We unfortunately have hit a snag in our goal here at Otaku Gamers Uk
As most of you know the site has been going for just under a year and have been getting some outstanding feedback from yourselves and publishers.
A couple of months back we started approaching publishers in regards to promo materials for the site, chances of review copies and various other help in regards to pushing out niche gaming to you all.
Over the months we have built up some amazing relationships with developers & publishers who understand why we at OGUK do what we do.
We all work full time jobs, some of us are married with children, others work over time & some have active social lives. Otaku Gamers UK is something we do in our spare time, when & where we can!. We don't get paid for this & up until recently we haven't been getting review codes so alot of the games come out of our back pocket.
We have seen alot of respect for the site from people we have contacted and also from places
requesting our services. We have a specialist team and know where each member excels so we can bring you the finest reviews possible. A passionate crew who love what we do & want to express it any way we can with our Otaku Reviews.
To cut a long story short we have had a few publishers who have been less than accepting of us & most commonly just blank any attempt we make to contact them. Today we found out one of them has decided our site doesn't meet the criteria they deem suitable to send any PR out to. The problem with this is, we have no idea what we don't hit and we aren't being told either.
So after a discussion we are respectfully pulling any pending reviews, news & previews from this particular publisher until we find out why and or sort this whole situation out.
We don't feel it's fair to the publishers/developers who back us to continue posting content from this group when they put nothing at all into our site & infact make our job harder.
We hope to have this sorted as soon as possible & thank you all for your time in reading this
- Team Otaku Gamers Uk
no one owes you anything 8)
ReplyDeleteThank you for your honesty. I can tell you don't want to say who, which is fine but at least this post should clear up any issues if you don't post about a couple of games.
ReplyDeleteYou quite clearly have not understood the situation. It's not a case of anyone owing anything, an if that was the case then we don't owe the publisher coverage on their titles either. Just a little less arrogance on their part would've gone a long way
ReplyDeleteYeah it's an odd situation to be honest. To be attempting to open a dialogue with a publisher for a few months without reply to finally be told you don't meet their criteria seems a little arrogant on their part, especially when your a niche focused website contacting a niche publisher lol Its like you have to be IGN to some it seems.
ReplyDeleteIt's still going to be buissness as usual on the site tho =)
Never said at any point the publisher owes us anything. It's simply a case of why should we dedicate our time and effort to help advertise for a publisher which doesnt want us to.
ReplyDeleteIf this is a problem for you then there are plenty of alternatives to us, we don't apologise for doing what is in the best interest for this site's future.
Whilst I have you speaking, may I request that there could be a symbol or bit of text next to posts that are verified a Europe/USA release?
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good idea. I usually put whether it's being localised or not in the body of text with the news, but when I think about it, the last few Japanese trailers I've posted I've not stated anything. I'll mention whether a localisation is on the cards from now on & look into other ways of notifying readers
ReplyDeleteGreat thanks for the reply!
ReplyDeleteWere they niche enough or small enough that the right people are finding out you covering them ? I know from the Studio perspective my emails often get lost in the crowd or I have to talk to the right person./ More Direct aproach. I'm sure someone appreciates the press coverage over there. In extreme cases contact emails are not even handled by the studio but rather then their a partnered firm.
ReplyDeleteIve come across the external PR situation myself, Natsume being one publisher we work with that does things that way. This particular one though handles it internally, yet has been completely oblivious to us till Andi decided to start chasing things up earlier in the week. We've been contacting them for the past few months & just been ignored till we was told yesterday that if we hadn't recieved a reply then we haven't met their 'criteria', whatever that is lol We're now just going to focus on working with publishers/developers that want to work with us and then try again at a later date with the rest.
ReplyDeleteIf you guys are gonna be getting less and less review copies of niche games, then maybe its time for you guys to expand your horizons within the whole of niche gaming. Have any of you considered reviewing 18+ games?
ReplyDeleteIt's not that we'll be getting less, more that we've been trying to open up new avenues of PR but one publisher in particular has seemingly brushed us aside even tho we focus on Games they like to publish.
ReplyDeleteI've reviewed visual novels before that have contained eroge elements, so those type of games are on the cards. It's just trying to get a steady stream of new releases of that kind is a little harder than expected. It's something we do whenever we have the opportunity
I see so that's the situation. The reason I brought up 18+ games is because I don't see that many websites that cover them. So you'd figure they'd be a lot more generous with review codes.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by 18+ games exactly?
ReplyDeleteIf this is something you would like to see on the blog we can always bring this up in our next meeting
Sure, like I stated I don't see to many websites that cover them. 18+ games are games rated AO, PEGI 18, CERO Z you know Eroge's. Even reviewing more visual novels would be great with upcoming companies like SekaiProject and Mangagamer.
ReplyDeleteI'll bring this up in the next team meeting then.
ReplyDeleteThe only issue I can see would be choosing a member of Staff to cover these titles. I shall ask around but if you or you know someone who'd like to do it let me know!
Cool, thanks for considering it!
ReplyDelete