It's not rare to see gaming personalities get paid to support games. In fact, we saw the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) go after Machinima two years ago for offering "seeming objective opinions" on the Xbox One when they were actually getting paid for it.
Last year, FTC found Machinima guilty and prohibited them from not disclosing being paid to sponsor items.
Around the same time that Machinima was being investigated by the FTC, Warner Bros. was up to the same thing. Apparently, Warner Bros. was paying YouTubers to promote their game. Now, the FTC has officially announced (via ArsTechnica) a settlement with Warner Bros. over allegedly paying YouTube personalities in secret to promote Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
According to the FTC, Warner Bros. hired a third-party marketing team that offered YouTube personalities “cash payments often ranging from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars" for videos on Shadow of Mordor that met a specific set of criteria: it had to be a positive video on Shadow of Mordor – no negative views, there could be no game bugs shown and it had to include “a strong verbal call-to-action to click the link in the description box for the viewer to go to the [game’s] website to learn more about the [game], to learn how they can register, and to learn how to play the game.”
YouTubers even had to use social accounts like Facebook or Twitter to help promote the video on the game. PewDiePie was one of these YouTubers that sponsored the game, he was paid thousands of dollars for his video.
So, what did the FTC tell Warner Bros. to do about it? In the future, Warner Bros cannot misrepresent any gameplay, must "clearly and conspicuously disclose" any connection to people hired to promote the game and must actively educate anyone paid to promote their game on sponsorship disclosures.
Violations of the finding can incur fines up to $16,000.
