German YouTube channel PietSmiet removed their Star Wars Outlaws preview video after admitting a third party agency had to approve their nearly one hour reaction video after spending four hours with the game.
A screenshot from Star Wars Outlaws (2024), Ubisoft
In a post to YouTube, PietSmiet shared that they removed their Star Wars Outlaws preview video from their channel. As translated by DeepL, one of the channel’s owners stated, “Hi, Peter here. We’ve taken the Star Wars video offline. Not because we wanted to sweep something under the carpet or anything. But because it should never have been published and we don’t want it on the channel. We’ll talk a bit more about this in the next PietCast episode. I’m sorry.”
PietSmiet community post on YouTube
This post came in the wake of a comment revealing that a third party agency had to approve of Star Wars Outlaws preview video.
As translated by DeepL, the channel posted, “I completely understand the arguments that were made here and that was not correct. I had the opportunity to play the game for 4 hours and it was edited into over an hour of video. As part of the review process, the entire video was thrown back to us and an intermediary agency, not Ubisoft, asked for a lot of changes, especially to the wording at the beginning. But since I personally thought the game was really cool, I didn’t see that as a big problem. This was a huge miscalculation.”
It added, “Sorry, you don’t have to pre-order a game, of course. You can buy whatever you like with your money. I absolutely enjoyed the version I was shown. The process behind it was for the ass and I’m sorry that we didn’t print more against it, but let ourselves be beaten wide open. Big sorry for that.”
A comment from PietSmiet
As for the wording in the opening of the video, a source who was able to view the video before PietSmiet removed it from their channel informed That Park Place that PietSmiet encouraged viewers to pre-order the game and shared that he “liked” the game.
Video game developers working with third parties and trying to dictate positive sentiment is not unheard of. YouTuber TotalBiscuit saw his review of Wild Games Studio copyright struck by the developer after they previously supplied him with a review code. However, they did not like his negative review trashing the game.
TotalBiscuit explained on X back in 2013, “Long story short. Dev sends code, code used to make critique, dev dislikes critique, dev abuses system to censor critique.”
A screenshot from Star Wars Outlaws (2024), Ubisoft
YouTuber Jeremy Griggs of Geeks + Gamers also documented how Naughty Dog colluded with Twitter in 2020 to get his Twitter account shut down after he repeatedly mocked the game.
He stated in the video, “All I know is they claim that I violated rules.” He later added, “I’ve received a lot of [DMCA take downs] in the past few months over memes. Memes from Naughty Dog because Naughty Dog doesn’t like memes being shared.”
Outside of video games, SyFy Wire’s Dany Roth admitted to making positive reviews for films and in order to maintain access with companies like Disney.
He stated on SyFy Wire’s podcast “Who Won The Week, “Here’s the actual reality. Here’s where we actually are in the industry if you want to talk about quote access media. Every single person that wants to have access to things early, that wants to get access to things so that traffic is drawn to their site will on occasion. Everybody at this podcast, everybody in our industry occasionally has to play softball, occasionally has to look the other way a little bit. Everybody has to do it. In the sense that I hated a movie, but I won’t say that I hated a movie. Or an actor behaved a sort of way, and you don’t want to put it out there that that happened.”
Co-host Karama Horne then chimed in, “Right, because you might not get the next review.”
Roth continued, “To some degree everybody in our industry that is part of this quote on quote access media has to decide which battles they want to pick. Which of the ones where my voice is the one that has to get said.”
Rotten Tomatoes critic admits they give fake positive reviews to maintain their access. pic.twitter.com/A7w2qwPOom
— Dataracer (@Dataracer117) March 7, 2019
READ: Ubisoft Responds To Plethora Of Complaints About ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ After Gamers Roast Gameplay
Of note, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot recently revealed that Star Wars Outlaws had the largest marketing campaign ever for Ubisoft.
During the company’s most recent earnings call Barclay’s Nick Dempsey asked, “When I look at the guidance for Q2 and if I assume something similar for back catalog in Q2 as Q1 kind of getting to €200 to €230 million, that sort of range. For the new release Star Wars Outlaws, when I look at the $70 price and then assuming what you might get from it, I’m getting to around 5 million units, something in that sort of bracket. First of all, where could I be going wrong with that thinking? Secondly, are you just being pretty conservative in your guidance because I guess given the interest in that game we might have thought it would be more than 5 million units?”
Guillemot said, “We can’t comment on the very numbers you are quoting. But what we have factored in is a strong launch for Star Wars Outlaws that reflects the fact that it is among the most awaited games of the industry this year and a really strong, positive community sentiment. And also, the fact, that we are coming with the biggest marketing campaign ever, so far, for [an] Ubisoft game. So that’s what we’ve been factoring in the second quarter.”
A screenshot from Star Wars Outlaws (2024), Ubisoft
Based on PietSmiet’s confession that it was working with a third party to review its video, it appears highly likely that part of this marketing campaign is requiring YouTubers through this third party to provide positive reactions to Star Wars Outlaws.
What do you make PietSmiet’s confession that a third party was reviewing its video previewing Star Wars Outlaws?
