The Daily Grind: Should game bloggers disclose gifts?

Yesterday, the US Federal Trade Commission unanimously ruled that all press outlets be held to disclose any "material connections" to the products they review. This basically means that if you review a product that was given to you for free by the company, you must now disclose that fact in your review. Interestingly enough, this ruling also dictates bloggers as well.

As part of the Joystiq network of blogs, Massively is actually held to an integrity policy that prevents us from accepting gifts valued over $20. This includes everything from airfare for studio visits to the games themselves -- we must turn them down. And while this new FTC ruling is not actually a law, we are excited to see that our long-standing policies safeguard us from any integrity issues. Plus, we simply don't review MMOs.

So now we're curious to hear what you think of this decision by the FTC. Do you think this will bring about a drastic change to all MMO reviewers out there? Can you trust a reviewer, knowing they were given a free game or travel expenses to visit a studio? Let us know what you think about this entire issue in the comments below!

Reader Comments (24)

Gushing about games that advertise on your sites is part of that rule so I hope that Massively discloses this every time they talk about Eve and Champions since the amount of press they give these 2 games is in proportion to the advertising dollars and free accounts they get from those game publishers.

I think the distinction made in law is that bloggers who receive gifts from companies are no longer bloggers, but are now a component of the company's ad campaign.

I believe the sentiment is fine, but I despise the fact that the FTC thinks it's the government's job to enforce it.

This is one of those things we didn't need a law about. We could just have handled this within the community. This is just one more law that's incredibly hard to enforce and can easily be abused by unethical pricks.

This sort of regulation falls outside the authority of the Federal government, yet they'll do it anyway. It shouldn't be done, but it will be. The FCC should be eliminated, but it won't. All you can do, until you're willing to give up your government redistribution programs, is suck it up when the big government shows up and takes away your liberties. It shouldn't matter if someone gets free gifts or not. If a blogger consistently makes bad recommendations, no one will pay attention anymore. We don't need Mr. Nanny State to protect us from that. We'll do a good job on our own.

The Daily Grind: Should game bloggers disclose gifts?

Reader Comments (24)

Posted: Oct 6th 2009 8:35PM Suspiro said

Posted: Oct 6th 2009 10:41PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 7th 2009 2:37AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 7th 2009 4:38AM LaughingTarget said

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