Have you ever watched a YouTube video of a review and wondered to yourself, is this an actual review, or is this a review that is sponsored so that the reviewer will wax poetic about the product? We suppose sometimes it’s hard to tell, but recently Warner Bros. managed to get themselves into hot water with the FTC after it was discovered that they had paid YouTubers for positive reviews.The original complaint was actually filed back in 2014, but it is only recently that the publisher has managed to settle things with the agency. The FTC claims that Warner Bros. had paid YouTubers to review their games in a positive light, and that they had guidelines that YouTubers had to follow, which included promoting “positive sentiment”, and to not “show bugs or glitches”, and that the video will not “communicate negative sentiment” about the game or the company.
The offending game in question is Shadow of Mordor which funnily enough was met with generally positive reviews by independent reviewers, so it seems that Warner Bros. did not even have to bother in the first place.
In a statement provided by Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, “Consumers have the right to know if reviewers are providing their own opinions or paid salespitches. Companies like Warner Brothers need to be straight with consumers in their online ad campaigns.”
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