I would use a more recent SF image, but Ziff Davis owns the rights to them all.

He said, she said, blah blah blah. Ever wonder how a site gets exclusive content? No? Well don’t, because you won’t like the place your mind takes you.

The Brazillian blog site, Blogeek.br, claims that they received a series of Street Fighter IV images from an unnamed source, and without hesitation posted them up on their blog. Ziff Davis (1up.com) set the legal gears in motion shortly thereafter because, you guessed it, these images are exclusives.

Once threatened with legal action by Ziff Davis, Blogeeek.br immediately removed the images and issued the following statement:

UPDATE: THE PROBLEM IS ALMOST SOLVED. WE’LL PROBABLY BE BACK TOMORROW.

THE SITE’S STILL DOWN.

IT WAS NOT OUR INTENTION TO MESS WITH ANYONE. LIKE EVERY NEWS SITE AND BLOG, WE JUST WANTED TO PASS INFORMATION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE INTEREST FOR ANY SUBJECT.

JUST TO CLARIFY, WE DIDN’T HAVE ANY NDA, AND FAR LESS WE WOULD HACK ANYTHING FROM ZIFF DAVIS. A SOURCE CAME TO US AND PASSED SOME INFOS AND THE TWO PICTURES, AND WE PUBLISHED THEM.

ALTHOUGH WE STILL DON’T THINK WE SHOULD, WE REALLY WANT TO APOLOGIZE TO ANYONE WHO GOT HURT WITH THE INCIDENT.

ZIFF DAVIS WAS THREATENING US, AND WE ARE REALLY AFRAID, OF COURSE.

THAT’S ALL.

According to 1up.com Editor, James Mielke, there is some speculation as to how the images were obtained. After explaining the amount of work (which he believes gamers “take for granted”) and time it takes to constantly crank out news and features at 1up, he states it is their belief that the images were stolen off their company hard drive:

So EGM USA gets pissed because we know that EGM Brazil — and only EGM Brazil — has these screens on their server. So we go to them to find out WTF. A little while later, after some internal investigation, we learn that one of EGM Brazil’s freelancers, named — oh, big surprise! — Douglas Pereia, had their login password, and actually logged in, grabbed the screens and put them in his blog.

“Why pick on Douglas Pereia and Blogeek?” asks Kotaku. Because Pereia actually used confidential information (login info) for personal — if ethereal — gain. All that hard work I previously mentioned that EGM and 1UP put into our publications, the exclusives which are time-sensitive and months in the making, can be undone by leaks like this. Needless leaks, senseless leaks.

Hard work? Many gamers have real jobs, busting their ass during the day doing manual labor, construction, landscaping, stocking store shelves, chasing down criminals … that shit is hard work. Don’t bitch to gamers about having to sit in front of a PC and crank out words on to a screen. I am a writer/designer as well, and having grown up with a family business that required “actual hard work”, I know that I have it good now.

Now, do I condone the stealing of another companies (or individuals) intellectual property, or in this case circumventing a agreement between two entities, absolutely not.

As for bashing Kotaku because you claim “it’s obvious they want hits”, shame on you James. Please explain to me how it is you pay your bills again? Apparently 1up is not interested in hits, as their four years of “hard work” has granted them the ability to run their site simply on love and pixy dust.

If this was the case of a movie studio or developer having images leaked before the game/movie came out in general, that is one thing. But I fail to feel any sympathy for a self proclaimed gaming behemoth that “negotiates” the rights to reveal exclusive images for an upcoming game, only to see their visions of traffic (yes, they did it for traffic) wither away as a “tiny Brazilian site” gains access to said images ahead of time.

The caption below the EGM cover in James’ piece claims that they are the only place you will see “real” Street Fighter IV information “anywhere in the world.” What exactly is “real”, because if the images that appeared on the Brazilian blog weren’t “real” I highly doubt that Ziff Davis would be pursuing legal action.

Update: I added another piece of James’ article to the portion above that quotes him in order to clarify the source of the leak. However in my opinion the source has little to do with the issues I addressed above.

• Street Fighter 4 Console Release Dates Announced
• SF Alpha Shoryuken-ing Its Way To PSN
• Mysterious Street Fighter Club Event: October 24th in Brooklyn NY
• Street Fighter IV US Console Version Releases This Winter (Snowflakes Not Included)
• A New Challenger Appears! Akuma Confirmed for Braw- Er, Street Fighter IV
• Apology: 1up Editor Street Fighter Rant
• Super Street Fighter 2 HD Hits PS3, 360 Next Week
• New Characters Confirmed for Street Fighter IV

5 Comments » Chad Stinks on December 8, 2007 6:10 pm Chad, you have no idea what you are talking about so keep your comments to yourself. REAL game journalists work hard to gain exclusives for their articles. All you guys do here at Ripten is report what other legitimate sources work hard to get, nothing more, nothing less. Getting exclusives for articles can take weeks, if not, months of hard work between the media outlet and the game company. Once again, keep your comments to yourself since you obviously don’t know how much work goes into getting an exclusive and go back to your family owned business selling flowers or boxes or whatever crap job you have and leave the real journalism to the real journalists. You’re nothing but a blogger and you will always be a blogger. Ripten = teh fail! Chad Lakkis on December 8, 2007 6:21 pm Chad Stinks, Thank you very much for your comment. It is refreshing to hear from such a well informed individual from time to time. Chad- Chad Stinks on December 8, 2007 6:27 pm Damn you, I wasn’t expecting that kind of response. Sorry for my harshness, but seriously man, these journalists put a lot of work into getting their exclusive and I for one would be pissed if all of my hard work was for naught because someone stole my work and tried to take all of the credit for my weeks/months worth of work. Chad Lakkis on December 8, 2007 6:52 pm Chad Stinks, I hope you don’t mind if I call you Chad Stinks. I understand that after you strip away the corporation, it comes down to the writer sitting at his or her desk busting their ass to get their assigned task done. Trust me, I get that. My complaint is not with the writer, it’s with the behind the scenes stuff that take place in order to secure an exclusive such as this. I am in no way saying that 1up is not qualified nor deserving of the exclusive, however knowing what I know (you would be amazed what you can pick up working for a box distributer) about how these things often work is what sickens me. I am a blogger. You are correct. But that does not mean that I do not have the ability to write. It does not mean that I cut corners and neglect to seek out reputable sources when writing. You will find many “real” writers here at ripten if you do a little research into our staff. Again, I do not condone stealing in any way shape or form, and my issues with James’ article have nothing to do with his explanation of the means by which the information was obtained. I simply disagreed with his outlook, which to me, seemed to summarize blogs as traffic hungry sites with no credibility. Chad- Idetrorce on December 15, 2007 9:42 am very interesting, but I don’t agree with you Idetrorce RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.