Gamespot Apart of Spliter Cell's Viral Marketing?

[DigitalFirefly]

If you head on over to Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/news/index.html) you'll see what looks like a hacked news section of the site. There's an image of a bald man with the words BEWARE. If you try and save the image you'll see it's title is sam_thumb001.jpg. Incase you haven't seen there's a new site up for Splinter Cell 4, www.bewaresamfisher.com (http://www.bewaresamfisher.com).

Source
Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000470066608/)
Playfuls.com (http://www.playfuls.com/news_3619_Gamespot_hacked.html)

UPDATE

This is Tor from GameSpot--this was a massive cockup in our Web publishing system, nothing more. The newshub has since been fixed. Our apologies for the mistake and any appearance of impropriety.

And for the record, there is nothting more on this PLANET I cannnot stand more than a viral marketing campaign. I can swear on an original unsealed copy of Fallout that we would never, ever in a million years be part of such a harebrained and morally bankrupt scheme.

If you have further questions e-mail me at tor@gamespot.com. Thanks! Cheers _TOR

[DigitalFirefly]

Joystiq just added this link (http://nwspk.blogspot.com/2005/11/gamespot-is-not-hacked.html) showing the full image shown on Gamespot, along with some others.

[swiftdraw]

I'm really dis-appointed in gamespot. I go to the news section to, I don't know, find news maybe? Lo' and behold I get official spam on a game I couldn't care less about.

[Savok]

Is it just me, or is viral marketing getting really annoying?

[spacerat100]

yea viral marketing is stupid. Small minds that are easily swayed are the only people really effected by marketing. Of course in most cases you'll buy the name brand anyway because 99.6% of the time it's better than the cheap off brand for several reasons (effectiveness, warrenty, features, support, ect). It boggles my mind some people goto college just so they can get a major in marketing. Jesus people get degrees that help people, pay more, and be able to look yourself in the eye the next day. (see engineering, doctor, history, english, ect.. name one thing a marketing major does besides annoy people and line his own pocket)

[The Iron Weasel]

I just found it to be rediculous, you never found out anything, its just marketing for a new game....where you don't actually find out about the game.....

[Kefkataran]

Viral marketing can be cool when it's well-done. But part of that involves you actually having the choice to take part in it. Having it get thrown onto news sites just lowers my faith in those sites.

[Savok]

name one thing a marketing major does besides annoy people and line his own pocket)
Make games worse by whining they won't sell without more use of the word extreme.

[mkelehan]

I'm really dis-appointed in gamespot. I go to the news section to, I don't know, find news maybe? Lo' and behold I get official spam on a game I couldn't care less about.

Agreed. Terribly unprofessional. And, when the news does come back, see if you can't spot the two glaring errors I found in the Nintendo 2006 article.

[thorsen-ink]

This is Tor from GameSpot--this was a massive cockup in our Web publishing system, nothing more. The newshub has since been fixed. Our apologies for the mistake and any appearance of impropriety.

And for the record, there is nothting more on this PLANET I cannnot stand more than a viral marketing campaign. I can swear on an original unsealed copy of Fallout that we would never, ever in a million years be part of such a harebrained and morally bankrupt scheme.

If you have further questions e-mail me at tor@gamespot.com.

[Tia]

yea viral marketing is stupid. Small minds that are easily swayed are the only people really effected by marketing. Of course in most cases you'll buy the name brand anyway because 99.6% of the time it's better than the cheap off brand for several reasons (effectiveness, warrenty, features, support, ect). It boggles my mind some people goto college just so they can get a major in marketing. Jesus people get degrees that help people, pay more, and be able to look yourself in the eye the next day. (see engineering, doctor, history, english, ect.. name one thing a marketing major does besides annoy people and line his own pocket)

o.O

oh yeah, english major, very usefull to help people and make money. You are so full of it I can smell the stentch all the way across the forums. Seriously, boggles my mind how people can think they know so much yet be so stupid in their claims. Jesus people, get some sense, there is no reason to be anti everything, and nothing will happen if you learn to respect people that do different things.

[Ernst_Jager]

haha all you guys were pointing fingers.

[The Iron Weasel]

This is Tor from GameSpot--this was a massive cockup in our Web publishing system, nothing more. The newshub has since been fixed. Our apologies for the mistake and any appearance of impropriety.

And for the record, there is nothting more on this PLANET I cannnot stand more than a viral marketing campaign. I can swear on an original unsealed copy of Fallout that we would never, ever in a million years be part of such a harebrained and morally bankrupt scheme.

If you have further questions e-mail me at tor@gamespot.com.

Well that clears that up.

[thorsen-ink]

PS: we even did a story on this the other day--that's why the art is up:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23902463

[Kefkataran]

This is Tor from GameSpot--this was a massive cockup in our Web publishing system, nothing more. The newshub has since been fixed. Our apologies for the mistake and any appearance of impropriety.

And for the record, there is nothting more on this PLANET I cannnot stand more than a viral marketing campaign. I can swear on an original unsealed copy of Fallout that we would never, ever in a million years be part of such a harebrained and morally bankrupt scheme.

Now that's really cool. I'm impressed that you'd step up and clear this up. Kudos to you.

Could we get an update in the front-page story to show this change?

[thorsen-ink]

No problem. Glad it got updated, since "viral marketer" is down there with "debt collector" and "child molester" in my book. I know a guy whose marketing company actually hires friends to influence their friends to buy product. S*** is so insidious. If you want to know more, watch this:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/

[swiftdraw]

And for the record, there is nothting more on this PLANET I cannnot stand more than a viral marketing campaign. I can swear on an original unsealed copy of Fallout that we would never, ever in a million years be part of such a harebrained and morally bankrupt scheme.
.

Good enough for me, as long as everything is fixed. I like that swearing on an original un-sealed copy of Fallout, I have to remember that one.

[agentgray]

This is Tor from GameSpot--this was a massive cockup in our Web publishing system, nothing more. The newshub has since been fixed. Our apologies for the mistake and any appearance of impropriety.

And for the record, there is nothting more on this PLANET I cannnot stand more than a viral marketing campaign. I can swear on an original unsealed copy of Fallout that we would never, ever in a million years be part of such a harebrained and morally bankrupt scheme.

If you have further questions e-mail me at tor@gamespot.com.
I really love Gamespot. Great reviews. However, the new redesign is a headache. It's now much harder to find info on games or even just plain navigate and this design is even more unfriendly to Firefox than the previous version.

[The Iron Weasel]

I think its really cool that a guy from gamespot went out of his way to clear this up here. That shows that they actually ARE listening to us!

[Dirty Harry]

This is Tor from GameSpot--this was a massive cockup in our Web publishing system, nothing more. The newshub has since been fixed. Our apologies for the mistake and any appearance of impropriety.

And for the record, there is nothting more on this PLANET I cannnot stand more than a viral marketing campaign. I can swear on an original unsealed copy of Fallout that we would never, ever in a million years be part of such a harebrained and morally bankrupt scheme.

If you have further questions e-mail me at tor@gamespot.com.
Awesome, EvAv is starting to become a big name in news.

[Sinistar]

Viral marketing seems to be working pretty well. You're all talking about it.

[Worldcrafter]

Viral marketing seems to be working pretty well. You're all talking about it.

It seems the discussion was less on the viral marketing, and more on the idea of a site that is focused on unbiased game reporting plastering their news sections with what seemed to be a paid advertisement. However, that has been cleared up and Gamespot has been exonerated.

After reading the article Tor linked to, I'm intrigued about the direction they're taking the game, but right now doubt it will be a good one. Ubisoft has done this before with PoP. I loved the first one, but couldn't stand the prince's character in the sequel. Hopefully they aren't destroying Sam Fisher's character just to be "Xtreme" in this game as well.

[jacktion]

I'm sorry. WTF is up with the headline for this story? Call me a nazi if you will but that shit is horrible. It has passed up just simple spelling errors and now it is actually changing the word's meanings to mean something wrong. Apart, and A part are very different in meaning. And how hard is it to spell Splinter? Haven't you ever read Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

And just so my post has some relevance to the topic, I think viral marketing is great, especially when it really bothers you.

[falcon]

Not sure what's worse, having a glitch like that in a production system or overreacting to said glitch w/out following up with the source. Oh wait...the second one is a lot worse but it's a "blog" so any kind of journalistic standards do not apply.

[DigitalFirefly]

It won't let me add the N in Splinter.

[Malovech]

o.O

oh yeah, english major, very usefull to help people and make money. You are so full of it I can smell the stentch all the way across the forums. Seriously, boggles my mind how people can think they know so much yet be so stupid in their claims. Jesus people, get some sense, there is no reason to be anti everything, and nothing will happen if you learn to respect people that do different things.

If there is one thing on this planet a person can "anti" it's marketing. From dealing with these kind of idiots for years I know what useless sacks of skin they are.

[mister_slim]

Viral marketing seems to be working pretty well. You're all talking about it.
It's somewhat ironic that people here are criticizing GS considering how much play EvAv gave to the various MS ARGs.

[spacerat100]

o.O

oh yeah, english major, very usefull to help people and make money. You are so full of it I can smell the stentch all the way across the forums. Seriously, boggles my mind how people can think they know so much yet be so stupid in their claims. Jesus people, get some sense, there is no reason to be anti everything, and nothing will happen if you learn to respect people that do different things.


yea i forget everyone comes to america automatically speaks perfect english and writes essays before brunch. I could address the rest but that's your opinion and I have mine. No need to try to get personal.

[The Iron Weasel]

If they wanted to add some bad-itude to splinter cell they would done it in chaos theory.

[MaiXu]

If you head on over to Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/news/index.html) you'll see what looks like a hacked news section of the site. There's an image of a bald man with the words BEWARE. If you try and save the image you'll see it's title is sam_thumb001.jpg. Incase you haven't seen there's a new site up for Splinter Cell 4, www.bewaresamfisher.com (http://www.bewaresamfisher.com).

Source
Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000470066608/)
Playfuls.com (http://www.playfuls.com/news_3619_Gamespot_hacked.html)

UPDATE

Thier "reporting" of the SP4 site and its subsequent hacking seems like all the free PR Ubisoft could ask for ...

[Savok]

Viral marketing seems to be working pretty well. You're all talking about it.
I talk about pop-up ads as well (well used to before Firefox) and how I wanted to hunt down the assholes who devised them. Along with statements of never buying a product I see in a pop-up.

That's how marketing people think, if people are talking about it, we've done our job. Bullshit, people are talking about it because they're organizing a boycott. Man I hate people.

And Tor, swearing on Fallout I guess I'll have to believe you, but you gotta admit, the way it came together and looked is gonna leave some folk wondering.