Bethesda DMCAs Its Official Twitter Account Trying To Stop ‘Redfall’ Leaks
from the seeing-red dept
We’re getting into the warmer seasons, which means AAA games are coming up for release dates. It also means that leaks of content, or sometimes the entire games, for those AAA games are coming out as well. We just talked about several leaks coming out for Nintendo’s latest Zelda title. And now, right on the cusp of Bethesda’s release of the much anticipated Redfall, the publisher is very busy trying to nuke every bit of leaked content it can sniff out on the internet. Including, briefly, images of Redfall appearing on its own official Twitter account.
Eager to prevent leaks from making it out into the world with only a few hours to go until launch, Bethesda is being extra vigilant, issuing takedown and copyright strikes wherever unapproved Redfall images and footage might pop up. Perhaps a little too vigilant actually, as the studio managed to copyright strike itself.
Both GamePitt and PMS Jordan shared screenshots of the evidence, which showed Redfall’s Twitter account with the banner image removed. Not just removed, which has been happening for no reason to a lot of people since Twitter started to crumble beneath our virtual feet, but replaced with a grey rectangle. On it, a message reads “The image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder”.
Policing copyrights is hard! So hard, in fact, that sometimes you pull the trigger on your DMCA gun only to find that you had it pointed at your own head.
While this certainly does cause me to wonder aloud whether there were other mistakes made in the DMCA blitz Bethesda has undertaken, in particular the potential for the blitz to have caught up instances that would qualify as fair use, it also makes me wonder just how useful these anti-leak campaigns really are. A good portion of this content that is being taken down are images and the like that most publishers, likely including Bethesda, wouldn’t give a flying damn about post-release. Given everything else going on publicly with this particular game, is attempting to bottle up leaks on the internet really anyone’s best use of time?
Not only does it have a very small and crowded window in which to operate, but Redfall’s build-up to launch has also been plagued with backlash. Gamers have taken issue with its always-online requirement, the inclusion of Denuvo DRM, and an FPS cap on consoles.
If nothing else, I’ll have to thank Bethesda for making this game in such a way that it will almost certainly give me other future posts in which to write about it.
Filed Under: copyright, dmca, leaks, redfall, video games
Companies: bethesda
Comments on “Bethesda DMCAs Its Official Twitter Account Trying To Stop ‘Redfall’ Leaks”
They probably used some brain-dead 3rd party service that guarantees “100% removal!!!1”.
And now that the reviews are out, we know why they policed it so hard: the game Not Good.
Re:
Saw some of the same reviews. Which makes me very sad; I was looking forward to this title.
Re: Re:
Well maybe in 6 months when they release a patch to get the game closer to what it should have been at launch.
Re: Re: Re:
You mean wait 6 months for the community to provide a mod to make the game closer to what it should have been at launch. Cause I’m not going near any Bethesda game that just launched till the modding community has had their chance at it.
Re: Re: Re:2
Eh, Denuvo adds a fair bit of difficulty in that department… So I imagine any modding community that forms would be rather small in comparison.
I mean just look at all the hoops people jump through with modding Dragon Age: Inquisition. Mod manager needing to ask as a wrapper for it to work at all. Most of the time modded hair/outfits generally have to replace something from the vanilla game. Often times mods just don’t work during the trespasser dlc.
Re: Re: Re:
Don’t mind me. I’m waiting for them to remove the “always online” and “DRM” elements.
I can wait, and wait, and wait…
Re: Re: Re:2
At the current rates 6 hours after launch there will be a DRM free version online somewhere.
Re: Re: Re:
From the reviews I’ve seen, the poor decisions run too deep. Lack of multiple ways in which to approach objectives, empty world, threadbare story, etc.
Generally companies take the cheap way out. So it’s cheaper to release a buggy game, get bad reviews, and then patch it up months later (lookin at you No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077) because…quarterly gains?
Re:
No Man’s Sky has never charged a penny for any of its dozen or so major updates. The game is almost unrecognizable now compared to what it was at launch. Mind you, they are still charging you close to full price to buy the game, but once you do you get ALL the updates they have done since launch and every future update at no extra cost.
You know what I could with less of?
Games glorifying “shooter”