The Messy Situation Behind Exclusively Games — What Happened and How Can it Succeed?
It’s rare to typically see a website come around with a relatively ambitious goal, but this was the case when YouTuber The Quartering (real name Jeremy Hambley) announced his new gaming news website Exclusively Games. The idea behind the site was it would be a website financed through crowdfunding and promoted its self on ditching any and all politics from people’s gaming news, as a result purging any potential bias in ways of which how some stories could be presented in order to deliver a narrative rather than report on a story.
There existed starting in December 2018 both a website and a YouTube channel in which content got consistently posted to both platforms. The website also had its own forum board where users could talk with each other and such in an attempt to build up more of a community around the site, similarly with the YouTube channel and just generally expanding their social engagement outlets. However, recently, some distressing news came from The Quartering with regards to the future of Exclusively Games. In a recent video posted to the Exclusively Games YouTube channel, Jeremy talked about the bad state that the website was in financially both in financial terms and terms of engagement with general interest dropping significantly.
There have also been some recent events with regards to the website’s former fanbase that’s been slowly brewing up that is reaching a boiling point that holds the potential to hold severe legal ramifications for Exclusively Games and potentially its future. I’ll go over some of the video’s content and what the ensuing results were before I jump into my own personal take.
So, Hambley said in the video while he wasn’t stopping the website, he has temporarily put it on pause in an attempt to see about scaling things back and going about putting the site under a form of restructuring. When you visit the Exclusively Games website now or any of the articles or forum boards, you’ll be met with a message that reads:
Reworking some things..back soon..I hope
We’re working on it.
-EG Team
However, some fans that were angry, frustrated, disappointed and upset about this news went ahead and opened up their own website called “Exclusively Games.”
The fan website seemingly has ditched the articles and has only brought in a forum, however, this website is reportedly incomplete. In addition, a Twitter account was made for this website that once donned the same banner as the real Exclusively Games Twitter account.
There’s also a Discord server that dons the same Exclusively Games logo.
Now, it seems very blatant in my opinion that there is an intent of creating marketing confusion between the 2 brands with how the fake Exclusively Games is not only making use of the same name but also the same logos and setting out as serving the same purpose of the original Exclusively Games website, which might I add Jeremy has stated he still intends on pursuing.
Now, there was a Twitter chain posted by the impersonating Exclusively Games website with some allegations being leveraged at both the original Exclusively Games website and TheQuartering/Jeremy.
So going over what’s been alleged one by one here, going over the first claim of staff not being paid, while according to independent journalist Sophia Narwitz there may be some legitimacy to claims of writers for the website not being paid as she has reportedly been talking with some ex-writers that are claiming to have not received payment for some of the articles they wrote, I have to say there’s no evidence shown in the post shown that indicates anything about writers not being paid. There’s literally zero mention in the image that the account touts off as evidence of making mention of not being paid.
In fact, the thread indicates the complete opposite where the poster states that he was paid for 50 articles but those articles never got published. And then talking about the plagiarism of articles, this is unfortunately very common fair in the print medium. When I was writing on TechRaptor it was a constant battle of finding works of ours had been plagiarised from websites that pitched themselves as “aggregated news sources” where they basically stole a bunch of articles from not just TechRaptor but the likes of Kotaku, Polygon, VG247 and made it a place where they just copy-pasted our work. Rutledge of TechRaptor though was always responsive to reports of copyright and he even had a spreadsheet of what sites he needed to send DMCA notices to that I wanna say was over 100 different pages and I can imagine for larger sites that number would be much bigger if they did it in a similar fashion. In the case of Exclusively Games though, if the work was plagiarised on other sites, it doesn’t really harm the writer in any way besides being a bit “that sucks” since it’s obviously their work. At the same time though, the writers would have been paid and it would be the website it’s self that would be damaged more in the long-term if that sort of thing were to continue. So if this did happen with Exclusively Games, I’d say Jeremy would need to be tighter on managing the works that are posted to his website and being more combative when matters that infringe his copyright and the such come up.
On the point of writers not being paid, according to my friend SidAlpha who made the Line of Sight news roundup videos for the Exclusively Games YouTube channel, he claimed in a video he made that he was paid for every single video he submitted to the channel. Sid also claims for this to have been the case with Twitch streamer Top Hats and Champagne who wrote articles for the website.
On the second tweet, they talk about Jeremy still taking money in from SubscribeStar for the website while it’s still inactive. I do understand there is a point of criticism to be had about Jeremy reportedly still taking money for a site that currently isn’t active. Personally speaking though, if people are still wanting to back a website that Jeremy has promised will return at some point in the future, it’s an individual decision on their part if they wish to still endorse the website in some way and it makes sense to me Jeremy wanting to get as many funds together to get the website back on its feet in the near future. I understand this point will be more of a contingency for some or just outright wrong, but I’m more in the camp of being more understanding towards this move both towards the backers and the people managing the website.
Then there’s the third tweet talking about how supposedly TheQuartering paid his staff through a since defunct company that was dissolved in 2012 and also saying how there’s no copyright or trademark towards Exclusively Games and a confusingly misworded point about company tax. I’m confused by what showing this meant, I think it was an attempt to further show how Exclusively Games wasn’t a registered company and as such Jeremy was using an older company he registered even though it had reportedly been defunct. However, even though there’s no registration for Exclusively Games’ trademark, as I talked about in a post I made on my Steam community group Sentinels of the Store (which I highly recommend you join) when we talked about the case of Hell Hunt and trademark law, I talked about how you don’t need to file a trademark to win in a case of a trademark dispute. It can usually just be a case of the first one to deal in any form of commerce which would be applicable to this case especially seeing as how Exclusively Games has seemingly dealt in some forms of commerce with their crowdfunding to offer a service and products to people. Copyright also is not something you file for either, and as such, the lack of understanding shown in the tweet is very laughable, to say the least and the ignorance of copyright law is actually amazing to behold. Exclusively Games owns the copyright over all the articles on their website as well as any and all products and such they create, no filing needed.
The 4th tweet talks about how supposedly there was no plans for revival, which clearly as already shown, there have been plans voiced to revive the site hopefully come November.
And then finally the 5th tweets talks about the aforementioned disappointment saying how they feel scammed from investing into Exclusively Games and feeling what they were promised wasn’t delivered upon. The word scam has become so overused where people have their own separate definitions as to what a scam is. Personally speaking, it hasn’t been a scam, Jeremy delivered on what he promised for as long as he could, even dipping into his own pockets and he’s even left the door open to hopefully come back to it in the future.
Jeremy of TheQuartering also made his own video talking about potentially suing the people behind the website for infringing on his rights, so it will have to be observed closely to see what comes of that.
Now, I want to step away from what’s happened with the fake Exclusively Games website and talk about the REAL Exclusively Games website. Now, I don’t fully expect all of this to be taken on board but I did want to just offer my take on the Exclusively Games website because I do admire what Jeremy was trying to do with the website and I wanted to offer my own personal input from working on websites similar to this in the past and just generally working within the same sphere. I feel there’s a skewed view that Jeremy has about controversial topics. He’s said he wanted to avoid the controversial articles because he didn’t want it to be “SJW this and SJW that” but it’s very easy to cover controversial topics in a very neutral and balanced way that doesn’t instigate a mob mentality. I feel there are methods to cover negative news stories in a balanced way that doesn’t add fuel to a fire. There exists a form of journalism that covers those stories ina reliable and concise way free of opinion and forcing people to think a certain way. I recall back when I started working for TechRaptor I was incredibly hesitant about injecting too much personal opinion into my articles because I wanted the facts to speak for themselves rather than me to inject my personal views, forcibly making people think a certain way. It made it even easier when dealing with complaints from some subjects to the articles due to it being nothing more than just showing what certain people had said with no personal interference. Now, of course, both on here and in my posts on Sentinels of the Store, it’s a different story but those are more my personal platforms and I feel more comfortable sharing views on a platform that’s my own rather than one where I effectively represent more different types of people. And another fun story, without naming names, I worked for another gaming news and reviews website, not for too long, but I quit after they had first forced me to put a personal take into a news story, and then shelved the article because they didn’t like the opinion I gave and then gave it to another writer, which just spoke volumes to me of the type of people they were and the type of website they wanted to run. It wasn’t an especially spicy take, it was a story on changes to the Steam badge system and it was clear the operators of the site saw the changes as a big problem to them because of personal investment they had and was more worried about a future that we weren’t in and still hasn’t arrived. In my take, I played the problem down because I didn’t see it as a problem and they didn’t like that and I didn’t like the way I and my work got treated because I put in an opinion I was told to put in and later got told they didn’t like my opinion.
But I mention those because they were learning experiences for me in how best to conduct and handle some more negative topics, it gave me a different perspective where I didn’t just put whatever take I wanted up and then only had to deal with any problems I personally faced, but it put me in positions where I had other people to think about, and having that knowledge can help in ways of how you deliver news on more negative topics. Personally speaking, the types of content that Exclusively Games were posting to the website was never really a big draw to me and it didn’t have much of a mainstream appeal. I’m aware of Jeremy maybe not necessarily being too interested in having a mainstream appeal as he is typically seen as an antithesis towards the mainstream media outlets, but these kinds of stories typically do have to be covered if any gaming news site is to survive. The content that was being posted there up until it closed, again, nothing wrong with it, but it can’t exist independently, you might get some people interested in a new mouse being released or what happened to Just Cause 4, but you need an extra layer to the website to make it more interesting and to get people more interested. There still exists a method in which these topics can be handled in a way that can uniquely identify you from the traditional mainstream gaming news sites and not trigger any mob mentality where facts and evidence can be at the front and centre of the pieces rather than ideology, political opinions as I’m fully aware those hold the potential to skew a lot of these pieces on other outlets such as some individuals at Kotaku and Polygon and the like.
But in short, I feel that some more of the general “negative” news topics will be needed if the site has any future at all, sure continue with the articles you have now, but they can’t act as a main piece of attraction I feel for drawing people in, they should be just something in addition towards the more news centred pieces. I feel it would benefit the community as a whole if they were given a place to get an impartial unbiased factual take on news coming out from the gaming industry, I feel that’s the area where Exclusively Games can thrive. You don’t need to dive too heavily into politics, you don’t need to be going “SJW this, feminism that” because there’s a difference between being controversial, negative and political, getting that balance is going to be key towards how much of a future I feel the website will have.
I wish Jeremy the best of luck with the website, I’ll be sure to be keeping a close eye on it, I hope for it to succeed, it has a solid foundation but just needs to be steered in a direction that can lead to a more prosperous future.
E-mail me: mellowonline1@gmail.com
