The Deadlock Debacle Shows That Still Nobody Understands Games Journalism, Especially The Journalists
The Verge "infiltrated" the worst kept secret in gaming for no other reason than to show off to the "the gamers" that they could, then seemed put out that they got banned for breaking the only rule.
On the 13th August The Verge ran an article entitled “We played Valve’s secret new shooter, Deadlock.” It was an embarrassingly poor piece, light on details and flawed in its conception. Hundreds of thousands of people are playing Deadlock, formerly known as Project 8. A secret it is not. But for the reporters narrative purposes it had to be… You see the article wasn’t about revealing the existence of a classified operation to a readership desperately to know more about it. Rather it was about showing that nothing escapes the attention of games journalists.
It certainly did achieve that goal. It also got the writer banned from access to the game before he’d even had opportunity to play for a few hours. The cringe inducing edit to the piece revealing that fact had gamers celebrating as the chudosphere flooded YouTube with videos about how The Verge had violated an NDA and Valve’s copyright(?) when neither were true. The journalist hadn’t even done anything wrong… Well, not really. Not technically. The error isn’t in the minutiae of how the article came to exist but rather what it points to. A broad failure of understanding, a lack of genuine desire to do anything other than convert popularity into web traffic and an embarrassing need to show off to a crowd who think you’re a tosser whether or not you land that handstand.
Understanding the psychology of the games journalist isn’t difficult. Yes, they are motivated by clicks and attention but that comes with the territory. They also like to use their platforms to proselytize and politick when all you want to read about is the refresh rate. They’re insecure and can’t bring themselves to admit they’d rather be writing about almost anything else but don’t have the drive or the audience to do it. Their real key motivator is they cannot stand to have “the gamers” think they might know something the journalists don’t. This is why every time a “secret” is revealed, someone else’s report published or a new scandal unveiled they have to all parrot in unison “of course I knew that too… It was an open secret actually.” Theirs is an industry of easy access so to not know absolutely everything would of course be embarrassing, especially if people who’ve never even written an article about the queer-coding of Chained Together knew it first.
I can tell you exactly what happened in this instance and even have a timeline to back it up. On Saturday 10th August a post was made on the Valve subreddit that said “Deadlock crossed 10k+ concurrent players and it's not even announced yet. It might as well be an open beta at this point.” That was then cross-posted to the Games subreddit the following day. The discussion was divided between those who were playing the game but wouldn’t share too many details and those who either didn’t have invites or weren’t aware of its existence. Shortly after the thread the concurrent players shot up to almost double the number.
It was here that The Verge editor, Sean Hollister, doubtlessly saw the thread. A hard day’s digging for journalists these days is checking what is trending on social media and rewriting it in the hope of catching some search engine traffic. Seeing that people were talking about what an open secret Deadlock was he decided to ask around for an invite. Anyone who is already in the alpha testing stage can request access a Steam account so actually getting access isn’t difficult at all. The Verge’s article comprised of a basic description of the game’s principle gameplay loop, a handful of screenshots and recorded footage of the writer playing against bots.
The game is already very complex as you would expect from a genre mashup of a class-based shooter and a MOBA. It is going to take dozens of hours just to get a sense of basic balances and synergies. Despite that Hollister, desperate to show the world that no “open secret” can slip past a seasoned games journalist, wrote a shallow review including embarrassing statements like “even in this “early development build,” there are already 20 different heroes, plenty of which look like ones I’d enjoy playing.” You see, if you were going to do the big reveal why not take your time, learn the intricacies of the game, write up detailed descriptions for each of the characters and what roles they fill, tap into some of the lore… But no. They’re talking about it NOW and the games journos aren’t. Can’t have that.
I feel safe in assuming these motivations. A cursory glimpse at Hollister’s social media output is exactly what you think it would be. Their Twitter account links to a Mastodon address, a throwback to when Elon Musk bought the website and the journos had a hissy fit because they could no longer backchannel to have accounts banned for telling them to “learn to code.” Indeed, the majority of his last month’s output on Twitter – now X.com – is whining about Musk and bizarrely saying “bye Twitter” despite The Verge still being very much active on the site. It’s all so tiresomely typical.
I’ve seen some other journalists argue that The Verge’s “report” was newsworthy. This is true but only in the most rudimentary sense. There was nothing in Hollister’s piece you couldn’t find elsewhere. Game footage leaked on 4chan months ago. There’s already a community subreddit with in excess of 27,000 members. IF you want to find out details about the game you can with ease and if you want FREE access to play it right now chances are you can message someone on Steam and have it in a few hours. So to be clear, even though Hollister did it for what are likely pathetically transparent reasons he didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t violate an NDA. He didn’t betray an embargo. He didn’t even click the box that would have forced him into an almost certainly unenforceable agreement. He did his very best big boy reporting.
Despite all of that though he has certainly caused a stink and one that could come with some professional consequences. It’s highly unlikely that Valve would place The Verge on a future blacklist for this but it’s within the realms of possibility. Even if the company were to place them on a low priority list when it came to comment and access would it have been worth it? A few clicks and showing your readership that you’re so well connected you can get into the same alpha tens of thousands of players have been enjoying for months? It seems like a stupefyingly short-sighted lapse in editorial judgment.
To be clear The Verge absolutely can report on the existence of the game and anything they want connected to it. I know enough about the games journos to know that The Verge will now likely go out of their way to publish more leaks about the game just to show how “not owned” they are. Any reader complaining about that is frankly an idiot. Yet the greater stupidity is not understanding why the report was so poorly received in the first place. This is something that wouldn’t take long to understand if they asked around but gone are the days when those reporting on games make any efforts to engage with the communities those games create.
Valve distributed Deadlock pretty much out of the blue and did so in as informal a fashion as a games developer ever will. It was quite simply “do you want to test out our new game?” Then somewhere down the line it became “do you want to invite your friends to test out our new game?” The only price of admission was “don’t be an asshole” so you can understand why this would have totally sailed over a games journalist’s head. The agreement amounts to “don’t leak it because we want this to be as polished as possible when we roll it out into beta.” This has given having access to Deadlock a real kind of speakeasy vibe and for the most part no-one is snitching. Sure, you could upload a video or stream it or even write a review but you can do that exactly once. After that you have you’ll be removed from having the chance to help develop the game and you might not even get your access back after it launches. In addition, because everyone understands that they could do the same thing but have elected not to, it’s just going to make you look like a knob. The good will Valve have shown in how they have handled access has been reciprocated by a community that is continually told they can’t be trusted to have nice things by other developers.
Already, if you know where to look, there are private discussions and meta-game theorycrafting. Private YouTube channels publish high quality video patch-note breakdowns of the most recent changes. Discords exist to facilitate competitive matchmaking and there are established community figureheads. There’s a developer forum for bug fixes and feedback for future balance changes. It has all the foundational aspects of any competitive games community but like how they used to be about twenty years ago. This is why the people who are a part of it enjoy being a part of it. These are the quiet, enjoyable moments before the floodgates are opened to the internet’s legions of screaming teenagers and sweaty tryhards. This is quite possibly the only time the game will be fun in the traditional sense of the word.
So, when a journalist comes along and decides to break the one rule every other player – be they humble TF2 refugee, content creator or reporter – has agreed to then yeah you’re going to get called a dick. Sure, it’s your job, maybe even your nature… I know many journalists that think nothing of betraying confidences as they deliver the “you knew I was a scorpion when you sat down for drinks” speech. That’s not going to win you any friends in gaming communities, which, as you’ve spent the past ten years making abundantly clear, is fine by you anyway.
Imagine if instead of rushing to leak the most surface-level reporting they’d instead taken the time to stick around, hang out, learn about the game and the people who play it. Months from now that would make you an authoritative voice when speaking about it, someone well connected and authentic. From that vantage you could do solid reporting that has value… Niche for sure but one that would retain a loyal following and if the game was to go on to be part of the new wave set to replace the comparative dinosaurs of titles like League of Legends you’d have established your site as a hub for all that traffic and interaction.
But The Verge is a serious tech website and thinks goals such as those are silly and beneath it. And maybe they are right, which brings us back to why they’d run such a pointless piece in the first place. Hollister would likely screech like a vampire stung by holy water if you called him a “games journalist” so why was he so quick to run out and plant their standard? Given Valve’s increasing forays into the world of tech with Steamdeck and Index why risk their annoyance just to stick it to Reddit? The answer is games journalism, maybe journalism in general, has become a largely self-serving practice where nothing matters except appearing smarter than the audience you’re supposed to serve.
Obligatory: Gargussy.
That is all.
Learned a new word - 'proselytize', so 10/10 article. :)
Seriously though - a great read (as usual) and thank you for sharing your thoughts on the topic.