ReviewTechUSA Is a MASSIVE James Blunt (Cockney Slang for The Good Stuff)
42This is a different kind of video to what we normally do, and I'm sorry we even have to do it. But, these big YouTubers with huge followings can't be allowed to get away with spitting on the little guy. If you don't want to watch the video (it is 12 minutes... and it's got my ugly mug in it) here's the skinny:
ReviewTechUSA, the YouTube channel, fronted by a man called Richard, took one of our articles and twisted it into a clickbait YouTube video. The video was titled “Disappointing PS5 News About Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Emerges” and it was based on an article from nine months ago.
Firstly, the “disappointing” news “emerged” in August 2020. I personally wrote that article. Richard of ReviewTechUSA spoke most of it aloud in his now-delisted video (though he’s still promoting it on Facebook) and in the process, called me out as a liar and a shill, saying that the way I wrote the article was "damage control" for Sony/Insomniac/the game.
The article was about Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart having different performance modes on PS5, something that Insomniac had spoken about in an interview with Japanese gaming outlet Famitsu.
My article put those words in an easy-to-read format that our readers have come to expect. We have a unique voice here at Pure PlayStation – it’s super casual, friendly, and we sometimes slip in the odd penis joke when it’s totally inappropriate. Alright, that last one is exclusive to me, but my point stands – we don’t write like drones.
So, in my article, I wrote the following:
“THE GOOD NEWS, THEN, IS THAT RATCHET & CLANK: RIFT APART ON PS5 WILL SUPPORT 60FPS AS AN OPTION. THERE IS A TRADE-OFF. AT 30FPS, YOU’LL BE GETTING THE FULL 4K RESOLUTION, MAKING THE GAME LOOK SUPER SHARP ON A 4K TV. IF YOU WANT TO PLAY AT 60FPS, THE RESOLUTION WILL DROP.
IN AN INTERVIEW WITH FAMITSU, THE DEVELOPERS CONFIRMED THIS BUT DIDN’T STATE WHAT THE RESOLUTION DROP WOULD BE. IT COULD BE DOWN TO 1080P (HD) OR IT COULD BE ANYWHERE BETWEEN THAT AND TRUE 4K. THE CHANCES ARE THAT MOST CASUAL PLAYERS WON'T NOTICE AND IT’LL LOOK GREAT NO MATTER HOW YOU PLAY. STILL, IT’S NICE TO KNOW THERE ARE OPTIONS FOR THOSE WHO WANT THEM.”
Nothing particularly outrageous, right? I did state that casual players likely wouldn’t notice the resolution drop because let’s face it, they probably won’t. I’m somebody “in the know” and I still struggle to tell what the resolution of a given game is without having to do a manual pixel count. That’s a testament to the techniques that game developers have at their disposal these days.
Richard… didn’t see it this way. He twisted it around and made me out to be a shill, somehow filling up a half-empty glass until it was full. It was super disrespectful and even though that article has had its day and will likely never be read again, it’s still disappointing to see somebody with a huge following take your work and - excuse my Welsh - shit all over it.
I’m not in the business of making anybody feel better about their games. I’m in the business of informing people about the games they’re interested in or games they have never discovered before. Richard is in the business of clickbait videos and acting like a man-baby. He does his job well.
I actually did call out Richard in the YouTube comments when the video first went live (I got pings on the site’s back-end that people were being sent here from his channel) and nothing was done. It took a tweet from Insomniac’s Community Manager James Stevenson for Richard to backtrack and apologise, though not fully.
He said he would de-list the video and issue a video statement as an apology. I, acting as Pure PlayStation on Twitter, asked if we could get an apology, too, because he had dragged the site’s name down with him. Did he apologise? No. He suggested we all eat some Snickers bars.
So, naturally, he creates his monetised “I’m so sorry” video titled “My Apologies to Sony and Insomniac Games”.
Do you see what’s missing? Did you spot it? Of course, Pure PlayStation! But wait! There’s more!
Richard goes on to say he’s sorry and that he messed up and that… it’s the source’s fault. Yes, the obnoxious prick actually goes out of his way to push the blame on the “source” he used for the video. No, my dear, you don’t get to do that. We, as the source, were bang-on the money when that article went live in August 2020. The fact that he used that video here in May 2021 is all on him. If he can’t do his research, why should Pure PlayStation be put to blame?
The fact he refuses to apologise to us is a show of his character. He doesn’t see us as worthy of an apology, but Sony and Insomniac? Definitely, because that’s a bridge nobody would want to burn, and there's a chance to get something from them. He can't get anything from us, though, so we're treated like shite. This is disgusting and I personally won't tolerate it.
He might have almost 1 million subs, but I've got something he will never have. Decency.
And hair.