GGG need to undertstand that Fextralife is the problem I feel like they don't get it.

Honestly I don't care, I get a lot do, especially because the "bad" build guides that don't work hurt the community. But at the end of the week the video will be probably be back up because Early Access will be available to the playerbase.

Personally I am not doing Early Access stuff because of how bad other companies are with it, hopefully everyone enjoys it. It looks more promising than it did 3 years ago.

I think the relationship between influencers and companies needs to be more clear in general, but other companies and brands are much worse offenders in this regard.

If it bothers you just block POE/POE2 stuff on socials for a month and the drama will be over.

"

roundishcap#0649 wrote:

If it bothers you just block POE/POE2 stuff on socials for a month and the drama will be over.

it isnt about socials or whatever, nobody who has an issue with that cares about this particular video PERSONALLY

the real issue is that: if that Fexa fella does the same thing that has been done to many other games (dark souls is my actual personal sad story) then you RISK having a great game without any credible, reliable wiki (ggg wont make one, ever)


because all top search results are going to point you to a click farm site with no content, all links. like in case of dark souls and many, many other games that are cursed with low effort, auto-generated wiki with no content.

why? because search algos will think it is great because people actually click it. so they will place it as 1st result. so more people would click it.

and they will click it in the first place because on day 0 this is going to be the first and only 'walktrough/guide/whatever' - already boosted by all other Fexa' sites (and there are 100s)

current search algos are VERY prone to such scenarios and because nowadays people hardly every click on 2nd or 3rd results - you get one site with monstrous lead making other creators not willing to spend resources on making a competing product

i hope playerbase will eventually create poe2 wiki as good as the current one - but that is going to take time AND effort (a lot more than simply copy'ing the fandom one) + need to gain traction to actually show up in search results.


it wont kill poe2, nobody ever suggested that. but for sure it is going to taint the experience and that might make a negative impact long term

how fun would endgame juicing would be if your only source of knowledge about it would be fandom wiki (outdated by like 4 years now)?

just my 2 cents, what was the thought process that lead to the decision?
it very much seems like we never should have been here in the first place

"

Dragoon_Diver#5241 wrote:

i will give my two cents about all this controversy

first, GGG does not want to escalate things because it never helps we can only hope they change some of their internal policies or remove someone from staff to prevent this happening in the future

second, i see this drama is larger than it should be because people are getting second-handed angry or something by proxy: the ones who are truly angry - and rightly so - are the other content creators that now feel punished because some shady guy broke the NDA. this is specially the case with content creators that are affiliated with sites COMPETING with scummy fextraloser.

third, if you don't care about being spoiled or you are one of those waiting for leaks and datamining this should not impact you. in the other hand, people like me who cares about enjoying the game and do not want to be spoiled we can only take precaution like getting some browser extensions to block channels that are spoiling in advance because they also want that sweet ad revenue or engagement metrics.

finally, we are only seeing a drama that is happening between streamers/youtubers as the established and OG creators are feeling the squeeze because PoE 2 is getting a TON of attention and now we have orphaned creators from other games because of "D4 BAD"
content creators are competing because "attention span" is a scarce resource from audience

distance yourselves from all of this or embrace it completely
the choice has always been yours and yours alone, not from your favourite streamer

good luck everyone

You misread the room, its got 0 to do with spoilers, ppl are mad at GGG for even interacting with a known toxic scammer, thats it, give the review copies, under those rules, wouldn't care, It's that its known Fextra is still not 100% blacklisted from GGG and that the even said a single word to fextra at all.
GGG's most unique aspect today is the level of trust we have with them because of their ethical good chocies, even speaking to, even following his twiiter, any interaction with fextralife at all is damaging (tho small) to that trust, because he is unethical.

"

Xypha#3760 wrote:

"

Dragoon_Diver#5241 wrote:

i will give my two cents about all this controversy

first, GGG does not want to escalate things because it never helps we can only hope they change some of their internal policies or remove someone from staff to prevent this happening in the future

second, i see this drama is larger than it should be because people are getting second-handed angry or something by proxy: the ones who are truly angry - and rightly so - are the other content creators that now feel punished because some shady guy broke the NDA. this is specially the case with content creators that are affiliated with sites COMPETING with scummy fextraloser.

third, if you don't care about being spoiled or you are one of those waiting for leaks and datamining this should not impact you. in the other hand, people like me who cares about enjoying the game and do not want to be spoiled we can only take precaution like getting some browser extensions to block channels that are spoiling in advance because they also want that sweet ad revenue or engagement metrics.

finally, we are only seeing a drama that is happening between streamers/youtubers as the established and OG creators are feeling the squeeze because PoE 2 is getting a TON of attention and now we have orphaned creators from other games because of "D4 BAD"
content creators are competing because "attention span" is a scarce resource from audience

distance yourselves from all of this or embrace it completely
the choice has always been yours and yours alone, not from your favourite streamer

good luck everyone

You misread the room, its got 0 to do with spoilers, ppl are mad at GGG for even interacting with a known toxic scammer, thats it, give the review copies, under those rules, wouldn't care, It's that its known Fextra is still not 100% blacklisted from GGG and that the even said a single word to fextra at all.
GGG's most unique aspect today is the level of trust we have with them because of their ethical good chocies, even speaking to, even following his twiiter, any interaction with fextralife at all is damaging (tho small) to that trust, because he is unethical.

then again, people consider that guy a scammer for many things, one of those breaking NDA to be the "first to deliver content"
scummy dude does scummy things, i certainly read the room correctly

"

ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

GGG probably aren't making a big deal out of this because it's NOT a big deal. Like... at all. It could not possibly matter less, and everyone needs to calm the hell down.

Why do I say it doesn't it matter? Well...

1 - This is a voided early access build of an unfinished game. Absolutely none of the things we all get up to on Friday will carry over into the full game when it comes out, and literally every skill, item, and enemy are subject to change.

2 - Everybody who cares about campaign spoilers is already avoiding videos about the game. Because... obviously. So the people who go out of their way to watch a campaign playthrough are opting into spoilers. I haven't watched anything since the reveal, which was incredibly easy to do. All I had to do... was nothing.

3 - The idea that people are going to quit the game after getting bad info from Fextras guide is absolutely laughable. No remotely intelligent and mature human being acts this way; if I get a new chocolate cake recipe and I follow it and the end product tastes awful, am I then going to think "all chocolate cakes are bad?" OFC NOT, I'M GOING TO CONCLUDE THAT THE RECIPE WAS SHIT AND FIND A DIFFERENT ONE MADE BY SOMEONE ELSE. And that's even assuming anyone follows his guide in the first place, which is a BIG assumption.

4 - I might be wrong about this, but isn't it true that Fextra didn't get to play in maps? Because if it is, even if I were somehow wrong about my first three points ( which I am not) it still wouldn't matter because we're talking about the game's tutorial.

So all of this rage makes no sense and is not grounded in any kind of logic. People need to take a look at themselves and realize that the real reason they're so triggered by this is the same sour grapes FOMO nonsense it always is. You're all just mad that someone you don't like got special treatment and you didn't, and everyone can tell that's why you're mad.

Stop being mad, none of this crap matters. Login on Friday and have a good time!

There's plenty of logic thats been posted by people who understand how SEO works you can find it if you'de like. You're just failing to understand whats actually happening and why it matters in principle to knowledgeable gamers and materially to game studios and un-knowledgeable gamers. But thats okay. It doesn't matter to you or me in a vested way it just matters that GGG not keep helping a con artist game his way to the top of search results for his ramshackle guides to misinform and confuse new players, and also so they can stop giving access to the con artist.

I find the subject interesting (as with anything to do with games and gamification) but in the end its just a matter of principle and irritation for me personally. It certainly doesn't need to matter at all to you, but then I'd wonder why this thread was clicked if someone were to, oh say: hand wave the matter and claim disinterest.

If however I was say an indi game dev (no longer GGG's case) and paying top streamers to market my game; potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars per sponsored stream (speculated to be the amount money that Fextralife could ask for if they successfully deceive game devs into believing they are a 30,000 viewer stream) I would be very interested in at least ceasing to be scammed. Like I said though I kinda don't give a shit if large corpos get scammed because they aren't savvy about someone like Fextralife.

Letting the little guys know whats going on however? That seems like a worthwhile pursuit, and it has to be asked what could possibly motivate a handwave response that seeks to dismiss or downplay that sort of public call out.

"

sidtherat#1310 wrote:

the real issue is that: if that Fexa fella does the same thing that has been done to many other games (dark souls is my actual personal sad story) then you RISK having a great game without any credible, reliable wiki (ggg wont make one, ever)


because all top search results are going to point you to a click farm site with no content, all links. like in case of dark souls and many, many other games that are cursed with low effort, auto-generated wiki with no content.

why? because search algos will think it is great because people actually click it. so they will place it as 1st result. so more people would click it.

we already had to deal with a cancer called Fandom. For many years that garbage wikia claimed the first search result if you googled something POE-related.

We managed to get by.

POE userbase isn't Karens that can't even install an adblocker.

"

ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

You mention Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and I'm gonna add Baldur's Gate 3 to that list. All three of those games have dogshit wikis made by Fextralife, and yet SOMEHOW they managed to sell millions of copies and amass an enormous fanbase. It's almost like this doesn't actually matter? Now where have I heard that before...?

Translation: as long at the studio makes lots of money on the game it doesn't matter if the playerbase gets a bunch of trash Fextra wiki results and garbage videos pushed into their youtube algorithm?

Thats a curious way to view things. Going to have to strongly disagree. It feels like your viewpoint is almost entirely informed by how much this harms or doesn't harm large corporations, a product loyalty sort of viewpoint.

Ignoring how many modern games (especially the good ones) are made by tiny indi studios figurative starving artists who might not know about this SEO confidence game and the impact of trashing up your own games discoverability and knowledge base due to spam wiki's like Fextras seems like a hopeless position to adopt.

I think this "outrage" (which is mostly coming from streamers with a very reasonable vested interest in not competing with Fextralife's con game) results in informing gamers and studios of the game thats being played. "feedback" in game design terms... Players need feedback to play the game correctly. Knowing what Fextralife is doing in this case, so they can make better choices. If enough game studios see what Fextralife is doing and stop feeding the con artist, the game will be over and we can all stop seeing this grifter trashing up our signal to noise ratio.

Why would anyone be against this? Again this seems like a really curious position to adopt; maybe its just pure contrariness? I can cop to doing that myself on occasion.

I also see the "who cares, as long as I know better than to click a Fextralife wiki link screw everyone else" type responses as pure self absorbed thinking, or perhaps pure cynicism. I don't think I need to point out whats wrong with that race to the bottom logic to anyone worth discussing this with.

This subject is an interesting study in decision-making with respect to the subjectively-held value of ethics vs real-world outcomes.

I see GGG collectively as an ethical company (entity), and one aspect of an ethical entity, to me, is a great preference for association with other ethical entities and avoidance of association with unethical ones. As such, I see their interaction with this other entity, widely regarded as being unethical, as an oversight / accident.

GGG stated that the initial breach was a result of an error on their part...and it appears that the error was a deep one, an error in judgment involving misplaced trust, probably as a result of insufficient research into the other party. That said, anyone...GGG in this case...can make a mistake. They admitted that they had done so, point blank. In that sense, if this was in fact purely and truly the result of an accident, GGG wins (ethics) points for being upstanding in their admission of blame. If that claim on GGG's part is untrue, as some seem to have implied, they instead lose a whole lot more points...but I seriously doubt that is the case.

On the other hand, we have resultant real-world outcomes that (have only begun to) unfold over time. I've read claims that this will have negative outcomes that include issues partially connected with the programmed nature of search engines and innate nature of human psychology. I think it would be tough to make a serious argument against that, considering that both of these things are reasonably predictable, demonstrably or statistically.

The OP, admirably, seems to be advocating for those who are likely to be mal-affected by this down the line...the bad actor's competitors (in the form of site hits and other revenue-generating activities), and gamers looking for information (in the form of, basically, time wasted as a result of misguidance). The severity or magnitude of these negative outcomes has yet to be revealed...It could turn out to be a blip on the radar, or it could turn out to be a big deal for some or for many.

To those insisting that the real-world outcomes aren't (or won't be) a big deal for any group...I would love to see a picture of the time machine that you used to dip into the future to perform your in-depth analysis of how this, in fact, played out for everyone. Otherwise if you are saying that it isn't and won't be a big deal for you or for a subset of the population, that's reasonable.

There is also the troll-feeding aspect of this, and only GGG knows how much food they gave to the troll.

Am I the only one that never heard of Fextra before this? I feel like I am.