Not that rare, considering they did the exact same thing already.
Kinda looks like they’re doing it on purpose so that the following apology gets them some free publicity and reputation for being honest… which is manipulative and shady.
If they made the tooling to mass produce the cubes like they claim they did, that advertising was very not free. In fact, paying for a lot of advertising would be quite a bit less money. I think they had been getting away with using Valve IP on skins for years, and thought they’d get away with this too.
They might just sincerely be stupid, but this all carries a strong scent of bullshit.
My money’s on a calculated PR move, with almost no investment made into leading up to the action from Valve, culminating with a woe-is-me to stir up some community support.
Anything is possible, but they announced it very early, made what looks to be a good design, made enough examples to send to a bunch of content creators, and took pre-orders. For the this to be intended to be a PR stunt only, everything would have hinged on Valve sending them a C&D after they did all those things. What if Valve had ignored it? The most simple explanation is usually correct, and never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, lol.
Murse@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Not that rare, considering they did the exact same thing already.
Kinda looks like they’re doing it on purpose so that the following apology gets them some free publicity and reputation for being honest… which is manipulative and shady.
jmill@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
If they made the tooling to mass produce the cubes like they claim they did, that advertising was very not free. In fact, paying for a lot of advertising would be quite a bit less money. I think they had been getting away with using Valve IP on skins for years, and thought they’d get away with this too.
Murse@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Am skeptical.
They might just sincerely be stupid, but this all carries a strong scent of bullshit.
My money’s on a calculated PR move, with almost no investment made into leading up to the action from Valve, culminating with a woe-is-me to stir up some community support.
jmill@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Anything is possible, but they announced it very early, made what looks to be a good design, made enough examples to send to a bunch of content creators, and took pre-orders. For the this to be intended to be a PR stunt only, everything would have hinged on Valve sending them a C&D after they did all those things. What if Valve had ignored it? The most simple explanation is usually correct, and never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, lol.