Quoted from Whysnow:beginning to wonder if Pinside was paid to remove the photos and leaked images all as part of the marketing???
Seriously crazy to me that these are being scrubbed. It seems to be right up Jared's marketing style which is fricking genius. This is how new age marketing works.
We now know Stern is actively backing and investing in pinhead media/social outlets (pinball with the Pros sponsor) and with Pinside now being a for profit venture and looking for ways to bring in more money to support 2 employees it is a no brainer to partner with Stern on managing releases and keeping the hype up for an extended period.
There is no way Stern did this as part of some "genius marketing" plan by Jared. Every time something like this happens, there are always those who think it's the company planning it. As someone who works in marketing and has planned "leaks" before, I would be highly surprised if this were planned.
When you plan a "leak" you don't go chasing down offenders and demand they remove the images. Course the fanboys will say, "BUT THAT'S THE GENIUS PART, THEY WANT US TO THINK THEY DIDN'T LEAK IT!!!!" Bullocks. For all of the fanboys thinking this is Stern marketing brilliance, just stop for a minute and ask yourself, why would they do this? Here are my reasons why Stern doing this makes no sense:
1. Stern doesn't need a leak to drum up excitement for it's pins...they've never leaked anything before and its popular themes have sold well without any "leaks"
2. Stern is VERY PRIVATE when it comes to reveals. They offer exclusive reveals to IGN on all their new titles and leaks would undermine those exclusives.
3. Stern would never showcase something that's a "work in progress"...they are professionals and show you the final package right before you can buy it. That's GENIUS marketing guys...that's how Apple does it and that's the way to go. You want people in a frenzy on the day they can hit "BUY NOW".
4. Nothing personal, but they would never let Jared go out with something like this. Gary is not the kind of guy that wants to feed the pinball forum fanboys info...he could care less.
5. The movie studio would never approve those CAD images to go out.
I could go on and on, but the fanboys will still read what I wrote and say, "Yeah, but that's why it's so genius because they expect us to think that!!!!"
I'll end with this...you don't get stuff removed from Reddit guys unless Stern's legal came down on them. "Ah, but Kaneda, the lawyers are in on it, that's why it's so Genius!" See what I did there?