The question of transparency is always a hot topic in the Youtube and livestreaming community. There are rules set out for what constitutes as proper disclosure, but even then not all content creators follow it fully and it doesn’t cover all eventualities. I mean, it didn’t stop this year’s big CS:GO gambling scandal that seemed to have its roots spread all over the place for instance. At the same time, with the widespread use of adblockers, many content creators need to do these sponsorship deals to help them manage their bills and everything else. So there’s no question that promotional content is necessary, but not all creators will disclose things if they feel it’ll bring down audience numbers.
EA doesn’t have a great reputation with gamers right now, but it seems that the company is using proper transparency for their products to help win back some of the audience. They’ve just established a set of new rules that require streamers and other content creators to use special labels to indicate content that is promotional in nature or in some way supported by EA.
In an announcement on their German site, EA made an announcement about the new rules stating (in a rough translation):
“Gamers and viewers must be able to see whether they are independent and editorial content, supported placements of messages, or advertising. Any YouTuber, streamer or otherwise active influencer, who enters into a collaboration with Electronic Arts in their content creation and does not yet use their own labeling system, is now requested to use our Hashtags and Watermarks.”
The disclosure will fall into two groups – #supportedbyEA, which covers content that EA has supported (such as invitations to shows, covering travel expenses etc.) but has no direct influence over the creation of the content; and #advertisement, which is actual advertising and covers content that EA has had a hand in creating, had some editorial influence on or maybe even just they created themselves.
The hashtag must be placed directly in the message for things like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram; while video content needs to have the watermark displayed or EA’s involvement needs to be “explicitly mentioned” at the beginning of the video.
Although the announcement was made on the German site, it’s been confirmed that these rules are going to apply across the board. Given that Warner Bros. Interactive got off fairly lightly earlier this year and the aforementioned CS:GO scandal, we can only guess that soon people who fall foul of these rules will soon begin to try the patience of the authorities and get hit much harder.
