FTC: Warner Bros. paid ‘influencers’ for Shadow of Mordor game promotion

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The American watchdog FTC has reached a settlement with Warner Bros. about paying for positive Shadow of Mordor game reviews without disclosing it. Among the paid “influencers” are popular YouTube personalities like PewDiePie.

According to the FTC, the paid videos had more than 5.5 million views, including 3.5 million views through PewDiePie’s channel. The watchdog has determined that Warner Bros. should make such deals public in the future and cannot prevent sponsored content from being the independent opinions of reviewers. Consumers would have the right to have this information at their disposal, a spokesperson said.

Warner is said to have paid hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars in 2014 to promote the Lord of the Rings game Shadow of Mordor. The conditions were that the YouTube personalities had to speak positively about the game and ignore any bugs, the FTC writes.

Warner had provided instructions for showing a notice that it was paid content. This was supposed to be displayed below the video, but because of that, it often disappeared under the ‘show more’ button on YouTube, according to the watchdog. In addition, statements on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, omitted this statement in its entirety.

The settlement does not contain a penalty for Warner Bros, it only contains an obligation to ensure that consumers are informed in the future. Last week it was revealed that two other YouTube personalities used a gambling site in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in their videos, without revealing that they are the owners of this site. In that case, no enforcement action has yet been taken, Ars Technica writes. The two have been charged.

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