NetEase Reportedly Punishes Content Creators For Criticising Marvel Rivals

thegamer.com:

Content creators who were offered access to Marvel Rivals were reportedly made to sign a contract forbidding them from making "subjective negative reviews of the game". The contract also says that the creator cannot "engage in discussions that are detrimental to the reputation of the game", or compare it to its competitors.

Further still, it's claimed that publisher NetEase has already enforced the terms of the contract, kicking someone from the creator program for appearing on a podcast in which negative comments about Marvel Rivals were made. The podcast's cohost says they were preemptively banned too, before they even signed the contract.

A section of the contract was initially shared by former professional Overwatch player Brandon Larned, also known as Seagull. He commented that he was "extremely disappointed" with the move, and noted that many would have signed the contract without reading it.

Industry insider Miller Ross followed up by claiming that NetEase was already enforcing this contract. He recently appeared on The Aftershow Podcast, in which he and a cohost Sadot the Gamer critiqued Marvel Rivals. During the podcast, Ross tells the other cohost, JayShockblast, to leave before they start talking about the game and the controversy, as he had signed the contract. This was not enough, and Ross has since shared that Jay was kicked out of the program.

Marvel Rivals doesn't have a release date, but closed alpha testing started on May 10 .

Sadot, who claims to have been preemptively banned for having Ross on the show in the first place, went into further detail about the contract on the podcast. Here, he says that other sections are "worse" and "pretty egregious". Sadot also adds that the creators aren't being paid, making this stipulation that they don't criticise the game even more unexpected.

Just moments ago, however, Sadot said that he had been unbanned from the program. He shares a statement from the Marvel Rivals team, in which they state