Allow us to peel back the curtain a bit about the gaming industry regarding certain things that are written about it. When you see previews or early reviews of titles that haven’t come back yet, the authors are often bound by a special kind of NDA. These “agreements” are often about not spoiling the game in grand ways. For example, if it’s an RPG, they might not have you speak about missions beyond a certain point so that players don’t have a key event spoiled. But in the case of Marvel Rivals, the team at NetEase put out one of the most “restrictive” NDAs/agreements possible, and they’ve had to apologize for it as a result.
If you haven’t heard yet, the upcoming title that will resemble many “team battlers” that you’ve all heard of before had an agreement that players had to sign before doing a preview or test for it. On the surface, that’s not a bad thing until you got into the nitty-gritty of the paperwork and found that if you signed it, you couldn’t say ANYTHING bad about the game or even compare it to other titles that were within its genre.
That’s not cool for various reasons, not the least of which is that NetEase should WANT that kind of negative feedback during its alpha/beta stages so they can attempt to make changes before launch. But the wording was very clear that they didn’t want “bad reviews or feedback” to make it seem like Marvel Rivals was anything but good.
Thankfully, after being found out and called out, NetEase posted on Twitter the following “apology:”
“We sincerely apologize for the confusion, suspicion, and frustration caused by these excessively restrictive terms and thank you for sharing with us. We cherish and appreciate every suggestion given by our players and always respect your feedback. We are currently working with Creators who have expressed these concerns and are revising the current version to be less restrictive and more Creator-friendly. Thank you for bearing with us while we make these adjustments.”
It’s interesting to say they “cherish and appreciate” all statements when they were the ones trying to stop them from being said in the first place. Many will likely see this as a “PR move” and nothing else. The irony is that because of this action, many are going to wonder what the game is really like and if it’s nothing more than a “Marvel coat of paint over an established property” kind of thing. Only time will tell!
