Press Embargoes: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

One of the things that comes part and parcel with games journalism is the press embargo. Anyone who's attended a game event has had to sign one of these little pieces of paper at one time or another. It basically works the same way as an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement): You as the publication agree to not print your stories or information on certain games until a specified time. These embargoes can last anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks and by and large they are adhered to. But, this is not always the case.

I can't tell you how many times I have been to an event and signed the embargo and held my stories back only to discover that one or more of the bigger sites has either flagrantly broken the embargo OR been given an exclusive. Exclusives are all well and good and I can certainly understand them for print media, but with the incestuous nature of online writing and blogs in particular, exclusives render these embargoes rather useless. Once a story is on the web, it is a free for all. Who is to stop Joe Blow game blog who didn't attend the event and sign the embargo from printing the story based on what they saw?

And yet it is perceived that if you do break an embargo that you have signed off on, that you will not be invited to future events or previews by that company. This may be true for the smaller sites, but it certainly doesn't seem to pertain to the larger outlets who break embargoes time and again and get away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. It is also true that many times these embargoes are placed so that the writers will have some time to write out their stories and give them the attention they deserve rather than rushing to be "the first one with the story." But again, not all media outlets play by the rules.

This is particularly detrimental to smaller sites such as ours. I like to consider that we are good terms with most if not all of the PR people we come in contact with at these events. Being as we want to stay on good terms with them, we feel a sense of duty to honor the embargo. But if a larger site breaks the embargo then we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If we break the embargo, then we have broken a signed contract and betrayed the company's trust. If we retain the embargo, then the news is already all over the web and likely has been for most of the day before we finally post it. And of course, by then everyone has already read about it elsewhere and it's considered "old news."

With internet journalism at the forefront of media these days, it seems imperative that companies re-examine the way they deal with embargoes and how they deal with those that break them. I certainly understand that this is probably the single biggest headache in a PR person's life. What do you do when a major outlet breaks an embargo? If you dis-invite them to future events and they raise a public stink about it then your company looks bad and yet there must be something done about it or this continuous breaking of the rules will continue. Perhaps it's time that the blogging community and the game companies sit down and come to some agreement about the way these things will work. It might not be an easy task, but at least it would help level the playing field a bit and give every outlet, large or small a fair chance at the news.