Responding to Polygon's Hit Piece on Me

on November 12th 2017 I decided to play the newly released sonic forces live on twitch.tv after beating the entire game in under three hours and being let's say underwhelmed with its overall quality I decided to refund it telling steam that the purchase was an accident because I thought I was going to be playing a totally different kind of game which is 100% accurate but we'll get to that both myself and my stream thought that it was pretty funny that I could go into this game blind play it to completion and have so little time on it that Steam accepts a refund however some people didn't really appreciate it that much one of those people being longtime polygon reporter Julia Alexander who reached out to me via email wanting to do an article on my refunding of sonic forces on stream I saw it as a good opportunity to clear the air and explain that what I did wasn't some premeditated money driven power play to abuse and manipulate steams refund policy rather that I just didn't really like the video game and I wanted a refund only 75 minutes after responding to this person's emails I started getting tweets with links to polygon I thought to myself wow that was really suspiciously quick let's see what she wrote I feel like I should like contact a lawyer or something let's not dance around terminology this is a hit piece literally almost every single paragraph in this article is a lie I understand that it's my fault for putting my trust into a website most famously known for having the worst gaming journalism on the internet but I really thought this one was going to be an open-and-shut case my mistake now before we get into the article there's something that I really quickly want to say first looking back and giving it thought and trust me I've given this a lot of thought what I did to sonic forces might have been a little bit scummy I am by no means crazy about this game I do owe it a lot of credit for making a very entertaining stream and so I genuinely believe that this is the right thing to do [Music] boy can't wait for all the comments saying I only did that because I got called out and now I'm trying to save face here's the thing even if you truly believe that I am the lowest scum on the face of the planet I ask that you at least stick with me on this one here I'm not making this video to beg for your forgiveness or pray that you don't hate me or anything like that I'm making this video because of the blatant lying and misinformation polygon is knowingly pushing in order to paint me as a boogeyman and that actually leads me to my first question why exactly was I selected to be the boogeyman I'm not bringing this up to try to deflect or throw anyone else under the bus or anything but other people have done almost exactly what I did and nobody seems to mind I'm sorry but the double standard here is so painfully obvious that I can't not talk about it you have to understand that I'm not going to name any names because I'd really rather people not get witch hunted but here's a perfect example X is a youtuber that has way more subscribers than I do and gets way more views than me in principle X did the same exact thing I did bought the game made content of it by bashing it relentlessly then refunding it hundreds of thousands of views but zero backlash or criticism one of the biggest issues my detractors have is that I technically profited from my stream via donations therefore my refund abuses the developers will have the whopping $14 I made from that entire stream makes you mad I can only imagine how much outrage you must have for X whose video made over $300 again I'm not bringing this up to make what I did seem not as bad by comparison I'm bringing this up to highlight just how little polygons actually cares about the ethics at hand when making a story it's much easier to focus on creating one big bad guy as opposed to a bunch of smaller individual ones with that being said let's get into the article itself twitch streamer beats sonic forces and requests steam refund alive I want to call attention to the subtitle it perfectly spells out what kind of article this is before it even starts hmm that is a bad thing the reason this is such an issue is because right off the bat the writer is making it clear that the article is going to be negative it's not interested in presenting the facts as they are and letting the reader come to their own conclusion it is telling you point-blank right out of the gate this is a bad thing and the person who did it is bad so much for unbiased journalism a twitch streamer under fire for playing through sonic forces and requesting a refund from Steam after playing it for more than two hours tells polygon he doesn't think it's an issue despite breaking valves return policy this is a lie how did it break steams refund policy exactly it didn't case in point the refund was accepted I never thought I would have to explain something so simple but Steam does not accept refunds that break their policy that's kind of the whole point of having a policy where one sentence in and the writer has already demonstrated that she does not understand how any of this works that has to be some sort of record Ouija the god whose real name is Kade McCown streamed sonic forces on November 12th a few days after the game launched he encountered a number of previously reported bugs as he played causing for an unpleasant playthrough during one particular level McCown screamed on mic for 30 seconds about a sudden crash no I didn't these are more lies and really strange lies at that I actually encountered zero bugs and the game didn't crash a single time what this tells us is that Julia Alexander didn't even watch the void she is reporting on something that she has clearly never seen and is literally fabricating events we have reached peak polygon when McCown beat the game which took just over 2 hours and 40 minutes he then streamed himself asking for a refund from Steam in the explanation for his request he didn't mention the games glitches you know because there were none or other problems but instead wrote that he had bought the wrong game hello I thought this was a different Sonic game and I meant to buy another one instead of this one I realized that this is the wrong one and I would like to refund it please thank you this is the part of the article that a lot of people bring up is the smoking gun on how I categorically abuse teams refund policy by lying claiming that I had purchased the wrong game by accident thinking it was a different kind of game which as I said is 100% accurate take a look at the options team gives you when requesting a refund out of all of them only to apply it was an accident because as I say in the request I thought it would be a different kind of game and it's not fun now granted I would say it's not fun might have technically been more applicable to my situation but that by no means makes what I said inaccurate or illegitimate also answer me this if I really was trying to take my time with this and lie to steam for a guaranteed refund why wouldn't I have selected something way more serious like it frequently crashes something that makes the software virtually unusable they're much more likely to refund something that is broken as opposed to something that the consumer simply didn't enjoy so if I really am this deceitful con artists mastermind polygon portrays me as then I'm definitely not a very good one after the screen went dark Macau was her telling Sega to quote give me my [ __ ] money back I just really loved how this line is portrayed to make me look like a deranged fringe lunatic I know you don't do well with jokes polygons but I did not legitimately believe I was talking to anyone from Sega when saying this which wouldn't even make any sense anyway considering it was a steam refund which Sega has nothing to do with hyperbole in facts be damned though we have a boogeyman to fabricate steams refund policy states that it will refund players the cost of games bought within a 14-day period and played for less than two hours Macau beat sonic forces in just under three hours based on steams guidelines McCown shouldn't have been able to ask for a refund again this is just flat-out incorrect and what's really depressing about this one is that she directly links to the source proving her wrong Julia it is abundantly clear that you have not actually read any of this policy but allow me to direct you to paragraph 2 quote even if you fall outside of the refund rules we've described you can ask for a refund anyway and we'll take a look you can ask for a refund on any game in your library regardless of playtime and it will still go through consideration one would think that if you're going to link a source in your own article you would at least want to take a quick look on what's on the page first McCown told polygon that Valve didn't give him a reason for the refund but said if my actions truly did violate slash abuse teams refund policy my request would have been denied this is one of the only parts of the article that isn't completely inaccurate and it's only because they are directly quoting what I said in an email interview by the way let's talk about the emails because as you're about to see they do a very good job on showing exactly how Julia Alexander approached writing this article as a whole 12:17 p.m. hey Ouija spelled wrong of course Julia from polygon here was hoping to talk to you about the sonic forces plus steam story you posed I think she meant posted wrong again on Twitter have time to talk today 54 minutes later I respond sure what do you want to know 19 minutes later she sends me these three questions I got back to her an hour later with my answers and then out of nowhere the entire final draft article goes live only 75 minutes after that I think you can see where I'm going with this there exists two possibilities here both equally disgusting possibility one julia wrote the article before even contacting me for my side of the story and haphazardly through my responses in at the very last second without taking any time to actually fact check and see if what i said was at contradictory to what she wrote possibility to Julia wrote the entire article in a little under an hour after getting my side of the story and rushed it out as quickly as possible for maximum clicks not even bothering to check for inaccuracies either of these possibilities would explain why the article is riddled with lies and misinformation and this next paragraph does a fantastic job of supporting this theory viewers started to complain that McHale was abusing the system but he pointed out that this wasn't the first time he's refunded a game live on stream McCown requested a refund for call of duty infinite warfare at the very end of a stream from last November this is objectively false and I have concrete proof that she knows this is false one of the three questions she asked me over email was have you encountered people being made again yet another spelling error about including the refunds in stream before my response this is the only time I have ever refunded something on stream which is true she replies but you have a video from 2016 where you ask for a refund you mention it in this tweet I say I thought you were only referring specifically to streams not videos pretty much same thing happened I didn't like the game and I refunded it she replies ah gotcha thanks Ouija still spelled wrong of course despite specifically telling her that this was a video not a stream and even having her reply with full acknowledgment of that she goes on to lie anyway this is a YouTube video not a stream the video is even linked on the page itself you had you actively search for it on youtube to get a link and yet you are still lying to people about it now some people might be thinking oh what's the big deal it's basically the same thing right so who really cares but in the context of this article the differentiation is extremely important she knew this incident wasn't a stream but called it a stream anyway because that makes me heat a fender wow I can't believe this guy is doing the same exact thing all over again I guess this [ __ ] will just never learn his lesson huh fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me I'm never gonna trust this guy again this was a conscious decision Julia made to demonize me and it further supports possibility number one despite getting my side of the story and knowing the cold hard facts she had an agenda to push and nothing was going to get in the way of that I was wrong folks now we have reached peak polygon this next part of the article is just look at it do you notice anything odd how in God's name does a professional journalism outlet allow this you spelled my name incorrectly and correctly in the same sentence you didn't even proofread your own article this is sixth grade English class levels of writing this also really supports possibility too if this isn't proof that the article was just spit out as quickly as humanly possible for those precious clicks then I don't know what is hmm maybe I should give my first draft a quick reread so it's not brimming with embarrassingly obvious lies and actually spells the subjects name correctly no it's good enough just post it get your money and call it a day who cares the next line is a statement I gave to Julia in reference to why I thought so many people were unhappy with me over this scenario from what I've seen another big issue has to do with the fact that people believed I had planned the refund from the start and I was only interested in streaming at all for monetary gain which again isn't true as hard as it is for some to believe I played a video game on stream to have fun not to nefariously milk it for twitch donations after beating the entire game in under three hours and coming to the conclusion that it was absolutely abysmal that's a bit harsh looking back I requested a refund with the reason being it's not fun while I stand by what I said I do have to step up and take responsibilities I will be the first person to admit that I really screwed up with my wording when answering this when I said I requested a refund with the reason being quote it's not fun I actually forgot that there was literally an option on the refund menu called it's not fun we've already discussed all of the refund options and how what I said in my request is still entirely accurate but I did drop the ball on this one and I apologize for the confusion people completing short narrative base games and under two hours and refunding them afterward isn't anything new even if it's ethically questionable most stores won't accept a DVD for return just because somebody hated the movie what does that have to do with anything correct most stores wouldn't let you do that but this one does so even if it's directly offered people still shouldn't use it because it's a bad thing Julia you're projecting some like EA levels of anti-consumerism here you need to take it down a notch and now we get to my favorite part of the article the absolute pinnacle of grasping at straws this bombshell counterpoint that Julia uses to utterly destroy me is a quote of a joke from [ __ ] donkey on Steam you can only return a game that you've played for less than two hours video game donkey said very strategically sonic team made sure that this game was actually three hours long which is just a brilliant move by them the YouTube personality points out that sonic forces can be finished in exactly three hours exceeding the refund policy requirement that means valve can refuse to give customers their money back for it should they try to refund sonic forces after beating the game yeah or alternatively they could repeating yourself like a broken record you continue to fail at mentioning I'll quote it yet again even if you fall outside of the refund rules we've described you can ask for a refund anyway and we take a look I don't know if that joke donkey told is the whole reason that this is so wildly misinterpreted but the to our limits team has on their page isn't a hard cap if I play a game for precisely two hours and one second steam isn't going to say nope sorry you're over the limit there's nothing we can do that is just a ridiculous thing to be peddling Julia the article wraps up by saying other people have noted on Twitter they've also received refunds for playing more than two hours of Sonic Forces polygon has reached out to valve for further information on steams return policy as well as the stream and will update when we hear back what a total [ __ ] catastrophe I honestly considered not even making this video I mean it's polygon for Christ's sake they're already the laughingstock of the internet but I just couldn't bring myself to sit here and allow these people to get away with this I mean how incredibly ironic is it that polygon is calling me out for lying for profit when in reality they themselves are the ones doing exactly that I never thought journalism was capable of stooping this low but wouldn't you know it Julia Alexander found a way now in closing this video I have one final thing I'd like to say instead of spinning this stupid internet drama into money for personal gain I feel like it would be much more appropriate to turn this into something positive and give back to the gaming community as a whole that is why every penny this video makes will be going to extra life a really great charity that helps support Children's Miracle Network Hospitals across the world through gaming marathons both Sega and myself have worked with extra life before so I think this is the perfect fit personally I'm going to start by chipping in $54 40 for the cost of sonic forces and 14 for the amount I made in donations during the stream I would challenge polygons to give back as well but let's be honest that's probably not going to happen again I'm not gonna stop you from hating me all you want but if you are going to call me an [ __ ] you should at least be doing so while knowing the facts thank you all for taking the time to hear me out I will see you guys next time

Channel: Weegee Plays

Views: 944,180

Rating: 4.5480962 out of 5

Keywords: weegee, weegee the god, weegee plays, sonic forces ost, sonic forces review, sonic forces ending, sonic forces theme, sonic forces supersonic, sonic forces shadow, sonic forces demo, sonic forces music, sonic forces final boss, sonic forces super shadow, sonic forces, polygon doom, polygon song, polygon dust, polygon cuphead, polygon, sonic the hedgehog, sonic boom, sonic songs, sonic x, sonic mania ost, sonic

Id: QPChLbxSle8

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2017

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[u/clppng1]

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[u/launchbasezone]

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[u/TechedZombie]

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