All the barroom lawyers need to take deep breath, another drink and then go home. You cannot sue over a bad review - period. Reviews are total opinion pieces and nothing more. I could post a 500 page blog on why Coca-Cola is the worst tasting soda ever and there is nada they could do about it. Some guy played some amount of time in DF, or maybe he didn't, doesn't matter in the slightest. I could "review" DF for MMORPG.COM and give it a one out of ten and there is nothing you could do about it legally anywheres that matters. The reviewer did not accuse Tasos or AV of any crimes, fraud, immorality or defame him in any significant manner, he just said the game basically sucks...it's an opinion, deal with it.
I'll tell you what. You make up a story about how you found a dead rat inside a coca cola can, publish the story in a widely read magazine, and we'll see what Coca Cola does. Good luck.
"Whether he's lied in the past or not is inadmissible character evidence."
Ummm...no. Tasos choose to reply to the review, and by doing that, he and his entire posting history going back several years would be allowable. And that would get ugly fast.
That's an interesting point, although I'm not really sure that would open the door to character evendence, which is generally inadmissable.
Sorry, I'm in california, so I'm more familiar with the California evidence code. But it's farliy similar to the common law. I imagine a Judge would have to go through a relevency analysis. As it is, I'm not sure how much probative value it has on whether there are factual mistatements in the review or not.
Actually journey01, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if the case wouldn't go under a Euro court ( in which case I'd have no idea what case law would be ).
"Whether he's lied in the past or not is inadmissible character evidence."
Ummm...no. Tasos choose to reply to the review, and by doing that, he and his entire posting history going back several years would be allowable. And that would get ugly fast.
That's an interesting point, although I'm not really sure that would open the door to character evendence, which is generally inadmissable.
Sorry, I'm in california, so I'm more familiar with the California evidence code. But it's farliy similar to the common law. I imagine a Judge would have to go through a relevency analysis. As it is, I'm not sure how much probative value it has on whether there are factual mistatements in the review or not.
Actually journey01, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if the case wouldn't go under a Euro court ( in which case I'd have no idea what case law would be ).
So ignore my babble there....
Yah, that's why I mentioned international law in my first post. Although, there may be jurisdiction where Eurogamer's business headquarters are located. To keep things simple, I just applied the law that was posted.
"Whether he's lied in the past or not is inadmissible character evidence."
Ummm...no. Tasos choose to reply to the review, and by doing that, he and his entire posting history going back several years would be allowable. And that would get ugly fast.
That's an interesting point, although I'm not really sure that would open the door to character evendence, which is generally inadmissable.
Sorry, I'm in california, so I'm more familiar with the California evidence code. But it's farliy similar to the common law. I imagine a Judge would have to go through a relevency analysis. As it is, I'm not sure how much probative value it has on whether there are factual mistatements in the review or not.
Actually journey01, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if the case wouldn't go under a Euro court ( in which case I'd have no idea what case law would be ).
So ignore my babble there....
Acutally, the more I think about your original point, I'm wondering whether Tasos response would be admissible at all in alawsuit agains't Aventurine. Just legal talk, but what's the relevancy in a libel suit of the plaintiff saying that the alleged libelous material is a lie?
(This post is only for the legal analysis of this one question that Hammertime posed. For those not interested in this legal issue, please don't flame the question)
I'll tell you what. You make up a story about how you found a dead rat inside a coca cola can, publish the story in a widely read magazine, and we'll see what Coca Cola does. Good luck.
Nice twist, but that wouldn't be a *review* it would be slander and a deliberate attempt to defame the company.
The reviewer did not *lie* or make things up. He reviewed the game and expressed an opinion on it. There is a major difference that you and others seem to be deliberately ignoring.
See this would be the part you are ignoring or just not understanding:
The statement(s) alleged to be defamatory must also be a false statement of fact. That which is name-calling, hyperbole, or, however characterized, cannot be proven true or false, cannot be the subject of a libel or slander claim.
I (or anyone else) can say, publish etc, that game XX sucks, is unintuitive, has a bad UI, no story, is boring/repetitive etc and any and all variations of the theme because they are subjective opinion and have value only in so far as the reader values my opinion. Now trying to claim that game XX caused my cat to have a seizure (if it did not in fact do so) would be a both a direct claim and falsehood...or your rat in a can story....but that is a totally different matter.
I'll tell you what. You make up a story about how you found a dead rat inside a coca cola can, publish the story in a widely read magazine, and we'll see what Coca Cola does. Good luck.
Nice twist, but that wouldn't be a *review* it would be slander and a deliberate attempt to defame the company.
The reviewer did not *lie* or make things up. He reviewed the game and expressed an opinion on it. There is a major difference that you and others seem to be deliberately ignoring.
A review is supposed to be impersonal but can contain personal point of view but slander is not allowed, he basically attacked the community and the developers of the game by giving 2/10 which is ridiculous and the guy should be put of his job and the review pulled with a BIG apology.
This is really bad publicity for EG.
And yes he lied several times which why giving 2 out of 10 is even worse, don't review if you can't.
Originally posted by Zodan A review is supposed to be impersonal but can contain personal point of view but slander is not allowed, he basically attacked the community and the developers of the game by giving 2/10 which is ridiculous and the guy should be put of his job and the review pulled with a BIG apology. This is really bad publicity for EG.
I can agree completely with all of that, but that is on EG and the consumers/readers of EG to enforce. The reviewer comes across as unprofessional and badly biased even though I do think DF sucks - but that doesn't make it an actionable matter in court. Write to EG. bitch at their management all you want, that guy should probably not be invited to review again...but that is their internal problem and heck they may decide a reviewer who generates flame wars is better publicity than fluff reviews we get here at MMOrpg.com
Edit:
I'll just drop it here, because this isn'y going to go anywheres. Trying to prove that any of that was deliberate or even neglient factual error rather than hyperbole or insult is a morass that any decent lawyer would mire this in for as long as it took. Assuming any sane court would even hear this case and thats before you try and argue that any actual damages occurred to a game that the vast majority of the market has already dismissed; but feel free to offer Tasos legal advice.
I'll tell you what. You make up a story about how you found a dead rat inside a coca cola can, publish the story in a widely read magazine, and we'll see what Coca Cola does. Good luck.
Nice twist, but that wouldn't be a *review* it would be slander and a deliberate attempt to defame the company.
The reviewer did not *lie* or make things up. He reviewed the game and expressed an opinion on it. There is a major difference that you and others seem to be deliberately ignoring.
1. there were outright mis-statements of facts in the review, which is the required element for libel. There are big lists of all the misstatements of facts in the comment section of the Eurogamer review. I will just post one example: The reviewer said there is no tutorial. There is in fact a tutorial that pops up in the center of the screen when a new player enters the game and it covers most of the screen.
2. It doesn't require a "deliberate attempt," or what's legally known as specific intent. The element is a reckless disregard for the truth. Or even possibly negligence, depending on the state of the law, which just means that there were means to readily discover the truth and the publisher ignored them.
3. Would it make a difference if you called my made up story about the dead rat in a coke can a "review?" So put the word Review at the top of the page and publish the story. Let's play that scenario out.
Originally posted by Zodan A review is supposed to be impersonal but can contain personal point of view but slander is not allowed, he basically attacked the community and the developers of the game by giving 2/10 which is ridiculous and the guy should be put of his job and the review pulled with a BIG apology. This is really bad publicity for EG.
I can agree completely with all of that, but that is on EG and the consumers/readers of EG to enforce. The reviewer comes across as unprofessional and badly biased even though I do think DF sucks - but that doesn't make it an actionable matter in court. Write to EG. bitch at their management all you want, that guy should probably not be invited to review again...but that is their internal problem and heck they may decide a reviewer who generates flame wars is better publicity than fluff reviews we get here at MMOrpg.com
What does make it actionable in court, potentially, is whether it fullfills the elements that the OP listed. See my initial analysis about whether a lawsuit would be viable following those guidelines.
This flame war has been extremely entertaining all around. Hopefully something good comes out of this - perhaps dissolution of the 10 point scoring system. edit: Taking this to the court starts to sound more and more plausible.
hehe, I'm not trying to start a flame war. I just find the legal analysis fascinating...
I think the whole libel law doesn't apply since we are talking about a personal opinion on a product. And not an attack on a person. And as far as I know this is fully allowed in the EU under freedom of press and freedom of speech, whether the reviewer in question did a good job or not.
edit: There wouldn't be many reviewers left if they could be sued just like that over being very negative, making false claims or doing a product a disservice in general. Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation is a nice example of a game critic who fully focuses on the negative aspects of newly released games and he has been doing so for quite some time, yet he doesn't get dragged to court; since his job is having an opinion and that is what we are allowed to have in most countries nowadays.
edit II: If defamation could be applied to a game review, it could also be applied on every negative post with inacuracies on this board.
I think the whole libel law doesn't apply since we are talking about a personal opinion on a product. And not an attack on a person. And as far as I know this is fully allowed in the EU under freedom of press and freedom of speech, whether the reviewer in question did a good job or not.
This.
You cannot sue over an OPINION. Imagine if every paper, every reviewer, every editorial is sued over something negative, there would be lawsuits flying all over the place. Opinion is NOT fact, now if you claimed something as fact , then yes you would have to prove that libel occured and with malicious intent, but a review, no.
I loved the movie Hudson Hawk, but it was trashed by every reviewer out there :P
I think the whole libel law doesn't apply since we are talking about a personal opinion on a product. And not an attack on a person. And as far as I know this is fully allowed in the EU under freedom of press and freedom of speech, whether the reviewer in question did a good job or not.
This.
You cannot sue over an OPINION. Imagine if every paper, every reviewer, every editorial is sued over something negative, there would be lawsuits flying all over the place. Opinion is NOT fact, now if you claimed something as fact , then yes you would have to prove that libel occured and with malicious intent, but a review, no.
I loved the movie Hudson Hawk, but it was trashed by every reviewer out there :P
I loved it as well! Especially the scenes where they time their heists to certain songs. That was friggin' brilliant! Sad to hear it was reviewed so badly. Hard to see why, really.
Eurogamer is a uk based company. Adventurone a greece one, so case, if adventurine found a lawyer that advise them to go, would be ruled in europe. And in europe its not as easy to sue people o companies as in the US, as people suing tobacco companis after US case was won found. All of them were dismissed with a common argument ( tabacco effects a widespread known, you smoke at your own risk). So suing someones for his opinions in a public theme? Very hard an no future
We still live in countries with a minimum of freedom of expression, and until it changed recently, giving a negative review of a video game, or of a movie, TV series, artwork or anything else isn't against any law.
If they sue Eurogamer for this, they will only be mocked by the judge during the trial, nothing more.
I say "Darkfall sucks and is one of the most crappy MMO release ever".
Please sue me.
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
We still live in countries with a minimum of freedom of expression, and until it changed recently, giving a negative review of a video game, or of a movie, TV series, artwork or anything else isn't against any law. If they sue Eurogamer for this, they will only be mocked by the judge during the trial, nothing more. I say "Darkfall sucks and is one of the most crappy MMO release ever". Please sue me.
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE-------------------------------------------------- $OE - eternal enemy of online gaming -We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
We still live in countries with a minimum of freedom of expression, and until it changed recently, giving a negative review of a video game, or of a movie, TV series, artwork or anything else isn't against any law. If they sue Eurogamer for this, they will only be mocked by the judge during the trial, nothing more. I say "Darkfall sucks and is one of the most crappy MMO release ever". Please sue me.
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
I'm not really surprised that you can't see the difference between that song that incites to murder and violence and the negative review of a video game. We all know you're gonna use the silliest non-arguments to try to defend your fetish game.
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
We still live in countries with a minimum of freedom of expression, and until it changed recently, giving a negative review of a video game, or of a movie, TV series, artwork or anything else isn't against any law. If they sue Eurogamer for this, they will only be mocked by the judge during the trial, nothing more. I say "Darkfall sucks and is one of the most crappy MMO release ever". Please sue me.
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
I'm not really surprised that you can't see the difference between that song that incites to murder and violence and the negative review of a video game. We all know you're gonna use the silliest non-arguments to try to defend your fetish game.
I am not surprised your use "freedom of expression" in a way of a hypocrite would use.
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE-------------------------------------------------- $OE - eternal enemy of online gaming -We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
We still live in countries with a minimum of freedom of expression, and until it changed recently, giving a negative review of a video game, or of a movie, TV series, artwork or anything else isn't against any law. If they sue Eurogamer for this, they will only be mocked by the judge during the trial, nothing more. I say "Darkfall sucks and is one of the most crappy MMO release ever". Please sue me.
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
I'm not really surprised that you can't see the difference between that song that incites to murder and violence and the negative review of a video game. We all know you're gonna use the silliest non-arguments to try to defend your fetish game.
I am not surprised your use "freedom of expression" in a way of a hypocrite would use.
Incitation to violence and murder is against the law.
Making negative reviews of video games is not.
If you can't see the difference between the two, you're hopeless. If you can't see what's wrong with a guy encouraging and praising the murder of policemen (or any other human, by the way), you need help. Freedom doesn't need being able to murder everyone that annoys you, or even encourage it. That's not freedom, that's anarchy. But from your posting habits here, I doubt you have the maturity to understand the difference, anyway.
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
I skimmed the thread and someone may have brought this up.
Beyond the fact that I don't know how EU law works in general compared to US law (home of the lawsuit) its hard to say.
To prove Slander/Libel in the US you have to prove that it is reasonable to believe the person knew what they stated was false. So unless there is something you can point to as a blatant lie... you are pretty screwed for a lawsuit.
There has to be some objective thing you can point to. Games are a form of art and art is considered to be objective. So if the review is just negative .. no matter how negative there is nothing you can do. You are allowed to state your opinion and when it comes to subjective material...
If you have 100 people go into the court who tried Darkfall... you will most likely get a split of:
1) It sucked
2) Its great.
3) More neutral
That's basicly how you could define subjective...
I've never been able to buy the game... and I didn't read the review. So was there anything in there that could be proven to be 100% false... and that the person if they had played the game would know to be 100% false?
Also remember at least some EU areas.. if you sue someone and lose... you have to pay all of their fees (unlike the US where there is no negative consequence to losing a lawsuit).
As opposed to... When the review came out there was a thread here where someone stated "Tasos say he can prove the person who did the review never logged in."
Was that ever stated by him? I ask simply because later there was a claim that they found the person had played some minimum amount of hours.... So if Tasos did make that claim.. the reviewer could in fact sue him.... I didn't see anything written by him so I am just asking a random thing because there was a thread here that said that. (aka you can't prove someone never logged into your system if at the same time you are saying they logged in for some period of time ie: 2 or 3 hours. You would know that any amount of time is greater than 0 thus knew what you stated was false... )
We still live in countries with a minimum of freedom of expression, and until it changed recently, giving a negative review of a video game, or of a movie, TV series, artwork or anything else isn't against any law. If they sue Eurogamer for this, they will only be mocked by the judge during the trial, nothing more. I say "Darkfall sucks and is one of the most crappy MMO release ever". Please sue me.
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
I'm not really surprised that you can't see the difference between that song that incites to murder and violence and the negative review of a video game. We all know you're gonna use the silliest non-arguments to try to defend your fetish game.
I am not surprised your use "freedom of expression" in a way of a hypocrite would use.
Incitation to violence and murder is against the law.
Making negative reviews of video games is not.
If you can't see the difference between the two, you're hopeless. If you can't see what's wrong with a guy encouraging and praising the murder of policemen (or any other human, by the way), you need help. Freedom doesn't need being able to murder everyone that annoys you, or even encourage it. That's not freedom, that's anarchy. But from your posting habits here, I doubt you have the maturity to understand the difference, anyway.
Except in these case Eddie-boy masked his attempt to villainize AV and the players in a form of a review, this against the law. Also an attempt to destroy jobs. At this point it calls for min a injunction suit and compensation and "freedom of expression" ends.
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE-------------------------------------------------- $OE - eternal enemy of online gaming -We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Originally posted by DarthRaiden Except in these case Eddie-boy masked his attempt to villainize AV and the players in a form of a review, this against the law. Also an attempt to destroy jobs. At this point it becomes a lawsuit case and "freedom of expression" ends.
Your reasonning is utterly flawed, because if we followed your logic, every movie critic who judged a movie negatively would be sued for the same reasons... same for book critics, etc... and we all know that's not what happens. Read Antarious's post about "subjectivity".
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Except in these case Eddie-boy masked his attempt to villainize AV and the players in a form of a review, this against the law. Also an attempt to destroy jobs. At this point it becomes a lawsuit case and "freedom of expression" ends.
it becomes nothing.
There is only one possible lawsuit that can actually come out of this.
That one is libel, and its against tasos for repeatedly calling someone a 'fraud' .
It wont happen though , because its not in the reviewers interest to validate the nonsensical ranting of Tasos by actually initiating a court case on it.
However, attracting this much negative attention to your own company, as tasos has done, when he has been continually, and still is, breaking European Distance selling Laws (which carry big enough fines to bankrupt his company) is probably not a wise move.
The fact he got so upset suggests the company itself is already on the edge. I wouldnt think Aventurine will be around long enough to get sued, or indeed, attempt to sue, anyone.
Comments
I'll tell you what. You make up a story about how you found a dead rat inside a coca cola can, publish the story in a widely read magazine, and we'll see what Coca Cola does. Good luck.
That's an interesting point, although I'm not really sure that would open the door to character evendence, which is generally inadmissable.
Sorry, I'm in california, so I'm more familiar with the California evidence code. But it's farliy similar to the common law. I imagine a Judge would have to go through a relevency analysis. As it is, I'm not sure how much probative value it has on whether there are factual mistatements in the review or not.
Actually journey01, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if the case wouldn't go under a Euro court ( in which case I'd have no idea what case law would be ).
So ignore my babble there....
That's an interesting point, although I'm not really sure that would open the door to character evendence, which is generally inadmissable.
Sorry, I'm in california, so I'm more familiar with the California evidence code. But it's farliy similar to the common law. I imagine a Judge would have to go through a relevency analysis. As it is, I'm not sure how much probative value it has on whether there are factual mistatements in the review or not.
Actually journey01, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if the case wouldn't go under a Euro court ( in which case I'd have no idea what case law would be ).
So ignore my babble there....
Yah, that's why I mentioned international law in my first post. Although, there may be jurisdiction where Eurogamer's business headquarters are located. To keep things simple, I just applied the law that was posted.
Kind of an interesting issue, really...
That's an interesting point, although I'm not really sure that would open the door to character evendence, which is generally inadmissable.
Sorry, I'm in california, so I'm more familiar with the California evidence code. But it's farliy similar to the common law. I imagine a Judge would have to go through a relevency analysis. As it is, I'm not sure how much probative value it has on whether there are factual mistatements in the review or not.
Actually journey01, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if the case wouldn't go under a Euro court ( in which case I'd have no idea what case law would be ).
So ignore my babble there....
Acutally, the more I think about your original point, I'm wondering whether Tasos response would be admissible at all in alawsuit agains't Aventurine. Just legal talk, but what's the relevancy in a libel suit of the plaintiff saying that the alleged libelous material is a lie?
(This post is only for the legal analysis of this one question that Hammertime posed. For those not interested in this legal issue, please don't flame the question)
Nice twist, but that wouldn't be a *review* it would be slander and a deliberate attempt to defame the company.
The reviewer did not *lie* or make things up. He reviewed the game and expressed an opinion on it. There is a major difference that you and others seem to be deliberately ignoring.
See this would be the part you are ignoring or just not understanding:
The statement(s) alleged to be defamatory must also be a false statement of fact. That which is name-calling, hyperbole, or, however characterized, cannot be proven true or false, cannot be the subject of a libel or slander claim.
I (or anyone else) can say, publish etc, that game XX sucks, is unintuitive, has a bad UI, no story, is boring/repetitive etc and any and all variations of the theme because they are subjective opinion and have value only in so far as the reader values my opinion. Now trying to claim that game XX caused my cat to have a seizure (if it did not in fact do so) would be a both a direct claim and falsehood...or your rat in a can story....but that is a totally different matter.
Nice twist, but that wouldn't be a *review* it would be slander and a deliberate attempt to defame the company.
The reviewer did not *lie* or make things up. He reviewed the game and expressed an opinion on it. There is a major difference that you and others seem to be deliberately ignoring.
A review is supposed to be impersonal but can contain personal point of view but slander is not allowed, he basically attacked the community and the developers of the game by giving 2/10 which is ridiculous and the guy should be put of his job and the review pulled with a BIG apology.
This is really bad publicity for EG.
And yes he lied several times which why giving 2 out of 10 is even worse, don't review if you can't.
I can agree completely with all of that, but that is on EG and the consumers/readers of EG to enforce. The reviewer comes across as unprofessional and badly biased even though I do think DF sucks - but that doesn't make it an actionable matter in court. Write to EG. bitch at their management all you want, that guy should probably not be invited to review again...but that is their internal problem and heck they may decide a reviewer who generates flame wars is better publicity than fluff reviews we get here at MMOrpg.com
Edit:
I'll just drop it here, because this isn'y going to go anywheres. Trying to prove that any of that was deliberate or even neglient factual error rather than hyperbole or insult is a morass that any decent lawyer would mire this in for as long as it took. Assuming any sane court would even hear this case and thats before you try and argue that any actual damages occurred to a game that the vast majority of the market has already dismissed; but feel free to offer Tasos legal advice.
Nice twist, but that wouldn't be a *review* it would be slander and a deliberate attempt to defame the company.
The reviewer did not *lie* or make things up. He reviewed the game and expressed an opinion on it. There is a major difference that you and others seem to be deliberately ignoring.
1. there were outright mis-statements of facts in the review, which is the required element for libel. There are big lists of all the misstatements of facts in the comment section of the Eurogamer review. I will just post one example: The reviewer said there is no tutorial. There is in fact a tutorial that pops up in the center of the screen when a new player enters the game and it covers most of the screen.
2. It doesn't require a "deliberate attempt," or what's legally known as specific intent. The element is a reckless disregard for the truth. Or even possibly negligence, depending on the state of the law, which just means that there were means to readily discover the truth and the publisher ignored them.
3. Would it make a difference if you called my made up story about the dead rat in a coke can a "review?" So put the word Review at the top of the page and publish the story. Let's play that scenario out.
This flame war has been extremely entertaining all around.
Hopefully something good comes out of this - perhaps dissolution of the 10 point scoring system.
edit: Taking this to the court starts to sound more and more plausible.
I can agree completely with all of that, but that is on EG and the consumers/readers of EG to enforce. The reviewer comes across as unprofessional and badly biased even though I do think DF sucks - but that doesn't make it an actionable matter in court. Write to EG. bitch at their management all you want, that guy should probably not be invited to review again...but that is their internal problem and heck they may decide a reviewer who generates flame wars is better publicity than fluff reviews we get here at MMOrpg.com
What does make it actionable in court, potentially, is whether it fullfills the elements that the OP listed. See my initial analysis about whether a lawsuit would be viable following those guidelines.
hehe, I'm not trying to start a flame war. I just find the legal analysis fascinating...
I think the whole libel law doesn't apply since we are talking about a personal opinion on a product. And not an attack on a person. And as far as I know this is fully allowed in the EU under freedom of press and freedom of speech, whether the reviewer in question did a good job or not.
edit: There wouldn't be many reviewers left if they could be sued just like that over being very negative, making false claims or doing a product a disservice in general. Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation is a nice example of a game critic who fully focuses on the negative aspects of newly released games and he has been doing so for quite some time, yet he doesn't get dragged to court; since his job is having an opinion and that is what we are allowed to have in most countries nowadays.
edit II: If defamation could be applied to a game review, it could also be applied on every negative post with inacuracies on this board.
My brand new bloggity blog.
This.
You cannot sue over an OPINION. Imagine if every paper, every reviewer, every editorial is sued over something negative, there would be lawsuits flying all over the place. Opinion is NOT fact, now if you claimed something as fact , then yes you would have to prove that libel occured and with malicious intent, but a review, no.
I loved the movie Hudson Hawk, but it was trashed by every reviewer out there :P
This.
You cannot sue over an OPINION. Imagine if every paper, every reviewer, every editorial is sued over something negative, there would be lawsuits flying all over the place. Opinion is NOT fact, now if you claimed something as fact , then yes you would have to prove that libel occured and with malicious intent, but a review, no.
I loved the movie Hudson Hawk, but it was trashed by every reviewer out there :P
I loved it as well!
Especially the scenes where they time their heists to certain songs. That was friggin' brilliant! Sad to hear it was reviewed so badly. Hard to see why, really.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Eurogamer is a uk based company. Adventurone a greece one, so case, if adventurine found a lawyer that advise them to go, would be ruled in europe. And in europe its not as easy to sue people o companies as in the US, as people suing tobacco companis after US case was won found. All of them were dismissed with a common argument ( tabacco effects a widespread known, you smoke at your own risk). So suing someones for his opinions in a public theme? Very hard an no future
We still live in countries with a minimum of freedom of expression, and until it changed recently, giving a negative review of a video game, or of a movie, TV series, artwork or anything else isn't against any law.
If they sue Eurogamer for this, they will only be mocked by the judge during the trial, nothing more.
I say "Darkfall sucks and is one of the most crappy MMO release ever".
Please sue me.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
I'm not really surprised that you can't see the difference between that song that incites to murder and violence and the negative review of a video game. We all know you're gonna use the silliest non-arguments to try to defend your fetish game.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
I'm not really surprised that you can't see the difference between that song that incites to murder and violence and the negative review of a video game. We all know you're gonna use the silliest non-arguments to try to defend your fetish game.
I am not surprised your use "freedom of expression" in a way of a hypocrite would use.
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
I'm not really surprised that you can't see the difference between that song that incites to murder and violence and the negative review of a video game. We all know you're gonna use the silliest non-arguments to try to defend your fetish game.
I am not surprised your use "freedom of expression" in a way of a hypocrite would use.
Incitation to violence and murder is against the law.
Making negative reviews of video games is not.
If you can't see the difference between the two, you're hopeless. If you can't see what's wrong with a guy encouraging and praising the murder of policemen (or any other human, by the way), you need help. Freedom doesn't need being able to murder everyone that annoys you, or even encourage it. That's not freedom, that's anarchy. But from your posting habits here, I doubt you have the maturity to understand the difference, anyway.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
I skimmed the thread and someone may have brought this up.
Beyond the fact that I don't know how EU law works in general compared to US law (home of the lawsuit) its hard to say.
To prove Slander/Libel in the US you have to prove that it is reasonable to believe the person knew what they stated was false. So unless there is something you can point to as a blatant lie... you are pretty screwed for a lawsuit.
There has to be some objective thing you can point to. Games are a form of art and art is considered to be objective. So if the review is just negative .. no matter how negative there is nothing you can do. You are allowed to state your opinion and when it comes to subjective material...
If you have 100 people go into the court who tried Darkfall... you will most likely get a split of:
1) It sucked
2) Its great.
3) More neutral
That's basicly how you could define subjective...
I've never been able to buy the game... and I didn't read the review. So was there anything in there that could be proven to be 100% false... and that the person if they had played the game would know to be 100% false?
Also remember at least some EU areas.. if you sue someone and lose... you have to pay all of their fees (unlike the US where there is no negative consequence to losing a lawsuit).
As opposed to... When the review came out there was a thread here where someone stated "Tasos say he can prove the person who did the review never logged in."
Was that ever stated by him? I ask simply because later there was a claim that they found the person had played some minimum amount of hours.... So if Tasos did make that claim.. the reviewer could in fact sue him.... I didn't see anything written by him so I am just asking a random thing because there was a thread here that said that. (aka you can't prove someone never logged into your system if at the same time you are saying they logged in for some period of time ie: 2 or 3 hours. You would know that any amount of time is greater than 0 thus knew what you stated was false... )
Then why Ice m'fuckin T's "Copkiller" had to be removed from an music album ?
I'm not really surprised that you can't see the difference between that song that incites to murder and violence and the negative review of a video game. We all know you're gonna use the silliest non-arguments to try to defend your fetish game.
I am not surprised your use "freedom of expression" in a way of a hypocrite would use.
Incitation to violence and murder is against the law.
Making negative reviews of video games is not.
If you can't see the difference between the two, you're hopeless. If you can't see what's wrong with a guy encouraging and praising the murder of policemen (or any other human, by the way), you need help. Freedom doesn't need being able to murder everyone that annoys you, or even encourage it. That's not freedom, that's anarchy. But from your posting habits here, I doubt you have the maturity to understand the difference, anyway.
Except in these case Eddie-boy masked his attempt to villainize AV and the players in a form of a review, this against the law. Also an attempt to destroy jobs. At this point it calls for min a injunction suit and compensation and "freedom of expression" ends.
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Your reasonning is utterly flawed, because if we followed your logic, every movie critic who judged a movie negatively would be sued for the same reasons... same for book critics, etc... and we all know that's not what happens. Read Antarious's post about "subjectivity".
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
it becomes nothing.
There is only one possible lawsuit that can actually come out of this.
That one is libel, and its against tasos for repeatedly calling someone a 'fraud' .
It wont happen though , because its not in the reviewers interest to validate the nonsensical ranting of Tasos by actually initiating a court case on it.
However, attracting this much negative attention to your own company, as tasos has done, when he has been continually, and still is, breaking European Distance selling Laws (which carry big enough fines to bankrupt his company) is probably not a wise move.
The fact he got so upset suggests the company itself is already on the edge. I wouldnt think Aventurine will be around long enough to get sued, or indeed, attempt to sue, anyone.
AV can't even fund another server nevermind a law suit with a semi competent lawyer.
Interesting debate though.