The Verge Under Fire for Publishing Information About Deadlock, Valve’s Secret Shooter

An interesting case of video game reporting is now unfolding, as the popular tech site The Verge has published: You have posted a great deal of information. About Valve’s secret shooter, Deadlock, which has been described as Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, and Overwatch combined together.

The problem? Many fans are angry about this being posted, accusing them of violating their NDA, and disputing the information mentioned which says:

“Early Development Release: Deadlock is still in early development, with a lot of tentative artwork and experimental gameplay. We don’t share anything about the game with anyone.”

But the loophole here is that this is just an honor system. As the Verge editor put it: Tom Warren’s NotesThey are:

• He did not sign or agree to a non-disclosure agreement.
• No verbal agreement has been reached with Valve regarding the sharing of information.
• You don’t even have to click through the EULA like you would if you wanted to undo it, it just disappears and you can play.

So, The Verge’s Sean Hollister got an invite, played the game, and posted about what he played.

This has caused quite a stir online among Valve advocates and others who have tested the game in its early stages. The community has taken notice of Warren’s tweet about the story, and The Verge says it violated “their informal non-disclosure agreement that requires them not to share any information about the game.”

As an update to the story, The Verge reports that they were actually banned from playtesting shortly after the story was published, which players seem to be celebrating.

These are the decisions you make when you report, and sometimes when it comes to “some people might think I’m an idiot for doing this,” you’ll still publish information that no one else does, especially when you haven’t agreed to any kind of legally binding non-disclosure agreement or even a ban.

The end result of this is that this could be the kind of thing that gets you blacklisted by the publisher or developer. We’ve seen leaks of information leading to this sort of thing across a number of gaming sites over the years, and it could now be happening here with The Verge. But given that Valve only releases a game once every decade or so, this might not be a big deal to them.

I’m not sure what I would have done in that situation, but yes, technically The Verge had the right to do it no matter how crazy people, including Valve, were about it. Although the backlash from all sides may have been more annoying than it was worth.

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