Sony employee(s) caught editing Halo3 wikipage.. *

EDIT : *Removed comments I consider in violation of previous post by yours truly*

I've seen many companies take shots at rival companies, but rarely have I seen a company take shots at their rival's products and especially when it was untrue and of such magnitude and importance to the rival company.

It seems there are some that feel MS may have been behind this to point the finger back at Sony. IMO, that doesn't make much sense as it is based on an insult to their flagship product. However true or untrue it may be, it draws attention to such an aspect and with today's easily influenced consumer, could steer many away.

MS has been making some stupid decisions lately, but I don't think they would go as far as to insult their flagsip product this year just to point the finger back at Sony.

It may be a rogue employee or friend of a friend or janitor, my point is, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Sony themselves based on their marketing actions and attitude over the past few years. Having said that, the IP address seems to point to the obvious: A zealous Sony dev.

No big deal IMO as I'm sure many devs feel their games are TEH ROXORS.


Getting back to Sony:
I think the reason we've seen their image/marketing implode a bit lately is they're in a completely different landscape than they've been or figured they'd be in. They've been dominating the market for well over a decade and figured to do the same for decades to come. Things didn't quite turn out like they've expected and they literally don't know how to handle it.

In sports it's like the always dominant team finding themselves in a big hole by halftime. When they've never had to face digging themselves out of a hole, they will have to learn on the fly. Sometimes they learn in time, others, they don't and fail.

Who knows how Sony will come out of this gen, but I think they are learning as we speak and will continue to learn. Regardless, they will be better off from it and IMO will likely dominate again with ps4.
 
I really don't understand the furor over all these Wikipedia edits, it's the nature of the beast. OK so someone who works for a company who has a vested interest in the item in question edited it.........

Errr OK. Not sure I see the issue.

People work for companies, people have opinions, people edit wikipedia (apparently at work).

But even Marketing depts doing it isn't "evil" in anyway. They have exactly the same access as the fanboys and those trying to add factual information.

Wikipedia doesn't attempt to be a repository of truth, it's collection of edits by people who have knowledge or opinions, I wouldn't take anything on there at face values especially if the item in question was in anyway controversial. I might believe an article on the definition of King Pin Inclination, but on the merits of a platform or game, your going to want to take buckets of Salt with it.
 
Yes this kind of things can happen anytime but I think the reason to why i am not Surprised that $ony did that is because $ony has said many bad things about Xbox360 before.

Ofcourse this can just have been a single employe as Shifty Gezzer says (under my post) so this shouldn´t be taken so seriously, anyways they have fixed it already, right?
 
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The whole 'Sony said' thing (BTW you appear to have a dodgy keyboard that puts $ signs where S's shoud be...) is a bit iffy though, because a lot of things Sony said are in fact developers, and not all first party. It seems to me the problem is Sony exclusive developers talk, whereas devs on other platforms don't. If you're going to talk, you're going to end up saying something someone takes offense to. eg. nAo, giving his personal opinion based on reviewing the PGR4 video evidence and his technical background and stating the motion blur is too good to be realtime. That's interpreted as a Sony developer which leads onto yet another Sony faux pas. Those disclaimers in people's signatures really annoy me, because it should be obvious that a person's statements on a board like this or down the pub or whatever aren't company policy but individual opinion, and yet it seems people won't make that distinction.

What we could be seeing here is an individual commenting that Halo 2 looks like Halo 3 (which was a stupid thing to say, because it clearly doesn't!) but the correlation the masses make is that it's the parent company's doing. It does reflect badly on his employer, but it shouldn't. If someone in the street spits at you, would you then consider their whole family equally disagreeable because of their association with him?
 
I think this whole thing is a bit silly. Some employee doing a childish edit on a wiki just isn't a big deal. It looks to me like some gamesite dug it up and is using it to gather more hits as fanboys take up arms. As a big Halo fan, I kind of find the edit funny. Wiki vandalism is common and happens all the time.

Shifty Geezer said:
(BTW you appear to have a dodgy keyboard that puts $ signs where S's shoud be...)
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Off topic, IMO that practice degrades this forum, Can we ALL agree to gentlemanly refrain from such behavior? Today I've seen a couple of posts with that (mis)spelling (with two different companies). :cry:
 
This particular issue is discussed IMHO because it's a pretty lame and unprofessional move in all aspects - it's clearly a completely stupid statement, it demonstrates that employees at SCEE aren't briefed properly on company policies (at least I hope there are some), and that at least one employee's intelligence is questionable... in other way he's stupid.
 
Laa-Yosh said:
This particular issue is discussed IMHO because it's a pretty lame and unprofessional move in all aspects - it's clearly a completely stupid statement, it demonstrates that employees at SCEE aren't briefed properly on company policies (at least I hope there are some), and that at least one employee's intelligence is questionable... in other way he's stupid.
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What makes you think it was edited by an employee?

By the way, regarding company policies, here is an official one:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16775981/
 
fallguy said:
Pretty funny how every forum has the same title, "Sony did this", when its a single employee.
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Isn't it always?

Sony = any employee of Sony

Same as any other corporation.


In interviews where people say dumb things employed by the parent company, their words are representing the entire company.

In this case though to be more specific, it should probably read "Sony Dev" not "Sony".
 
rbushner said:
Off topic, IMO that practice degrades this forum, Can we ALL agree to gentlemanly refrain from such behavior? Today I've seen a couple of posts with that (mis)spelling (with two different companies). :cry:
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Good post!

Yes I find it childish to se how many use the $ in MS and this is the first time I seen it in the Sony name. I think it is pretty obvious that both companies have as high priority to earn as much $ as possible as all (or most) other companies.
No need to mark out a specific company with this childish behavior of using $ in the company names.
 
Anything goes...

An ex-employee ? An intern (We have 4 in my small group alone) ? Part-timers (We have hundreds here) ? Visitors ?

My son and wife also have access to my work laptop @ home. I leave it running (working on long jobs), and the screen saver lock is off because I jump in/out of work very frequently. If they want to, it is possible for them to send a short email on my behalf :) Editing a short wiki is not a problem too.

But that hardly mean anything.... as is the wiki incident. It might be an employee or it might not. No one knows. The devs might not know who did it too (They might know which computer and account the post was made). :)
 
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Laa-Yosh said:
Who else could have regular access to a computer in the Liverpool office? Janitors don't usually have user logins...
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I don't see any regularity in this issue. It seems to be a one-time edit. For all I know wireless network wasn't password protected and some guy passing by made a joke.

Don't get me wrong what ever is the case, a visitor, intern, employee, cracker doesn't matter. SCEE Liverpool is responsible for the network, but it may not be the ethical company policy issue you are talking about.
 
NavNucST3 said:
that would be from your providers ip, assuming no vpn is active. The microsoft mantea which is not much different from what we had in the navy is to not do or say something, that if it were front page news it would adversely affect the company im sure sony has something similar. The only reason this is news is because ip tracking is the new in thing kinda like npd numbers.
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Yes... I am refering to VPN IP since the data my stuff work on are in that network :)
 
Nothing new, Sony aparently changed other stuff, microsoft uses henchmen to do their "work. There is tons of examples, this is hardly worthwhile since it´s only throwing mud.. as usual...
 
TheChefO said:
Isn't it always?

Sony = any employee of Sony

Same as any other corporation.


In interviews where people say dumb things employed by the parent company, their words are representing the entire company.

In this case though to be more specific, it should probably read "Sony Dev" not "Sony".
Click to expand...

So lets say I am a retard, a sick person in the mind and happened to be employed by a company A that is unaware of that and then I express my own sickening personal opinions, I suddenly represent the company's opinions and tactics?? me??? A nobody who happens to work somewhere?

His opinion wasnt expressed officially, and neither was he placed there to represent the company's opinion or tactics and the same counts for LS. What he expressed in Wiki is most likely beyond and irrelevant with the responsibilities of the position he was given in LS. He acted independently
 
Nesh said:
So lets say I am a retard, a sick person in the mind and happened to be employed by a company A that is unaware of that and then I express my own sickening personal opinions, I suddenly represent the company's opinions and tactics?? me??? A nobody who happens to work somewhere?

His opinion wasnt expressed officially, and neither was he placed there to represent the company's opinion or tactics and the same counts for LS. What he expressed in Wiki is most likely beyond and irrelevant with the responsibilities of the position he was given in LS.
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Agreed.

But any employee of a company represents that company.

When Ken Kutaragi would spout off about some crazy xyz, it wasn't "Ken said xyz!", it was "Sony says xyz".

That's the way it is. People represent their companies through their actions. How descriptive one wants to be in describing their relationship to said company is up to the reporter.

Sony said
Sony employee said
Sony dev said
Sony Liverpool dev said
Sony Liverpool dev intern said
Ex Sony Liverpool dev intern said
friend of ex Sony Liverpool dev intern said
friend of ex janitor of Sony Liverpool dev said

etc.

If some guy wearing a Verizon hat clips your service to your house, your going to say Verizon did it.
 
Nesh said:
So lets say I am a retard, a sick person in the mind and happened to be employed by a company A that is unaware of that and then I express my own sickening personal opinions, I suddenly represent the company's opinions and tactics?? me??? A nobody who happens to work somewhere?

His opinion wasnt expressed officially, and neither was he placed there to represent the company's opinion or tactics and the same counts for LS. What he expressed in Wiki is most likely beyond and irrelevant with the responsibilities of the position he was given in LS. He acted independently
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Corporations are at least somewhat responsible for the actions of their employees, especially when said actions could be seen as in the companies interest and were likely performed using their equipment.

If a Sony employee ran into my house with a Sony truck, I'd skip suing the individual and go right to the source. Someone there clearly let him have the keys.
 
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