That blows because Cary seems fairly even handed. He said Stranger Things was boring and articulated why he felt that way, which is a fair criticism all things considered. He has talked up TMNT. He did rake them over the coals for Heavy Metal's price and artwork though. But that can't have possibly set Stern off, could it? He only gets a couple thousand views, mostly pinheads that already know Heavy Metal is a rip off. Plus when he is making his arguments, he is usually very fair to Stern by recognizing them as a business that happens to make pinball machines.

I just hope that Stern isn't learning the wrong lessons from the modern relationship between the video game industry and video game press. A lot of video game publishers are blacklisting people or only giving early access to people who won't say anything negative about the product.

It's a pretty bold claim to say Stern would pressure the locations that get the first wave of games to keep someone like Cary from reporting on new games. Surely someone there is familiar with the Streisand effect.

This is flawed logic. By your logic, there would be no such thing as investigative journalism.

They have the moral and legal right to share the information if it is newsworthy. That is assuming they didn't do anything illegal to attain and release it, such as hacking into private emails, buying stolen property, or violate a NDA. Some people might abuse the DMCA if they don't like it (and social media companies quickly cave because it's easier to take stuff down and put it back up then risk their own ass), but things like this have always been considered fair use.

I didn't say they were deserving of Pulitzer prizes. Just that they do have the right to do it if they want to.

But Stern doesn't have the right to try to stop it, other than trying to be better about controlling things before stuff gets leaked. Once it's out there, it's out there. They can file DMCA claims all they want, but it is widely considered fair use to cover newsworthy items in a hobby. This sorta thing happens all the time in video games industry.

Unless it was stolen or illegally gained in some other way, they have no legal right to remove that content.

To be fair to Stern, they should have those pre-announcement conferences calls with their distributors. It's a professional courtesy and a good business practice because the distributors need to know what they're about to sell, because their customers will be calling instantly.

What I think is a mistake is having that call a few days before the actual announcement. It could be done in the morning and the announcement posted that afternoon. That way the leaks are minimized and a bunch of people aren't trying to dissect and draw false conclusions based on low res photos.

I can only guess Gary and co feel mildly embarrassed and wants their licensing partners to know they don't run some rinky-dink operation. It's important that they can be trusted with potentially confidential things. (Not that Stern makes anything in advance of a movie/show/band release anymore)

Yes? But it's not my choice. I'd run the hell out of Stern...straight into the ground most likely! But what a glorious few years it'd be for the consumers in the hobby (till the support is gone and buried)

And the video shows his gameplay footage as he talks about it...

Why leak poor quality photos on purpose? How does that help anything?

The first impression is the most important, so the first impression needs to be high quality, informative, and tempting. A fuzzy photo from a circa 2007 cellphone does none of these things. If it's to gin up appetite, then there are better ways to make teasers.

Good point, but I counter that Stern sales only keep going up by leaps and bounds. The negative opinions certainly aren’t hurting too much. Prospective buyers aren’t going to immediately stumble upon the Kaneda’s of the hobby.

And really some of the threads on pinside documenting poor quality control should scare them more than some guys saying they didn’t have much fun playing the game.

I still can’t believe how many people want to take the side that is against someone providing their criticism of a game.

He wasn’t disrespecting the location or saying anything at all about it (Does he even mention where he plays? I’m sure one could figure it out)

All he did was talk about how he didn’t like that game. And honestly, saying Stranger Things isn’t among Stern’s recent best isn’t even that hot of a take.

Maybe some people play that particular game less at that particular location. But really how many people who watch Cary and will go to this location?

Maybe it’ll affect other locations with the same game. That could be more detrimental. Of course the kind of people who watch Cary probably want to play every new title regardless and simply enjoy talking about and evaluating games 24/7.

And really, Cary is arguably doing a service to operators by letting them know that a game like Stranger Things has issues out of the box and that hardcore pin heads might have a very cool reception to it.

Cary making videos calling out Stern’s afterthought UV kit and extremely expensive for what you get JP topper is simply being a consumer watchdog.

Hell Cary does more than most of you to get more and new people engaged with this hobby.

Some think it’s people like Cary that cause Stranger Things to sell poorly. I can’t argue with that because it’s simply not grounded in reality with how much pull someone like Cary has on a company that sells around 12,000+ units a year. (As an aside it is amusing Stern is including a random chance to win bunch of free swag to goose Stranger Things sales)

I do feel bad for someone like Zombie Yeti when his hard work doesn’t get shown off in the best way in a leak. It’s a less than stellar first impression to some of the most ardent pinball fans. But I stand by saying that what Cary does should be consider fair use in discussing newsworthy topics in this hobby.

I do sympathize with Stern for wanting to show off their products in the best light, to not have to deal with constant trolling and negativity, to not look foolish in front of their business partners, and for trying to find the best way to deliver value to the consumer and profit to their private equity vampiric overlords

But get your shit together Stern. The leaks, the mediocre games in between the great games, and the thin skin when it comes to dealing with valid criticism from your biggest supporters.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

I don’t see how anyone gets to the mindset of “I shouldn’t demand every product to be excellent” unless they’ve just been beaten into submission.

That kind of talk is catnip to those that can’t get over Zach’s endless hustle

(No offense to Zach. Go earn easy money selling new in box games and HUO trade ins)

People who keep saying that Stern has the right to request takedowns of copyrighted material really need to brush up on the legal doctrine of fair use

The leaks are not being distributed for profit (eg counterfeit prints of the artwork). They are using a small portion of an overall copyrighted item to discuss it as a news item and criticize it (eg people who post movie reviews with clips from the movie). They are photos of a product and represent a small portion of the overall greater copyrighted good. The leaks cannot easily be shown to have a detrimental effect upon the value of the product (some guy saying it ugly doesn’t suddenly make the pinball machine not worth six grand).

Assuming the leaks are not illegally obtained by the leaker, Stern can ask and threaten, but they have no legal right to have them removed.

A lot of major media companies have the clout to abuse the DMCA on social media sites. The social media sites will err on caution, because they’re not going to risk their ass for you.

But generally speaking, Stern can’t stop you from sharing leaks. They can apply pressure to a location to keep someone they don’t like away, but that’s about it. Or the location is proactive about it because they’re afraid of being on Stern’s bad side when it comes to being first to get the latest and greatest

Or possibly in Kaneda’s case, they go to your employer and say how can you have a marketer that is leaking marketing material for other companies including some of your own mutual business partners.

The NBA did something several years ago to catch a high level executive that was leaking to the media. They sent a memo to all 30 teams general managers, but placed minor changes in the wording in each memo. Then they sat back and waited to see what the reporter had to say.

The moral of the story is Joe Dumars was a dumbass

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But then the distributors would be unavailable to take calls from the most enthusiastic buyers

The best they could do is a morning meeting and an afternoon reveal.

People would be wanting to call the distro at 8:01am, but they don’t know everything about the game yet. Or during the conference call to learn about it, people would be calling them.

If I was a salesperson, I’d want to know what I’m selling first and then be as available as possible to field all calls/texts/emails.

Zach and others might see this. I’d love to know what their opinion is for when they should be briefed and when the game should be revealed. But I understand if they rather keep those chats just between them and Stern

I think it’s still valuable for the distributor to be more familiar with the feature matrix, especially if they are trying to upsell their potential customers to a premium or LE.

I’m sure there are regular customers that only need to send a single text to place their order, but the initial reveal is when most customers are still trying to figure it out.

That one doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the UV kit.

Mostly because it was clearly planned from the beginning, seemingly scrapped, and then brought back for an extra fee. That and the upside down is an iconic part of the show and it’s a very underwhelming implemented feature in the base game.

Makes them look bad in front of their business partners. They don't want to look untrustworthy if they are given access to confidential things.

We get it, you love Stern and what they do.

This also reminds me of the people that think companies like Apple are often purposefully leaking details about their next iPhone.

No. People in their vast supply chain are paid bribes to leak things like phone dimensions so other factories can start making phone cases in bulk for day one purchases.

The purpose is to discuss Stern and how they deal with leaks.

I'll admit, I shouldn't have gone off the Stranger Things UV kit tangent in that one post. But you've gone off on way more tangents and have dismissed a ton of interesting conversation. All to put in your two cents that you don't like the conversation or find it interesting, but can't be bothered to write anything meaningful to that extent...yet you still have the addiction to chime in regardless.

More of a poorly managed product that failed to maximize sales by being released well after the initial Star Wars purchasing frenzy. One that everyone knew about and joked about because it had leaked years before release.

Look at that, I made my "Stern grievance" germane to the topic of leaks.

Is anyone really arguing that a Stern Pro isn’t generally a great ROI for an operator? Regardless, this thread is way off topic at this point.

Some people complained about thread derailment when it became about Stern QC, but are happy to talk about how much they love Stern’s making them money on route.

The thread was about how Stern deals with leaks and negative feedback. But whatever. That topic was beat into submission by the acolytes.