Penny Arcade Disses CU Fans for Spamming Journalists to cover the Kickstarter

[Maios]

If your trying to do damage control, I would advise to let the topic die. The reasonable people already know it was a mistake. The reasonable people already know that PA is correct and the article was appropriate. The reasonable people already know the article served it's purpose of giving coverage with a rebuke. It's seriously doing more harm than good to try paint the spam as innocent and PA as wrong.

[SmudgePudge]

If your trying to do damage control, I would advise to let the topic die. The reasonable people already know it was a mistake. The reasonable people already know that PA is correct and the article was appropriate. The reasonable people already know the article served it's purpose of giving coverage with a rebuke. It's seriously doing more harm than good to try paint the spam as innocent and PA as wrong.

The game is funded and had received much love from the media before the PA article so I don't see why damage control would be necessary. Short of getting an Outlook virus you can't innocently spam and I certainly wasn't attempting to suggest that. My initial point was a)acting like spam is harassment is ridiculous and b)saying that you are punishing a game because some fans spammed your inbox or your youtube channel is wrong. Don't cover the game, cover the game positively or negatively, whatever, but if people want to be thought of as journalists they need to maintain some journalistic integrity.

[Abstieg]

There is a comment on the Kickstarter (linked in the PA Report article) where someone gives a list of 20+ gaming news websites to contact, along with a pre-written e-mail to copy+paste. That isn't fans of the particular sites tipping the staff to something they may find interesting, it's an annoyance and a harassment. To make matters worse it seems the mailing list was also copy+pasted from another kickstarter for a different game.

Except the "email copy/paste" was not for the email. Granted, it was poorly formatted and worded, but the call for emails clearly stated a single, personal email. Sure, people misinterpreted that, and yeah, that fault lies on the fans who chose to simply copy/paste, but it's not harassment. That's absurd.

[Maios]

a) spamming can be harassment.
b) if PA was the arbiter of all gaming news, you might have something to complain about here. Otherwise, he's an annoyed guy with a platform that you don't have. His coverage was exactly his impression: "Wow, there's some game called CU that looks popular but they're spamming the shit out of me".

[Abstieg]

a) spamming can be harassment.
b) if PA was the arbiter of all gaming news, you might have something to complain about here. Otherwise, he's an annoyed guy with a platform that you don't have. His coverage was exactly his impression: "Wow, there's some game called CU that looks popular but they're spamming the shit out of me".

Is it spamming if you send one email to a guy, but a bunch of others do too without your knowledge?

[Maios]

Is it spamming if you send one email to a guy, but a bunch of others to do without your knowledge?

To the recipient, yes.

[Abstieg]

To the recipient, yes.

Enough that you bitch about it and call the game a scam on Twitter? I'm not arguing that to Ben, it was annoying. But his response to it was a bit excessive, especially considering MJ reached out to him and apologized for the situation before the article was posted.

[Dhrizzle]

Except the "email copy/paste" was not for the email. Granted, it was poorly formatted and worded, but the call for emails clearly stated a single, personal email. Sure, people misinterpreted that, and yeah, that fault lies on the fans who chose to simply copy/paste, but it's not harassment. That's absurd.

The term used was a single, polite e-mail; and immediately after the list is the phrase "feel free to copy/paste this wherever you feel the need" followed by the letter. So personally I think the problem came from the message transmitted, not how it was received.

Still, copy+paste or not, the "spec ops style approach" (as the author describes it) still calls on the community to contact websites and people they otherwise would not interact with to draw attention. If someone did that to me I would feel harassed, as did Ben Kuchara and (according to his article) several other editors. It may not be intended as such but it was the result.

[Maios]

Enough that you bitch about it and call the game a scam on Twitter? I'm not arguing that to Ben, it was annoying. But his response to it was a bit excessive, especially considering MJ reached out to him and apologized for the situation before the article was posted.

Link tweet, I'm not seeing it.

[Abstieg]

The term used was a single, polite e-mail; and immediately after the list is the phrase "feel free to copy/paste this wherever you feel the need" followed by the letter. So personally I think the problem came from the message transmitted, not how it was received.

Still, copy+paste or not, the "spec ops style approach" (as the author describes it) still calls on the community to contact websites and people they otherwise would not interact with to draw attention. If someone did that to me I would feel harassed, as did Ben Kuchara and (according to his article) several other editors. It may not be intended as such but it was the result.

I agree that the formatting was poor.

Game reporters cannot feel harassed by fans of a game encouraging them to cover it. That's ridiculous. They can be annoyed if a lot of people email them (which happened) but they can't feel harassed about it. It's their job to listen to that talk. The fact that Ben hadn't even heard of Camelot Unchained is a bad sign for his integrity, as it has been one of the largest kickstarters in the past month, and has gotten a lot of coverage.

How many people interact with website reporters on a regular basis? Regulating contacting them to only those who you interact with is a terrible strategy.

Link tweet, I'm not seeing it.

Apologies, I suck at Twitter. BenKuchera ‏@BenKuchera 30 Apr

@#### @########## Sadly, those concerted efforts make the game seem scammy. It's why I've stayed away. Everyone uses the same wording.

[SmudgePudge]

Wiki on harassment:
It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset, and it is characteristically repetitive.

Obviously no one would attempt to disturb or upset someone they were asking for coverage from. And it was only repetitive until the person spamming was notified that the receiver was upset. Then it stopped.

Pretty much NOT harassment at all. If someone does something to you that you find annoying and you ask them to stop and they do, it isn't harassment.

[Maios]

Apologies, I suck at Twitter. BenKuchera ‏@BenKuchera 30 Apr

@#### @########## Sadly, those concerted efforts make the game seem scammy. It's why I've stayed away. Everyone uses the same wording.

I will give you that that's a bit rude.

[Dhrizzle]

Game reporters cannot feel harassed by fans of a game encouraging them to cover it. That's ridiculous. They can be annoyed if a lot of people email them (which happened) but they can't feel harassed about it. It's their job to listen to that talk. The fact that Ben hadn't even heard of Camelot Unchained is a bad sign for his integrity, as it has been one of the largest kickstarters in the past month, and has gotten a lot of coverage.

He was annoyed and disturbed by repeated e-mails urging him to check out the same game, that's a pretty text-book definition of harassment even if it was unintentional.

How many people interact with website reporters on a regular basis? Regulating contacting them to only those who you interact with is a terrible strategy.

Their readers interact with them every time they read with one of those articles. If there are PA readers in the CU community they should have contacted them without resorting to "Operation Rambo, Unicorn, Camelot, Unchained".

[Abstieg]

So it's harassment to email someone having no idea how many people have emailed them already? No, that's not harassment. It can feel like it, and it can certainly feel like spam, justifiably, but it's NOT harassment.

[Dhrizzle]

So it's harassment to email someone having no idea how many people have emailed them already? No, that's not harassment. It can feel like it, and it can certainly feel like spam, justifiably, but it's NOT harassment.

It's really simple; the guy feels harassed therefore it is harassment. It doesn't matter if it's unintentional. It doesn't matter if each individual was unaware other e-mails were sent (although I can not stress enough that the post orchestrating the e-mails started "Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE I have developed a spec opcs style approach to help us fund before time runs out. I call it, operation Rambo, Unicorn, Camelot Unchained aka RU-CU?" so claiming ignorance of other e-mails would be a bit weak); the fact is they received repeated e-mails, often with the same wording, that they found annoying and disturbing, they felt harassed, it was harassment.

[Slaughty8]

--You are off the freaking deep end with this one. This was the line that made me question your English skills because I honestly can't believe someone would knowingly write such a thing. 'I despise this behaviour' - get off your Throne of Judgment for a bit and come back to reality. Someone got carried away and you suggest fines and courts??

Yes I suggest fines and courts because their behaviour was an harrasment and they acted without thinking "what would it be like on the other side? How does it feel to have a job depending on emails and have 500 spam-mails about one thing so this paralyzed my work?"...
I am fully into fines and courts for any uncontroled behaviour and "carried away" stuff. Those ppl must be punished so they will think the second time before making any stupid things.

And yes, I love my Throne of Judgement, because I am rational, reasonable person and intelligent, unlike those spammers.

Btw, thanks for the answer. I understood everything.

[Auxis]

Just curious, what happens if a Kickstarter doesn't reach the pledge goal?

[vizzle]

My initial point was a)acting like spam is harassment is ridiculous and b)saying that you are punishing a game because some fans spammed your inbox or your youtube channel is wrong. Don't cover the game, cover the game positively or negatively, whatever, but if people want to be thought of as journalists they need to maintain some journalistic integrity.

Give me your email and I'll show you how emails can be harassment.

[Slaughty8]

Email spams are harrasment and are punishable, at least in my country.

Why reasonable ppl percieve this situation as a bad thing:
- it was organized spam
- it made journalists' email paralyzed
- it was unneccessary, spammers acted out of control and have been driven by desperation, if the game have been fund, they woulnd't do it. Feeling of "the game must be fund or my world is collapsed" was out of control
- spamers acted like it was a matter of life or death because of a game, this and point above are more than enough to think badly about them
- CU is a company, they have to do the PR by themselves, if I was CSE I would find everybody behind this spam and go to the court OR just simply ignore Time and others, instead of worrying about him...
- any game ever had such a story, and it's not a positive thing for CU and CSE to have it first...
- by apologizing, Mark is only showing apprecation for spammers efforts, this is bad

and many more

[SmudgePudge]

LOL

Ok, Ok... call off the trolls. Slaughty8 - you win bud. Not sure what you are sniffing but it's stronger than what I'm drinking. You are so far out there that I can't even begin to comprehend where to go next.

Cheers and goodnight.

---------- Post added 2013-05-01 at 10:55 PM ----------

Give me your email and I'll show you how emails can be harassment.

Good point actually. Say I gave you my email address and you started spamming my account. THAT would certainly be harassment. You would be setting out with the goal of causing me problems. If I asked you to stop and you didn't now we are DEFINITELY into harassment territory.

Perfect analogy for describing what is, and conversely what isn't, harassment.

---------- Post added 2013-05-01 at 10:56 PM ----------

Just curious, what happens if a Kickstarter doesn't reach the pledge goal?

Then Amazon doesn't take any money from the pledgers and the company gets nothing.