The onus of this is squarely on Thebestgamers' immaturity instead of possibly making a reasonable stand for expression. Shame on them.
I thought satire implied wit of some kind?
While Terraria is a good game, they are as in the right to remove that video as the developer of The Conduit 2 was to AmazonBomb a reviewer's book because he hated the game.
Terraria's main pr at this point has been /v/, and /v/ friggen hated their translucent attempts to viral their own game. When you play with fire you get burned.
Just saying, there are dicks on both sides of the equation here.
So if people say things that make you mad, they deserve to have unlawful copyright claims made against them?
Is that what you're trying to say here?
Being mean is wrong, but falsely accusing people of breaking laws that they did not break is wrong AND illegal.
There's a difference between satire and trolling.
The Best Gamers walk a fine line.
Uh… they actually dug up the Deviantart/dating site stuff BEFORE the video got taken down.
If you watched the video, you would know that.
They show his Deviantart in the video itself!
It wasn't an act of retaliation against the video being taken down. It was a preemptive jab at the creator.
Anyways, this was a poor decision on Blue's part. But I doubt TBG care much. This whole stunt has just gotten them more publicity. I mean, this article is proof of that.
It's a joke website.
The cry-babies are coming from the Terraria site if anything.
The Best Gamers constantly do this shit and don't really care, they just want to offend, and they did it.
Terraria devs just wanted bad publicity censored.
The "personal attacks" were him laughing at a poem.
I definitely think it was a good move by them to remove it. I didn't know the best gamers were satire at the start, and just heard a shitty review, and if one person thinks that, others will. The fact is they're indie game developers, and if someone searches for a random review on Youtube and gets that, it's just absolutely terrible publicity, and could make or break a sale, which in my opinion is just a bad thing to do to an indie title, and I think the best gamers should take this into consideration before posting a (terribly non comical) satire review.
Not to mention it's free marketing. And they're customers of the game as well. Weird Al has made the same point during the Lady Gaga flare where his video was allegedly shot down by Gaga. It was later revealed that she never got news of it, but I digress. The gaming community has been arguing the similarities between the two sandboxes, so the satirical review isn't even the tip of of the iceberg as far as publicizing goes.
The dude deserved it. Don't pull a move like removing a review of your game no matter how much you don't like it.
The website is full of trolls, the videos are troll videos, obviously. Blue took it off of YouTube because the entire "review" was the reviewer trolling and accusing Blue of copyright about 60 times.
Someone does not understand satire or the concept of multiple posters on website very well, do they?