News
Dark Side of Gaming - Embargo Dates
Cordova, TN; October 28, in the year of our Lord 2019 -- Family Friendly Gaming, the industry leader in covering the family friendly video games is continuing our requested series on the DARK SIDE OF GAMING. This article is on the embargo dates used way too often in the video game industry. The concept is simple – give all gaming media outlets the same amount of time to work on a game and then they can release their coverage on a date and a time that is convenient for the company and the people in PR representing that game. Sounds like a good plan right? Can you see any potential for problems with this procedure?
If you said there could be problems based on the date and time picked then you would be right on base. At this point in time Family Friendly Gaming releases published web pages early in the morning and in the evening. Usually a review and some video pages are released around 6AM CST, and around 6PM are some news stories. Sometimes we release a news story in the morning. Can you guess when most of the embargo times are lifted? The most common ones are 8AM to 11AM CST. That time range does not work for us.
What is even more hilarious is when companies and/or PR firms are asking us to release our reviews at midnight. We are not waking up in the middle of the night to release a published review that we paid for. That brings up another interesting concept. They act like they have paid for wonderful service, and they did not pay us anything for our hard work. Why do they think we should release reviews, news stories, videos, etc. when it works for them? How often do they consider what works for us? Is it because they see as their slaves?
What generally happens with Family Friendly Gaming is we make them wait an additional day. Let’s say they have this meaningless embargo lift at 9AM CST on a Tuesday. We then release the review at 6AM CST on Wednesday. We refuse to jump through any additional hoops because they want us to. If they paid for that service then we would happily accommodate them. They pay nothing and expect us to do all of this extra work for them. What does it matter if the embargo date/time gets broken? How would it hurt anyone if we released the review 2-3 hours early?
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
God bless,
Paul Bury
Emperor
Family Friendly Gaming
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