Wheee!! [H] has finally managed to piss off FutureMark.

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ostsol

Veteran
[H]ardOCP
3DMark Makers Upset with [H]:
Tero Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Futuremark, wrote in this morning with a directive for HardOCP to stop slandering their 3Dmark product line and threatens to bring in lawyers. I do have to think that this is a shot across our bow as surely ATI and NVIDIA have told Futuremark about recent interviews we have done with the video giants in preparation for an upcoming HardOCP editorial.


I strongly advise you to not to slander our product, 3DMark, on your web site. Take down all your false and unjustified and baseless claims about 3DMark.

Sincerely,

Tero Sarkkinen
Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Futuremark Corporation
tero@futuremark.com, http://www.futuremark.com

As is normal operating procedure, we like to be specific as to what exactly the company wants removed. So I responded, " I have reviewed the document that you sent (Tero sent a 15 page PDF that was a reproduction of today's HardOCP news page in full (possibly a copyright violation in itself )) and see no slanderous, false, unjustified, or baseless claims whatsoever about "3DMark." Could you please be more specific as to your allegations and advice?

Tero replied with...

You know what I mean. Your articles have consistently discredited 3DMark for years now and the few justifications there have sometimes been have been without merit. It seems to us as if you have something against our product personally and are using your popular website as a platform to attack and trying to discredit on purpose and with baseless claims and sometimes also with erroneous information.

I will no longer communicate with you after this. Our attorney is looking that this situation will get resolved and will contact you if necessary.

Tero Sarkkinen
Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Futuremark Corporation
tero@futuremark.com, http://www.futuremark.com

"You know what I mean," was hardly the answer I expected. But just remember that having an opinion these days means having a band of high priced lawyers at your side.

I do stand by the opinion that 3DMark05 "sucks" as a benchmark based on the fact that it does not tell me anything specifically about the games I play. Did 3DMark tell us how DOOM3 was going to play? No. Will 3DMark tell us how HL2 or STALKER will play on a given system? No. Does that mean 3DMark is worthless? Surely not. 3DMark has a ton of great and fun uses; I just don't find any of them as a benefit to our readers or myself directly. On that note, the entire 3DMark series can be a great tool for end users testing tweaks and such on their systems and it can be a great source of fun competition across the Net.

Our editorial on the state of 3DMark will be published soon, and I guess this one will be another that we have to pay the lawyers to read before it goes out the door. But if Futuremark thinks their baseless threats and attacks on our opinions will gain them ground with the hardware community, or us they are badly mistaken.

And Tero, I know you guys are not Americans, so you might want to catch up with The United States Constitution and specifically the First Amendment to it. I guarantee you that HardOCP is very much inside its legal rights to express opinions about your products and will continue to do so. What amazes me is that you are stepping on some of the very toes that Futuremark relies on to make its money, and those toes belong to the gaming and hardware communities that we share the truth with on a daily basis. Now take our advice. You are barking up the wrong tree little doggy.

(A thread is now active in our forums to address this issue if you feel like sounding off or hearing what others have to say.)
 
Nahh, what's FM going to do? Sue [H] for not likeing their benchmark software and saying so in their review and editorials which are by their nature subjective opinion pieces? In a country where free-speech is protected in the constitution? FM are just pissing in the wind.

If FM were serious they would have pointed out exactly what lines they object to, instead of a vague "you know - all those nasty things you've been saying about us. Makes us cry. I've told my mommy". :rolleyes:
 
Oh, forgot to add : Where's the popcorn?

Oh well, perhaps it's a storm in a teacup but knowing Kyle, he'll milk this for all it's worth.

If what Kyle said Tero wrote him is true (and I honestly have no reason to think Kyle would come up with this on his own!!), it really is unlike Tero. Nor is the follow-up email from Tero, which Tero probably didn't expect Kyle to post, otherwise Tero would've said "This email is under NDA". Seems like the follow-up email from Tero was rushed and -- more importantly and perhaps damningly for FM -- emotional.
 
Could a game publishers sue a corporate review site such as Gamespot for damages due to a negative review impacting their title's potential sales?

That said, Kyle has demonstrated a clear agenda since last year to denigrate the usefulness of 3DMark in testing graphics hardware, and his statements are often based on erroneous knowledge (a la lack of technical understanding). Some of his comments above mirror this: the Proxycon (sp?) game test did tell the gaming community how ATI hardware might handle Doom 3 with AA enabled, and GT4 and the furor that broke out over its PS 2.0 skybox clearly indicated that a certain IHV wasn't entirely confident their then-current hardware could run the test as well as the competition's hardware. I don't think there's anything wrong with a benchmark suite comprised only of games, or choosing synthetic tests other than FM's products, so long as the reviewer understands how to use and interpret data gleaned from his testing.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
Nahh, what's FM going to do? Sue [H] for not likeing their benchmark software and saying so in their review and editorials which are by their nature subjective opinion pieces? In a country where free-speech is protected in the constitution? FM are just pissing in the wind.

If FM were serious they would have pointed out exactly what lines they object to, instead of a vague "you know - all those nasty things you've been saying about us. Makes us cry. I've told my mommy". :rolleyes:
FM could be holding back specifics to surprise [H] when/if they file.

Looks like it'll be a jolly good show though either way. 8)
 
Reverend said:
Oh, forgot to add : Where's the popcorn?
This one will require the jumbo sized one and lots for everyone!

popcorn.gif
popcorn.gif
popcorn.gif
popcorn.gif
popcorn.gif
popcorn.gif
 
I don't understand why Futuremark would take this up, unless they got word from someone regarding H's upcoming Editoral on 3dm2k5. It's not like Kyle has this profound effect over his readership with his opinions, his forums are filled with many threads with his readership openly comparing 3dmard2k5 scores.

This is only going to make Futuremark look bad.
 
I was thinking just before that post by Kyle that he was perhaps being unprofessional when he made this post earlier:
See 3DMark05:
If you don't have the hardware to actually see 3DMark2005 in action, there has been someone nice enough to throw up some AVIs of it in action. 3DMark05 sucks as a benchmark, but it sure is pretty and great fun to watch. Thanks Roberto Valle!

The bolding is my own. There really was no need for and it really is just a mean spirited jab, so I can see how FM might get "emotional". However, the [H] is Kyles baby and he can do what he wants. I have no idea what FM thinks is going to happen with this, but I can't see anything good coming of it.
 
Maybe Kyle gets enough hits now that when he pisses people off they sue him, which in turn generates even more hits? Hehe. I kinda hope this goes to court, just to see it get laughed out faster than the IL case.
 
Kyle might have eventually forgotten about 3DMark had Tero not called him out on it, but knowing Kyle he'll never let it go now. If anything, Tero just made things a lot worse for FM.

The editorial, if it ever surfaces, will be interesting indeed.
 
What can I say except that [H] must be in love with lawsuits. Here's hoping the publicity generated will allow them to offset their accumulating attorney's fees, someday, maybe...:D

This was great:

[H said:
]I do stand by the opinion that 3DMark05 "sucks" as a benchmark based on the fact that it does not tell me anything specifically about the games I play.

Now, since [H] seems to know and understand that 3dMk is not actually a game itself, but is instead a "benchmark," why would 3dMk "suck" merely because it "does not tell me anything specifically about the games I play"...?

Does HL2 "suck" because running the game tells me nothing specifically about how my box will run Stalker? Does Stalker "suck" because playing it tells me nothing about running HL2? Does Doom3 "suck" because running it tells me nothing about how Quake 3 will run on my system? Does Doom3 "suck" because running the game tells me nothing about how my system will run benchmarks like 3dMk, or the UT2K3 fly-by benchmark? And vice-versa, ad infinitum?

In short, does *everything* "suck" because it doesn't tell us how *everything else* will run?...:D

It seems that [H]'s enduring objection to 3dMk is simply that it isn't Doom 3. But then, Doom 3 isn't Stalker, isn't HL2, isn't Far Cry, isn't NWN, etc. and etc., forever and forever. So if the basis for [H]'s objection to 3dMk is that it isn't anything else, then what is [H]'s rationale for liking any individual piece of software? According to [H], if any piece of software isn't something else, it sucks. If you can figure that one out, clue me in, by all means...:D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top