Did fextralife break nda?
1 December 2024
On November 30th, Fextralife posted a video on their youtube channel reviewing the Early Access for path of exile 2 and giving their early impressions. Many of the fans and content creators were confused with the release of this video as they were under the impression that no reviewers will be getting any early copy of the game for reviews. Though that is technically not correct. Many traditional games media were given a review version of the game under a few conditions, these are:
Needless to say, People were not happy with this. Fextralife does not have a good reputation in the gaming community because of their controversy regarding embedding their twitch streams on their website effectively view botting their streams. So everyone jumped to the conclusion that Fextralife had broken their NDA and posted their review early on their youtube channel. Though since then Grinding Gear Games(GGG) the developer of Path of Exile 2 have come out and given their statement.
GGG have since come out and posted a official statement on their Path of Exile account on twitter.
Transcript:
We've seen some speculation that some people might already have access to the Early Access version of Path of Exile 2.
To clarify, some traditional games media have been given access to review a version of the game. Part of the stipulation that media were given is that this is for review purposes only. They may share their opinions of the game but are not allowed to produce “guide” style content from this version that would spoil the discovery of the game or post unedited playthroughs. They are not playing on the same servers as the early access version, so none of their progress will be kept. In addition, all of the content they produce is embargoed until the release of Early Access on December 6th, so no content is supposed to be posted until then.
Unfortunately there was a miscommunication with Fextralife that resulted in a video being posted early. This was a mistake on our end, and is in no way on Fextralife.
On release day, we want players to be able to make a more informed choice about if they would like to buy a key. We believe that allowing traditional games media access should be able to accomplish this without spoiling the game.
In summary, GGG said that there was a miscommunication between them and Fextralife resulting in the video posting early and that Fextrallife was not to be blamed.
Information about how embargo's have worked for Path of Exile 2 in their past events:
This has lead to some people assuming that the reason GGG made that statement is because they do not want any controversies surrounding their game this close to the launch of early access.
