Valve has a new game in the works, Deadlock, even though it also doesn’t have a new game in the works at all. Deadlock is an unannounced hero shooter that tens of thousands of people were playing over the weekend, including streamers and journalists who have just been asked to… please not talk about it?
Yesterday, The Verge wrote up their impressions of Deadlock, which reporter Sean Hollister “received a no-strings-attached invite” for. According to Hollister, the game features a pop-up reminding players that it’s still in development, and saying “Do not share anything about the game with anyone.” Hollister wrote that this message popped up on launch, but that he "didn’t click ‘OK’; instead, I hit the Escape key and watched it disappear.”
“I’m not under NDA. I have signed no contracts and made no verbal agreements,” Hollister wrote. “I haven’t even clicked through a EULA.”
As we’ve written before, companies will often attach caveats to game access they provide journalists, which can be an embargo (agreeing not to publish something until a certain time) or a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA (a legally-binding contract about what a journalist can or cannot say). A dismissable pop-up is neither of those things; Hollister didn’t agree to any special rules in exchange for Deadlock access, or break any agreements by writing it up, and he apparently wasn’t even required to agree to Valve’s ask, though this seems to me like a technical oversight rather than an intended option.
This hasn’t stopped some people from being very mad at The Verge, with Verge commenters calling Hollister “a bad journalist,” saying it’s a “scummy thing to blog about,” and that the post “kinda goes against the spirit of gaming industry ethics.” Comments under Verge staffers’ tweets are equally outraged, citing unprofessionalism and calling it “karma” that Hollister was banned from multiplayer, even though he wrote that “the current build lets anyone with a copy invite as many Steam friends as they’d like to give it a try, too.”
Was The Verge publishing this story a nice thing to do? Not really: Valve asked people with Deadlock access not to share about it, and it’s not very nice to ignore requests someone makes of you. But while no good journalist sets out to intentionally hurt someone, the profession requires honesty and fairness over niceness. This can be complicated, and all journalists struggle with it. The news value of The Verge’s story is clear–Valve has been bizarrely secretive about Deadlock, a game thousands of people are currently playing. Readers are right to want to know more about it, and what it’s like to play, and Hollister can tell them that while still adhering to journalistic ethics: he didn’t get access illicitly, or misrepresent himself, or break any agreements.
This isn’t even a situation specific to journalism; Hollister was not granted special access to the game because of his profession, and there is nothing to stop any player from doing what he did. In fact, plenty of other people have; I can find YouTube videos and Twitch streams of the game easily. Valve could crack down on these by, I imagine, removing these people’s access to Deadlock, or potentially taking other action if they clicked the “OK” button Hollister was able to ignore. The Verge could face bigger consequences; Valve could blacklist the outlet, and while I would consider that petty–especially since the company’s tech permitted Hollister to dismiss the agreement–Valve is under no obligation to give The Verge access to its games or reply to the outlet’s questions, the same way The Verge is under no obligation to do what Valve wants regarding its game if there wasn’t a formal agreement.
There are broader questions here about the relationships between game companies and journalists, something that’s become more and more a topic of conversation since December’s Insomniac hack. Impressions from a news outlet, especially one with the reputation of The Verge, have the power to shape public perception of Deadlock. The Verge’s article surely goes against whatever Valve’s completely baffling marketing plan for Deadlock is, but, again, over 16,000 people are playing this game right now and forming opinions of it. Hollister’s responsibility is to inform readers, and he’s done that, even if it wasn’t in the way Valve might have wanted.
While I wouldn’t fault anyone at Valve for being a bit pissed at this situation, I’d call this journalism functioning as intended: honestly obtaining true information that matters to readers. The lines between games journalists and publishers are already fuzzy, in a way that serves companies more than readers. It benefits all of us to shake that up.
