Yesterday I reported on the plight of French games site Gameblog, who, after discovering reference to Black Ops 2 on Amazon.fr, were under the impression that they had been blacklisted over refusing to take down the news post with the screen shot. This wasn't a mere misunderstanding, they were apparently asked not to attend a Transformers: Fall of Cybertron event – that's not the sort of thing you are confused about, you've either been told to attend or you haven't.
Talking with Kotaku, a representative of Gameblog went into detail about the sequence of events that lead to their ultimately being blacklisted. Again, there was no confusion over the issue:
"They tried again to explain they needed us to pull the article, I refused again. They insisted again that it would seriously deteriorate the professional relationship we had, that we weren't fully aware of the consequences this could have, and that they had already contacted their Advertising Agency (which buys ad space for them). I asked them again if we should consider ourselves blacklisted, and more precisely if my journalist (another one) was still to attend the preview event of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron that was planned next week and to which we were already invited. Activision said no. They also made clear that the relationship was to be severed, all advertisement plans cancelled, games not sent, and invitations to later events cancelled as well. I explained that if this was their decision indeed, we had to inform our readers of it, and would do so later in the day."
Does any of that seem like a misunderstanding? Activision claim so, after being contacted by Kotaku: "Activision doesn't blacklist journalists. We believe this was a misunderstanding and are working towards a resolution."
Like the EA/Battlefield debacle late last year, it would seem that seeing the inner-workings of a publisher can be quite an ugly thing to see.
