Rant: Beta Leaks

If you’re in beta for any game, STFU or quit.

Seriously. Personally, I’m of the opinion that if you’re chosen to participate in something like that, it’s to be valued.

A buddy of mine was recently cruising a website that specializes in beta leaks. They hire leakers and give them special status on their forums!

Anyways, one of these schmucks was blabbing in a forum about how poor the combat was in the current state of WAR.

Let me stop here. Screw this guy. I dug around and found out that what he was commenting on was about the state of combat over six months and many builds ago.

So, here he is spoiling people on the game with inaccurate outdated information. He bashes Mythic because they removed all of the videos they… surprise, surprise… busted him for posting, causing him to lose beta access.

A mod on the board follows up with a “wave at the Mythic guys, everyone!” to which another person tosses in a “*gives the Mythic devs the finger*” I may be paraphrasing a bit because I refuse to give their site more traffic by going back.

Seriously…. Gives them the finger? Why do you even want to play their game? How would you feel if they gave YOU the finger, moron. People deliberately break a legally binding contract so that a bunch of information hungry forum dwellers will think they’re cool. At a potential detriment to the game!

Then, the original leaker says that “oh, I’m just waiting on my next key so that I can get in and get you guys some more vids.”

…

Are you kidding me? That stuck up, spoiled little, brat. Ugh. You have no idea how mad that made me. How many of us have been waiting anxiously for the chance to get our hands on that game? And this dork gets one. And the prospect of a second one.

I make a point not to read those sites but my attention was called to these comments, all. I’m glad I saw it too. It gives me even more disdain for people that blow off the NDA.

I read a comment on Warhammer Alliance a while back that I think sums up the quality of those sites nicely. It said something to the degree of the vast majority of beta testers stay silent on the quality of the game. This tells us that they don’t want to risk their spots in the test. They care about it and are having too much fun to worry about going to some leak site.

The comments of a most WAR leakers I’ve seen slipping by on WHA have been negative. Out of these people, I’d wager that most of them fall into one of more of these groups:

1. the game just isn’t for them regardless of quality
2. they’re using BETA as a free trial and expect trial-grade quality
3. they’re upset because they’ve made suggestions that the developers didn’t agree with.

On top of that, I’d be willing to bet that the amount of leakers that are actually fair and unbiased in their reviews make up the vast minority of those willing to report them.

The lesson here? Leaks suck and hurt everyone. Period. They encourage idea stealing. The encourage some anonymous internet person’s e-peen. Let’s join together and not join these people because if majority rules, most of the reviews can’t be trusted and they’re only giving them up to help themselves feel better.