A post was merged into an existing topic: Leaker Trolling
Let’s not turn this into Conspiracy Theory Central, eh? Healthy discussion is good; other stuff, not so much.
2K has tripled down and has issued over 60 scopyright strikes to SupMatto’s channel and it will be terminated within the week.
Remember, 2K sent two physical private investigators to trespass on a fan’s property. Without any other details, this alone is a per se atrocity. All of this over a leak that the B3 team/2K is responsible for themselves. All supmatto did was find them and report on them. Because of this, 2K has physically intimidated a YouTuber at his own residence (SupMatto), issued over 60 strikes which will terminate his channel (He’s been playing Borderlands for 7 years and is a superfan), and has even deleted his own Twitter in fear.
I love Borderlands. I played 1 and 2 with all of the DLC. My wallet was ready for B3. But now, with all of this coming from the compayny that is responsible for the game I love, I cannot in good conscious support a game that uses such mafioso tactics. I encourage all of you to reconsider your position as a consumer with this company.
This makes me all very sad.
Cheers.
Let’s avoid the wild speculation and hyperbole over stuff about which we have very few details.
Interpreting the one account we have of events as the absolute truth, and to then extrapolate what may or may not have actually happened might not be prudent.
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Yes but we also have facts.
It is undisputed that private investigators were sent to Supmatto’s residence unannounced at 2K’s behalf.
That alone is enough to condemn their actions. Unfortunately, 2K has decided to triple down by claiming Supmatto is “stealing” from them (their takedown of his channel confirms this), and we also know that is was 2k/Gearbox/ that streamed a test run of B3. It was not stolen from them, they leaked it on their own. Seeing how Gearbox and B3 does things, it’s very plausible that SupMatto thought this was a “hint” of some sort by the Gearbox team, as they are well known to do such things.
It’s all messed up, and 2K really messed up. They need to atone.
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There’s been no evidence that gearbox are involved in any way. It seems to have come from take-two, the parent company of the publisher, 2K.
I find that vid to be a guy making loads of guesses. Why not wait until we get more facts? At the moment we have one account of events, and a statement from the company. Nothing else.
And yes, it’s all very exciting and dramatic and that, and ofc folks will form opinions without the full story. Let’s just not do that here.
As to why (as that vid makes a big deal of) we don’t have the details of the alleged wrongdoing), how about 2K don’t want to jeopardize any possible future legal proceedings?
For the record, I’m no huge fan of huge corporations, but isn’t this all one big wait and see situation?
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I did not say Gearbox sent goons. I said 2K did. An IGN article has confirmed this with a statement from a 2K representative. They admit to a “10 month investigation” into Supmatto where they flat out accuse Supmatto of infringing copyright andleaking information. You can see the actual quote on IGN. They are not denying this. They also have a history of sending people to people homes in the GTAV era with mods and such.
Here’s another fact. it was not SupMatto that hacked or stole any information. There was a test stream of B3 being run and SupMatto found it and reported on it. That is it.
How can anyone not see that this is totally over the line? Now in retaliation to SupMatto publicly declaring what TakeTwo/2K did to him, they have picked his YouTube account with a fine toothed comb and have issued over 62 copyright claims. Many of these claims are on videos about B2 and B1!
It is very clear what is happening to anyone that wants to see.
Edit: (No more replies allowed I’m a noob here)
I appreciate nuance as much as the next person. However there are very clear ethical boundaries that have been broken by TakeTwo. These are per se violations of ethics. Could you at least admit a phone call, email, or any other approach would have been better than sending physical agents?
We give benefit of the doubt to 2K by taking a very nuanced approach to this situation. Fine. Where was the nuance on TakeTwo’s part?
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If you read the rest of the thread above, you’ll see that many folks take a somewhat more nuanced view, in particular with regard to copyright issues.
The thing is that he didn’t hack into any of 2k systems to obtain this information he was lucky enough to stumble on a life stream that happened to had been testing some new twitch streaming feature that no other game had and 2k was pissed that he leaked information like that, it was left out in the public the only thing illegal I can see he did was if he was selling information but just cuz he was able to witness stuff that was left out in the open does not constitute an investigation
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2K/Take 2 also now seem to overreact to any info released. Yesterday IGN released a video that sums up “all” weapon manufactors. It didn’t showed anything new like the rumored comeback of S’n’S or Eridian but before long it was taken down. Now it’s up again and is promoted on the Borderlands Twitter account.
I mean who deletes a video with old information only to reupload it not 24h later.
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I’m pretty sure that the investigation was more expensive than the “harm” from leaks. And they have that all negative PR.
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Again : the claim that SupMatto sold information is completely false, ask people who were on his Discord and they will all tell you that he never gave exclusive information to the Discord members, or anything of the sort. This is just a claim out of nowhere to make him look bad, since it’s hard to fact-check it.
Which brings me to this (video is timestamped) :
IGN has been caught editing their article without notifying it. Again IGN showing how much of a corporate lapdog they are. Can’t spell IGNorant without IGN. 
I’m honestly not an unfair or biased person, I always try to understand everyone’s side despite what anybody here might think of me (you’ll recognize yourself). I do understand that covering leaked information is risky, but that does NOT mean that Take-Two and 2K have the right to do what they’re doing right now. Information was leaked because of their own incompetence, SupMatto did not steal it. The claim that SupMatto broke the law is completely false, and a good way to prove that without knowing anything about policies and laws is that if he really did pursue illegal actions they would have completely crushed him with lawsuits and would’ve handled this in a much cleaner way, since they have the law on their side. Instead they chose to hire private detectives (so not law enforcement, which is an important detail) and completely bombed his channel with dozens of fallacious DMCA claims.
And just to be sure : I am not going to make the claim that SupMatto is 100% innocent on the matter. Covering leaked content is risky and in some capacity he brought this upon himself. Take-Two are known for being extremely disingenuous and ruthless regarding policies, and they already did this in the past. I’m not saying he deserved it at all, in fact I support him, but he played with fire to a certain extent.
The thing is that right now SupMatto isn’t guilty of anything, but Take-Two and 2K are for sure guilty of false DMCA claims (which is a federal crime in the US), and possibly guilty of intimidation/harrassement and abuse of power.
And I’ll say it again : Gearbox most likely doesn’t have anything to do with this. I think they’re the ones responsible for the Twitch app leaks but I don’t know for sure, but other than that I doubt they had anything to do with Take-Two’s actions towards SupMatto.
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Nice post @Enderborn1
I completely agree with all you’ve stated in your post.
This has me perplexed. I love the Borderlands installments.
Borderlands is a lifestyle!
Hind sight: Borderlands is a lifestyle Pre-Borderlands 3.
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Very well stated.
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Which might not be true to the full extent. If they striked down everything SupMatto did before Borderlands 3 was even announced (and that is a lot of videos), then they are at least partially in their right to do so. Without watching all videos we cannot answer the question of wether they’re doing something illegal here or not. We can only make assumptions and while that is entertaining, it does not make it right.
In the case of even going against IGN:They must be completely out of their mind to do so as IGN has the ressources to fight back. It’s a dangerous game they have begun there and SupMatto is in the middle of it. Even if that was just a mistake, it might become more and thats somewhat scary to think about.
My personal and opinionated piece about the Quartering: He can’t keep apart a publisher, a parent company or a game developer and his personal problems with Randy Pitchford makes him even more biased than Jim Sterling. He just isn’t a credible source as he lets his personal opinion get the better of him. You can watch and like him, but when it comes to Gearbox, then he always takes a stance against them even if it isn’t deserved.
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Brother Darvin Dittrich. I appreciate your balanced view about this. However I would like to respectfully refute a couple things.
TakeTwo retroactively striking SupMatto’s videos that are pre-B3 content immediately after this news broke is indicative of some sort of retribution. Even if SupMatto’s pre-B3 content was somehow in violation, TakeTwo waited until this very moment to strike it. On YouTube, making DMCA claims is very easy and its tendency to be abused is well documented. Take-Two seems to have very obviously used this mechanism as a bully tactic towards SupMatto.
IGN and TakeTwo are virtually on the same side of the coin. IGN acts as a mouthpiece for large corporate video game entities. IGN has created an article to smear SupMatto in order to justify these bully tactics against him. The day after SupMatto reveals what was done to him, he even states he’s taking a very long, perhaps indefinite break, from Borderlands, they kick him while he is down by virtually eliminating his channel. They intimidated him to the point of no longer wanting to cover the game he has been loving for seven years, and now they will terminate him to make sure he does not come back. He does not deserve such harsh treatment.
I respect your opinion about Jeremy (TheQuartering). His emotions and passion can indeed show. However, he is very sincere and fights for gamers that do not have a voice. In this case, his indignation towards those who bullied SupMatto (TakeTwo) is righteous. I agree he might have conflated the developer/parent company, but the message remains the same:
Corporations using these bully tactics is unacceptable, and we must let them know it is unacceptable.
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Otherwise they’re going to it to more people. We got gambling for kids, incomplete releases, lying developers, the last thing we need is billion dollar publishers bullying content creators.
I also kinda agree on The Quartering. I appreciate the guy and his honesty but as a news reporter he’s pretty biased imo.
Well I’m pretty sure Take-Two’s OP10 high-powered lawyers can find an interpretation of the law that would suit their case, but SupMatto’s videos clearly fall under Fair Use according to US laws, which makes the DMCA claims illegal.
And they’re also abusing YouTube’s broken copyright system, which is another debate.
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I appreciate the response and I can only agree on the timing of the 63 strikes. The timing in and of itself isn’t however indicative of the legal right, only indicative of the intentions of Take-Two and 2k. Often enough claim- & strikable content stays on Youtube as the right owners decide not to act, for whatever reason. Now that they want SupMatto gone, they are willing to go the full distance. They could have done that earlier, just from his leaks from october/november 2018 alone and that would have been enough to take down the channel. But now they have over half a year to work with to get rid of him. So they do what they can do and strike everything.
Sure, there will be videos where the strike has no legal ground to stand on, but there only need to be 3, max 4 videos that they can claim to kill the channel. Its a shotgun tactic. Spray a whole room with bullets until you hit your target.
I respect Jeremy in many regards and I know that he is fighting the good fight, but even with the right intentions, personal bias can make you miss your mark. That is why I think that he isn’t fit for this particular situation. Even if he wanted to stay completely on the topic itself and tries to be as calm and professional as possible, his history and his radical “F-Randy” stance that he showed many times in the past would make him loose credibility in the eyes of many. And his passionate tone doesn’t help this time either. The whole thing is too complicated to be looked at from purely emotional eyes.
I think people are too quick to defend SupMatto without knowing the full scope of the situation. Like how well do you REALLY know this guy? He could be lying or not disclosing the entire truth either, don’t just assume he is an innocent victim based on a video HE made himself.
2k did something that was kinda shadey yes, but it wasn’t illegal at all. They also didn’t send “goons” to “intimidate” Matto. They were private investigators. They found out where he lived (which is honestly not hard to do if you know where to look), came to his home, and asked him questions. Watch the video, he never said they threatening him or anything. If he was smart he would have told them to screw off and not said anything, but he was a fool and talked for 45 flipping minutes. That right there is a red flag. He says he felt like he didn’t have anything to hide, to me though it sounds like he was trying to hide SOMETHING. You don’t just talk to some PI’s that show up to your house for 45 minutes if you’re not trying to weave a story to cover up something you might have done. Then again, maybe he was just scared and was telling the truth about that. Fact is WE DO NOT KNOW.
Everyone is so quick to just jump on this boycott bandwagon they fail to critically think about this stuff. What happened to Matto sucks, no doubt, and I sympathize for him, but at the same time I’m hesitant to just blindly defend a guy I honestly know nothing about. At the end of the day, it’s his word against theirs. But they own the copyrights on Borderlands meaning that what they did by striking his videos was ENTIRELY LEGAL AND WITHIN THEIR RIGHT TO DO SO! Someone else said that it means they can do this to any content creator. YES THEY CAN THEY OWN THE COPYRIGHT. The reason they don’t is because majority of content created about their copyright isn’t potentially breaking any sort of NDA or leaking information they don’t want leaked. It’s basically free advertising to them. Like have you guys seen what Nintendo does to content creators? They will strike your ■■■■ so fast it will make your head spin. You need to sign up with their content creator program and give them a big cut of the revenue you earn on your videos. And they can do that, it’s their copyright.
And before someone says it… it might sound like I’m defending 2k and I’m not. I’m simply playing devil’s advocate and suggesting that maybe JUST MAYBE we should wait until more details are released so we can see the actuality of the situation. Understand companies like 2k have rights too, just like Matto, so reserved judgment until more facts surface.
Everyone is so quick to get triggered by stuff like this they fail to use logic and reasoning, instead going on pure emotion and “fight the system” mentality. I want to ask anyone here that supports Matto… HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THIS GUY? If you’re answer is “I watched all his YT videos and streams for years” then sorry to say you don’t know him at all. You know him as he presents himself publicly. That. Is. It.
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“Pretty biased” the dude makes a living off of generating mass hysteria over zilch. Him and YongYea are honestly cancer to YT. It’s always “look at this super horrible thing some company did REEEEEEEEE” with a huge circle jerk in the comments from sheeple that just want an enemy to fight. They are manipulative, period end of story. They turn every mole hill into a mountain to get more views. Does that make all their points invalid? No, but you do seriously have to question the motives of people who’s entire channel is “this is the bad guy now, let’s be mad at them!”.
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I dont have alot of input on this, but whatever the case is, it tarnishes the image of GBX/2K. Which already wasn’t even good in the first place. And I am not just saying this because I am not the right person to market BL3 to.