Activision accused of blacklisting journalist, calls it “misunderstanding”

Posted February 20, 2012 by Jamie Donnelly in News.

News: Activision have been accused of blacklisting French website Gameblog.fr, but have waved it away as a “misunderstanding”.

French website Gameblog.fr has accused Activision of blacklisting them for posting a rumour that a sequel to Black Ops would be released this year, based on an Amazon product listing. Activision have now denied the claim, saying it was just a simple misunderstanding.

The French site posted a story informing readers of their conversation with Activision, and Kotaku followed up by interviewing the site’s editor, Grégory Szriftgiser. He explained that Activision had asked them to pull the article as a favour, as nothing had been officially announced. Szriftgiser refused to pull it, but Activision persisted. He said: “They tried again to explain they needed us to pull the article, I refused again. They insisted again that it would seriously deteriorate the professional relationship we had, that we weren’t fully aware of the consequences this could have.

“They also made clear that the relationship was to be severed, all advertisement plans cancelled, games not sent, and invitations to later events cancelled as well.”

It seems that he’s pretty certain they’ve been blacklisted, but Activision think otherwise. In a statement to GamesBeat, the company’s spokesperson said: “Activision doesn’t blacklist journalists. We believe this was a misunderstanding and are working towards a resolution.”

So what’s actually going on here? It’s hard to tell. Activision would never admit to blacklisting a journalist, and their “misunderstanding” may just be a frantic backtrack now that the cat is out of the bag. On the other hand, it seems strange to me that Activision would care so much about this rumour. True, if they’ve got a carefully planned advertising strategy it messes with that, but everybody already knows a Call of Duty game is coming this year: it’s hardly a surprise.

I hope that it was genuinely a misunderstanding, as nobody wants to see publishers trying to throw their weight around and influence the press: it’s not called for, and sites don’t have to stand for. However, I think we should bare in mind that Activision are a fantastic games company who care very much about their customers and are angelic creatures capable of doing no wrong. Nope, nobody pulling our strings here at BeefJack, whatsoever.

You can find all the latest Activision news right here at good old BeefJack.

Tagged as Activision, activision blacklisting, blacklist, gamesblog.fr