@boilingsteam Is it? The guy has affiliate links in his description, which he discloses, but doesn't disclose a sponsorship from ASUS, which he would be required to do if he had one.
Since it seems unlikely to disclose one thing and not the other I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt unless you have more specific claims than... you know, giving positive coverage to a thing.
@MudMan Asus is known to pay influencers for positive coverage.
@ridge true, but he has been doing like 5 videos or so in the past 2 weeks about the ROG. This goes beyond the normal "everything is awesome" bullshit
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@boilingsteam What does "is known" mean here? I can find examples of people disclosing ASUS sponsorships easily. I can find examples of people very publicly dropping ASUS as a sponsor.
If you're saying ASUS is paying people to break the terms of their Youtube accounts and run undisclosed sponsorships I'm gonna need specific evidence against a specific creator. And then we can go report them together for breaking both Youtube and advertising rules.
@MudMan i cant find the original source but here goes https://www.kitguru.net/channel/generaltech/matthew-wilson/asus-uk-pr-believes-it-is-legal-to-buy-positive-reviews/
@MudMan and yes. Of course its possible to break youtube POS. How is youtube going to prove you got something from ASUS or anyone else for that matter?
Also relevant gaming publications have been corrupt for decades so theres always that
The issue of the Asus Ally (I called it) is a problem of execution. The value of the Steam Deck is multiplied by its vertical integration of hardware and software (Very similar to how Apple operates) the Steam Deck is not some hardware where some software has been thrown in to make a full package with some after the fact tweaks, it relies on software that has been carefully tweaked for the hardware's capabilities and above all provides a good user experience without getting in the way. On the Deck the OS is there, but on a second plane. On the Ally however the OS is on first plane because the "gaming interface" lacks and hey it is running Windows, so let's just run windows things.
@boilingsteam I do believe he got a unit from ASUS for testing and then he bought his own, or at least that's what he disclosed.
For the record, I wrote for "relevant gaming publications" in my day, never experienced any instance of undisclosed sponsorships and was often accused of it anyway when people didn't like my opinions. And then the one time a retailer, not even a publisher, threatened to pull ads as a pressure tactic that publication also disclosed that and took the ad hit, as you do.
@MudMan if your business relies on ads and most of the ads are related to the products your review its only a matter of time until your whole publication is bought by corporate interests. Thats just the logical conclusion of the business model and you see that everywhere and the gaming industry and related publications are no exception. (Continued)
@boilingsteam
I haven't done that job for decades, but if you're wondering if the simmering frustration you feel means this is still a huge pet peeve of mine, yes it is.
People substitute their preferences for reality, missing the mark both by being too lenient and too cynical all the time, and it's an incredibly annoying, self-defeating thing to do that actually discourages ethical behavior in the people creating the coverage.
@MudMan If it were not so then the average metacritic score between professionals and users should be the same. And its never the case, publications typically rate things higher than end users and not even by a little.
@boilingsteam Nope. The reason why you get to sell ads is that people want to come and read about a thing from you. That means they need to at least entertain the notion that what you're saying makes sense and conveys the experience they will have with the product.
No trust, no views, no eyeballs to sell to advertising, no money.
That's how advertising is supposed to work. And like everything, for the bits of it that don't always linue up with that there is regulation to fill in the blanks.
@MudMan there is no regulation whatsoever in journalism against corruption or writing favorable things about people who buy ads in your publication.
The adage is still relevant today: you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
@boilingsteam
Again, that's why reviewers tend to absolutely flip the lid when a marketing, advertising or sales guy wants to drive the editorial.
If you become the shill then you're the shill forever. How the hell are you going to get an audience after that (and then monetize that audience by selling trusted ad space)?
That PR asshole not only is incorrectly guessing things he should know for a fact, he's harming the reputation of the journo, and thus getting rightfully blasted for it.
@boilingsteam What I don't get is how you're apparently running reviews yourself and out here posting that stuff without any sort of self-awareness.
Why should I trust your content if you assume everybody is out there selling undisclosed sponsorships? Should I assume if you think it's commonplace you're doing it, too? That seems reasonable. I mean, it's bad enough that you're aligning with a platform owner, but at least that's in the open, who knows what you're doing behind the scenes, right?
@MudMan Exactly. Don't trust anyone. Especially the ones who do that for a living. I don't, so there's always that, and Boiling Steam has no ads at all and never had any. because we don't believe in ads. So there's that, too.
@boilingsteam If the average metacritic score was the same between pros and users you wouldn't need pros.
Users only rate things a 10 or a 0, because the only reason to go to the trouble of posting about a thing is you either love it or hate it. Pros see a lot of stuff and do this for a loving, so they are bring a perspective that doesn't involve being raving mad at a thing or shilling for it.
THAT is why the averages are different. That and the practicalities of writing pre-release reviews.
@MudMan that's a ridiculous take. User reviews are far from being 10 or zeroes. I check user reviews the whole time on metacritic and there's a good range in every type of rating, which does not exist in gaming publications since everything gets 7.0+ by default
@boilingsteam
Hey, cards on the table, since it seems like this is entirely about you console wars-ing for Valve and being mad that a competitor would get any mainstream traction at all.
I own a Steam Deck. Mostly like it, except the bad things about it. I then went on to buy a GPD Win 4 and that's been my primary handheld. I don't own an Ally and have no plans to get one because it seems rather janky.
We cool? Cool.
@MudMan As far as I know I was not accusing you of anything :-) So I did not assume you were paid by ASUS or something, so yeah we are cool
@boilingsteam Well, yeah. No ads, so where does the money come from? If you are actively supporting a billion dollar corporation and feature no ads I have to assume you work for them, right? If you can't see the ads, then the content IS the ad, right?
Only, to be clear, I don't actually think that. I'm pretty sure you're a fan with a creative streak. Just like everybody else is. In my experience, being a critic often involves being WAY harsher than you'd be otherwise.
@MudMan
I mean, I have always been fairly transparent that I don't write for money, as I have other occupations in life for that. That's precisely why a blog is a blog and not a publication driven by profits.
Also, you can see I have been critical of Valve numerous times, more so than anyone else in the Linux community.
@boilingsteam
It's neither ridiculous nor up for discussion, it's a well established fact.
I pulled the shot below completely at random, and it's anecdotal, but you're free to check with a proper sample of real data. I have, because again, did this for a living. User scores are more extreme by a LOT, to the point where many places just switch to thumbs up/down, because the scale is so underused in the middle.
@MudMan anecdotes are not going to convince anyone because I just found the opposite if what you found by just picking the latest Zelda on the home of Metacritic and here is the user scores:
If you want to make a point like that you need to scrape data from both publications and users and you will see exactly what it looks like there. Anything else is just meaningless
@boilingsteam Yeah, but I don't need to believe that, do I?
You *could* be a paid shill for Valve, just like I *could* have been taking money from publishers to write positive reviews.
If your assumption is that people who disagree with you are corrupt and that's the default for a whole field of professionals, regardless of the actual situation, then there is no real bottom to the barrel of conspiracy and paranoia.
Sure, you don't know for sure. But I can tell you for sure that influencers who push 20 videos per week with millions of followers DO that for MONEY. There is not even any kind of doubt there, because we know how much money Youtube ads bring back with that kind of volume. And that's before even considering the fact that they can have additional sponsorships.
@boilingsteam I have scraped data from publications and users. Again, did this for a living.
Won't share that data, for a number of professional reasons but I assure you I'm not lying.
I do invite you to pull whatever amount of it you think is relevant, because the great thing about data is that it says the same thing no matter who collects it.
It's not that hard to pull chunks of data from most aggregators, even manually. Just go, pull 30 or 40 games and put the numbers on a spreadsheet.
@boilingsteam
Of course they do it for money That's what being a professional at something means.
What I'm trying to impress here is that the money comes from you being a trusted source, if your business is reviews, so selling out is *bad for business*. Like, really bad. Like, lose your shit at PR guys implying you're biased bad because it threatens your source of revenue bad.
The money comes from your reviews being useful, and useful means not being an ad.
> The money comes from your reviews being useful, and useful means not being an ad.
Yeah, but there is no telling when the tide can turn. You can be a honest source at the beginning and end up being corrupted by money. That's the story of every rockstar!
@boilingsteam
Mostly that user reviews are largely extreme scores, that they are very time-specific (which is why Steam has one rating for all-time and a different rating for recent reviews) and that they tend to overreact to technical issues regadless of how major or widespread (so, if your game runs poorly in your PC you'll go there and give it a zero even if you're the only one with the problem or it's a relatively minor issue).
Which all tracks, it's not like any of that is surprising.
> In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) establishes that, in many situations, for independent and identically distributed random variables, the sampling distribution of the standardized sample mean tends towards the standard normal distribution even if the original variables themselves are not normally distributed.
@boilingsteam
Right. So if you can't trust anybody, then you can't trust *anybody*, you inclulded.
So I have to assume you're a paid shill. Maybe you weren't at first but they just got to you, right?
I mean, I don't even know if the original guy does all their discloures properly. I do know that I don't accuse people of that unless I *know*, because I don't hurt just that guy, I hurt everybody by perpetuating the assuption that disagreement equals corruption. Which sucks.
@MudMan
Hey, I don't know if ETA PRIME is paid by ASUS even though I strongly suspect so. I can always be wrong.
But paying online influencers is a thing, and it's a very, very, widespread practice. If you don't think that exists, then we live in two different worlds.
@boilingsteam
From what I know about him his schtick is getting access to review units of tons of handhelds and churning out lots of videos about whatever is the latest entry on the scene, but he will call out the negatives.
Paying influencers is a real issue and disclosures are needed for that reason, which is why Youtube (and others) have rules about it, leat alone different advertising supervisors.
So if you don't know you shouldn't accuse him of it unless you want the same done to you.
> which is why Youtube (and others) have rules about it
Such rules are useless because this is self reporting and we all know how well self-reporting works in all situations
This is just the Youtube team ticking a box to pretend they are doing something about it
@boilingsteam Alright, I'm not gonna talk in circles about this. My point was that the guy discloses his affiliate links, so it'd be weird to not disclose a sponsorship just in this case. I've explained why accusing baselessly is irresponsible and self-defeating.
It's up to you if that makes enough sense to adjust your perspective. I have no horse in the race, I don't write reviews, either professionally or for fun at this point.
@MudMan For the comment related to undisclosed sponsorship, I am not talking specifically about this case here, but in general. There is no way for youtube to enforce it expect trusting people to do the right thing. And when there is no chance to be caught, you should expect bad behavior to thrive.