Nintendo Apologizes to SuicideGirls 423
As a follow up to the unfortunate incident on Wednesday, thanks to emfra (and others) who pointed out that BoingBoing has Nintendo's Apology Letter to the SuicideGirls site up. They even went so far as to offer up a free game system and game to the site owner. So alls well that end's well...but not before Penny Arcade had a chance to comment.
Makes perfect sense to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they've handled this in a most professional, and logical manner. Something that cannot be said for most large entertainment companies these days.
-phixxr
Re:I said it before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I said it before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Smart move Nintendo (Score:3, Insightful)
It was a loser but at least give them credit for recognizing it and trying to make amends. Short term it's ugly either way, but this will limit the long term damage. There's no story now.
Good job, Nintendo. Bite the bullet, apologize, move on.
Re:Nintendo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes perfect sense to me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Makes perfect sense to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. They didn't even blame it on an intern, or outsourcing, or anything. They didn't try to pull the "Well, we know we were right, but we're going to do you a favor and back down anyway" thing. And in offering one of their products, they're letting the person choose what they want. As opposed to the RIAA, which dumps poorly selling albums in inner-city schools and calls it good.
WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Makes perfect sense to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Kudos to Nintendo.
Re:I said it before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn, I never laughed so hard in my life. I don't know what bizarro universe you live in... but companies exist to make profit, there's no way around that unless you're a non-profit company.
You see, they explicitly make a type of company called "non-profit" to destinguish them from all the other companies who exist for profit.
You, my friend, need to rethink your idealistic subjective reality.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame in the right place? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:website (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, I am rather overtly paranoid, but did anyone else look at the last paragraph ("we would appreciate it if you could provide us with contact information for RuneLateralus") as a smooth attempt to get directly at the user without having to bother with a subpeona? I mean, come on. I'm Nintendo and I'm getting critized for attacking the website when it was an individual who posted (ignoring the context for a second here). So, I want to go after the user, but I don't know how to send the SaD letter. This looks to be a pretty cool way of getting the info without having to pay^H^H^Hcontact a judge.
classy (Score:5, Insightful)
Kudos.
Re:I said it before... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds like a win-win to me.
PS: nobody cares that it was a guy who wrote about it, all they hear is "suicidegirls.com" and "nintendo."
Good move by Nintendo... (Score:2, Insightful)
But, they did the right thing and fessed up to their mistake, something companies rarely do anymore. Way to go Nintendo.
Re:Nintendo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I said it before... (Score:2, Insightful)
How you know that, i'd love to know. The mentality around here of "If I don't like something, everyone else must hate it too" gets really annoying sometimes.
Re:Nintendo (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations are big, confusing entities. They're byzantine. Sometimes one individual, or team, or department, or DIVSION, exercise a strategy inconsistent or in competition with the corporation's main objective. How many times have you gone to work, looked at a project, and wondered "what the HELL are they doing?!?!?".
In this case, cooler heads prevailed and the situation was rectified. I don't think that Nintendo should be penalised for correcting a mistake. They were even gracious about it.
Re:Makes perfect sense to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can someone repost? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, duh. It's called "damage control", where bullshit excuses usually occur. Nice touch with the free game/system though.
Re:WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nintendo (Score:1, Insightful)
Or more direct, quoting Jesus: "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."
Re:Can someone repost? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Makes perfect sense to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I am *really* sure they were *scared* of that one.
Why, of course they are. A site visited regularly by a lot of gamers - most between 15 and 30 years old? Sounds like potential Nintendo customers to me...
It was a PR move, of course, but they made it right. They deserve some credit.
Just to summarize (Score:5, Insightful)
Coverage on Slashdot, Penny-Arcade, etc on this debacle
Nintendo goes "oh sh*t" at the negetive PR, fully owns up, and offers free (Nintendo brand) gaming system of choice to some of those involved at SG.
SO basically, SG comes up with a whole crapload of attention, extra site traffic, and some free gaming systems. Now, since the site didn't get nuked I'm assuming that a full slashdotting didn't happen. If at least some of the visitors end up signing up - offsetting the bandwidth cost - they benefit not only from the free systems but also from the free publicity/extra signups.
Heck, I sent me GF a link to this, she was looking up some girls' on SG and found their profiles rather cool, wanted to sign up herself. I'd say that I score this one:
SG:+2 (traffic/signups/game systems)
Nintendo+1: or 0 (no harm no fowl, but perhaps bonus points for owning up where few would)
Idiot IP lawers:-1 (for doing the right job in the wrong place).
Whoa dude (Score:3, Insightful)
It hardly implies that he lives in some "subjective reality."
Not perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
Take the tinfoil hat off. First, it was a fuckup. That's clear, they admitted it, end of story. Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids. I think I'm on board there. Third, there's no case for indifference because they did everything they could to fix the fuckup.
I know it screws up the schemas of the slashdot crowd, but there's really not this global conspiracy to screw you personally.
Re:Nintendo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I said it before... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Let's give Nintendo a break, folks. (Score:2, Insightful)
Too often the big companies sending out these types of letters refuse to admit there was a mistake. When they do it is usually something that barely admits any error on their part.
Which makes the action of Nintendo really stand out, and this action by Nintendo of both making it clear that they were in error AND actually making some restitution has definitely raised my opinion of the company.
Re:Not perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
The jerks using Nintendo character names and stuff on porn sites to pull in links probably aren't pedophiles, and they probably don't give a shit that children get drawn in as well. They're just crooks hoping to cheat the system so they can pull in more money from their porn empire. Labeling this type of stuff as pedophilia hurts cracking down on the real problems by diluting what people think of as pedophilia and/or child porn. Frankly you're part of the problem, not the solution when you say things like this. We're all against child porn but most of us want to be helpful in stopping it, not mislabeling things to confuse the issue.
Re:Nintendo (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason I hate that quote so much is that it makes no sense. An eye for an eye means that everyone who goes around poking eyes out will be blind. Not the whole world. Just the eye-pokers.
Re:Not perfect (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can someone repost? (Score:3, Insightful)
I immediately wanted to answer, "Uhh, why don't you try being a manager and tell them to lay off the porn if they want to keep their job?"
Re:Nintendo (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Parent has merit (Score:1, Insightful)
The kind sent by Nintendo's customer service dept. I've gotten email from them before (in reply to a complaint). They're rather on the informal, ingratiating side.
No contact information provided for the SG owner to contact customer service with the system of his choice
How about clicking reply? It was an email.
Most people scan in their letters as JPGs or PDFs, not retype them
Most people copy and paste the text of email messages.
Attorneys usually send e-mails to supplement a cease and decist letter sent via mail. SG says they only got an e-mail.
I don't know what lawyers usually do, but you haven't established that you do, either.