Discussion about breaking NDAs

[Maju]

Re: Arguing about the NDA

Why report? How about the thousands of people who would be more than happy to follow all of SE's rules but couldn't get in to the testing phase? You know, people who wanted to actually test the game for bugs and not try to grow their e-peen by leaking shit all over? The NDA is in place for a reason, as has been discussed numerous times in other threads and other forums, so I'm not going into that, but really, it seems like such a simple thing to follow.

I have no idea what you mean with the bolded part. Are you suggesting that reporting a leaker somehow helps those who would have wanted in the beta and would not have leaked? The opposite is true: All of those people were watching Pooky's stream and they loved every minute of it.

The purpose of the NDA is to protect SE and unless you for some incomprehensible reason feel loyalty towards them, there is no benefit to enforcing it yourself. Whether the NDA holds doesn't even matter as long as leaked material doesn't spread to large publications like major gaming news sites, which it won't because SE would likely take legal action if that happened.

Also, I think that it encourages players in the testing to be concerned more with actually finding and reporting bugs than with their own e-peen and 15 minutes of fame. I'd much rather hear that a tester was working hard to find issues within the game than to spend his time sharing stuff he shouldn't be. It only takes about two minutes to black out names in a pic and post them somewhere, but in that two minutes he may have done something productive within the test atmosphere that could affect how the game is played when it goes live.

Sure, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't amount to much, but you have say, 500 testers taking breaks to save screenshots or create map composites or haXXor the soundtrack, that's time they were spending that could have helped the game.

You can't seriously be making this argument! So someone stops for a few seconds to take a nice screenshot and it's somehow making the testing less effective? Are you kidding me? Running a stream or a video capture program requires no effort from the player and you can just let it run in the background. There are hundreds of testers in the alpha and a tiny fraction of them spending a tiny fraction of their time editing material to leakable form is insignificant and will not show in the final product.

Besides, at least Pooky reported every single bug he found.

There are other reasons, but that's a big one. I know how much people want to see new stuff. And I know that SE really sucks at communication a lot of times. But that doesn't mean it's really fair for people to take what they don't want to give just yet. SE, like any huge company, has a marketing department, and they're probably busy doing market research right now, deciding what tidbits of information to release next, whether it be on the official site, or on Famistu (sp?) or to IGN or whatever. My point, though, is they know what they want to release. NDA breaches kind of screw with that, and it makes marketing's job that much harder. Working around leaks, and trying to keep things that they wanted to make "big reveals" secret.

Again, I understand people want info about the game, but really, patience is a virtue.

SE is absolutely horrendous at releasing information about their games. I know this, you know this. There is nothing wrong with the community trying to influence SE's decision-making in this regard. Also, marketing departments are the bane of video game companies. They're often out of touch with development and tend to make awful decisions when it comes to releasing tidbits about unfinished games.

[Corrderio]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

Am I the only one who's surprised a leak caused this much trouble?

I do think Pooky was stupid for steaming the game, but that's mostly because he steamed the most unstable phase of the game for a few min of fame. When he could have been patient and enjoyed the beta more then steam something that was actually worth it. But FFS this is ridiculous.

[Pwnagraphic]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

Am I the only one who's surprised a leak caused this much trouble?

I'm with you on this.

[Malacite]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

tl;dr

Why are we even discussing this? *calls TGM*

[Kafeen]

Re: Arguing about the NDA

Going 1 mile over the speed limit IS breaking the law. You can't honestly say that not everyone breaks traffic laws. Shit.. You don't even need a car to break a traffic law like jay walking.Shit I don't care. It'd stop all the bitching about breaking the NDA, lol. I'd still get to play the game eventually.. I don't need to do a bug hunt. But that would mean it would take longer to release.

You also got to remember that SE knew this would happen.. Only, what, 10% of the game is actually playable? Yeah we got a good fill on some stuff, but they ended up talking about in an interview anyway, lol.

You're given some leniency with speed limits (here at least, not sure about the laws where you are) as speedometers aren't 100% accurate. Here that's 10% of the speed limit + 2 MPH. So if you drift over its not so bad.

I have no idea what you mean with the bolded part. Are you suggesting that reporting a leaker somehow helps those who would have wanted in the beta and would not have leaked? The opposite is true: All of those people were watching Pooky's stream and they loved every minute of it.

She means that Pooky too the spot in the alpha test that one of thousands of other people would have loved to be been in only to throw it away in a few hours by broadcasting the stream. Maybe he did report any bugs he found, but others could have helped by finding lot more on subsequent test dates.

SE is absolutely horrendous at releasing information about their games. I know this, you know this. There is nothing wrong with the community trying to influence SE's decision-making in this regard. Also, marketing departments are the bane of video game companies. They're often out of touch with development and tend to make awful decisions when it comes to releasing tidbits about unfinished games.

They are slow to release information but there are legitimate reasons for doing so. Not everything is going to be locked down, as the game is tested maybe some things won't work as well as they were expected to and need to be changed, you want to make sure that you only announce things that aren't going to change. Information releases are best staggered, releasing new information on the game spurs people's interest. If too much is released too early then interest can dwindle over time before the game has even been launched. Competitors could steal ideas from information released and rush them out before SE have the chance to to. Gaming magazines and website will pay for exclusive information to be released through them. If that information is leaking out without SE's permission they can be loosing out on potential revenue and publicity.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Arguing about the NDA

Competitors could steal ideas from information released and rush them out before SE have the chance to to.

Please, it is not that simple. Why do people think that. Going by that avenue of thought, they can do the same with screenshots or trailers; both of which developers release themselves. An ass load of coding and tweaking goes into simple movement to make it look realistic so trying to replicate a particular game dynamic is exponentially harder.

[Malacite]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

Quit stroking Kailea's e-peen, TGM lock the thread already and start issuing warnings to people who keep dragging it out >_>

[Aksannyi]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

I don't know, I think that if a discussion about this had happened before the major leaks, we could have prevented a lot of bullshit, instead, people keep trying to stifle it which is not the way to resolve an issue. What happens when the next major leak comes out and an entirely new shitstorm comes out? Not only are we going to snipe at each other when that happens, we're going to drag up all the old bullshit along with it. Nothing has been resolved, it's just a "STFU" order, which isn't really doing shit. Sorry, it's just not. I understand that you want people to stop arguing/bitching/being dicks, but it's CLEARLY not working.

BG has been up front about their stance on the NDA, and that is, they will follow the wishes of SE. If people post stuff and SE requires it to be removed, they will remove it. They're not encouraging people to break the rules but they're not turning away people who do.

It wouldn't hurt to have a similar policy here, or at least point out where this particular website stands on the issue of stuff that was leaked by testers as opposed to information given out by SE.

I guarantee if we have an admin who says exactly what the stance on the NDA is, we will have a lot less argument about leaked information.

[Malacite]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

I guarantee if we have an admin who says exactly what the stance on the NDA is, we will have a lot less argument about leaked information.

Would be nice and I agree with a lot of what you said. I just think too many people here are trying to provoke Kailea (and possibly Spazz) still.

[Kafeen]

Re: Arguing about the NDA

Please, it is not that simple. Why do people think that. Going by that avenue of thought, they can do the same with screenshots or trailers; both of which developers release themselves. An ass load of coding and tweaking goes into simple movement to make it look realistic so trying to replicate a particular game dynamic is exponentially harder.

I know how much coding goes into it, I do it for a living, including looking at how other games in order to implement our games in a similar way. Its not a way I agree with working but our designers can be rather unimaginative so we're sometimes told to look at other games or videos of other games and try to mimic the mechanic. Being a budget studio that I work for we try to get games out as fast as possible. They might not be as polished as some other games due to shorter development times and smaller teams but it doesn't stop the management from expecting games to function the same as a full price title would. The developers choosing what to release is one thing, testers choosing what to release is something else.

People seem to forget that an NDA is legally binding, if it was internal testers or any other development staff that released information of their own accord they would loose their jobs at the very least.

[Mhurron]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

Would be nice and I agree with a lot of what you said. I just think too many people here are trying to provoke Kailea (and possibly Spazz) still.

Simply locking this thread won't change that.

[Durahansolo]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

I don't know, I think that if a discussion about this had happened before the major leaks, we could have prevented a lot of bullshit

I'm pretty sure it was talked about by a few people in another topic before the alpha started. I'd try to find it, but I don't want to try to dredge it up and it cause another finger pointing session.

[Icemage]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

We (the staff at FFXIOnline.com) don't typically lock threads here to stifle discussion, even on sensitive topics, unless things look like they're getting out of hand.

What you all mostly aren't seeing (except for the people affected) are the various disciplinary actions we've been taking behind the scenes to remind everyone that we do have rules here, and we do enforce them.

This thread has stayed in the safe zone, and for as long as that remains true, I personally see no reason to lock it as long as people are able to be polite to one another and not resort to the sort of petty name-calling that we've recently seen a rash of.

As for FFXIOnline itself as a site and a forum, we don't currently have an active policy toward the situation vis-a-vis FFXIV's alpha, but traditionally our stance has been similar to BG's. That is, we don't encourage people to break NDAs, we don't help them do so, we don't host any such materials. We can't control other sites if they do wish to host such things, but the extent of our responsibility extends only to what is actually hosted on this server.

However, we're not interested in killing discussion about the topic - it's a legitimate topic for general discussion. It is inevitable that leaks will happen from time to time; people WILL talk about such leaks, and it's counterproductive to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that such things aren't happening when a good portion of the fanbase is interested (irrespective of which side of the fence they may fall).

So long as our members are able to talk about the issues without crossing these lines, and do so in a responsible and reasonable manner (as has happened thus far in this thread), I see no reason to summarily shut down this topic.


Icemage
FFXIOnline.com Forum Super Moderator

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

We (the staff at FFXIOnline.com) don't typically lock threads here to stifle discussion, even on sensitive topics, unless things look like they're getting out of hand.

What you all mostly aren't seeing (except for the people affected) are the various disciplinary actions we've been taking behind the scenes to remind everyone that we do have rules here, and we do enforce them.

This thread has stayed in the safe zone, and for as long as that remains true, I personally see no reason to lock it as long as people are able to be polite to one another and not resort to the sort of petty name-calling that we've recently seen a rash of.

As for FFXIOnline itself as a site and a forum, we don't currently have an active policy toward the situation vis-a-vis FFXIV's alpha, but traditionally our stance has been similar to BG's. That is, we don't encourage people to break NDAs, we don't help them do so, we don't host any such materials. We can't control other sites if they do wish to host such things, but the extent of our responsibility extends only to what is actually hosted on this server.

However, we're not interested in killing discussion about the topic - it's a legitimate topic for general discussion. It is inevitable that leaks will happen from time to time; people WILL talk about such leaks, and it's counterproductive to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that such things aren't happening when a good portion of the fanbase is interested (irrespective of which side of the fence they may fall).

So long as our members are able to talk about the issues without crossing these lines, and do so in a responsible and reasonable manner (as has happened thus far in this thread), I see no reason to summarily shut down this topic.


Icemage
FFXIOnline.com Forum Super Moderator

I'll add to this by saying that we would prefer if you kept your comments to a general nature. We are talking about NDAs, leaks, etc. and not the particular incident that is on everyones mind. Keeping it general will keep it more civil and on topic.

[Pwnagraphic]

Re: Discussion about breaking NDAs

next major leak comes out and an entirely new shitstorm comes out?

Why does there need to be a shitstorm over this at all? lol There's a lot of worse things going on in the world than people breaking NDA's.

What you all mostly aren't seeing (except for the people affected) are the various disciplinary actions we've been taking behind the scenes to remind everyone that we do have rules here, and we do enforce them.

A mod here mentioned how FFXIonline.com allowed info on cheating to be posted here and supported it. I don't remember exactly what it was. I never heard of it, but it was mentioned after a few people said they would report any leaks cause it was wrong.

and not the particular incident that is on everyones mind. Keeping it general will keep it more civil and on topic.

Isn't that in relation with the NDA and leaks? lol