MFTV & Twitch: Official Statement

[quote=PsiGuard][quote=Anonandonandon] [quote=Mowen] As far as anybody knows none of the staff insulted sivHD, unless you would be kind enough to show me where? He did post a private conversation between him and yannis, which went: [12:20:27 AM] MOBAFIRE Yannis Ziakas: there are no bots, we have nothing to hide [12:20:40 AM] Siv HD: then arent you at least curious why your chat is so fucked up? [12:21:08 AM] MOBAFIRE Yannis Ziakas: yea there are primetimes, NA and EU, this is neither [12:21:28 AM] Siv HD: primetime means you get more viewers, it doesnt mean 11500 ppl behave like 80 ppl So all yannis did was say that there are no bots, which is the truth. Then he says "After this they just started to personally insult me." I'm sorry but that would really surprise me and there is no evidence. Also, @ Napoleon D the stream was just a little down on the homepage, not at the bottom. It was also immediately visible on champion database pages. These are the only pages it was on. I hope this clears things up. [/quote] But why did you feel it both necessary and acceptable to set the stream to auto-play and auto-mute? Since you cleared this with Twitch ahead of time, you had to have at least some inkling that it was underhanded and would artificially inflate your viewer count. So why do it? [/quote] This is from the other thread: [quote=Matt]The sidebar version was playing for the same reason. Having it play is eye-catching, our hope was that people would be curious and click through. Unfortunately it's difficult to track such metrics and objectively determine its success, but in the short time that it has been up, our followers and natural viewership has definitely grown. Certainly no one is being forced to follow or join the chat, but they were.[/quote] It's the same philosophy behind moving advertisements on web pages. It's more eye-catching and attracts more people to the stream.[/quote]

[quote=Anonandonandon][quote=PsiGuard] It's the same philosophy behind moving advertisements on web pages. It's more eye-catching and attracts more people to the stream. [/quote] As I said in the other thread, that logic falls apart when you auto-mute the stream and stuff it out of immediate view. The combination of auto-play, auto-mute and a player that's not prominently displayed to let the site visitor know immediately that they're watching a stream is very shady and brings up serious questions as to what was being attempted here. In addition, you guys clearly felt this was questionable, as you sought out Twitch's permission ahead of time, so there's no way you can say now that you had no idea the community might react negatively to your gaming of the viewer count. The lack of truth is part of the problem here. The credibility of Mobafire is already questionable, and the continued lies and half-truths only make it worse. I cannot understand why you guys are dicking around here instead of apologizing to those who found this offensive and simply turning off the auto-play on the stream.[/quote]

[quote=DemonRyou]Why shouldn't MOBAFire be able to embed the stream onto their front page? It's not wrong and it shouldn't be frowned upon. Normal streamers gain a reputation and a following because of the effort they put into streaming. MOBAFire has put work into the website, despite what anyone says about the website, and gained a following which they are spreading their following onto their Twitch stream. If you don't want to be counted as a viewer, just don't visit the homepage or the champion information page. Ads are often set to autoplay and automute as well and I don't see you people gathering up a witch hunt for that. MOBAFire doesn't even charge people for viewing or creating guides and yet people bash of them for being "unfair" and "shady". Honestly, I just think that your accusations fell short and now you're just looking for other reasons to blame them because you don't want to seem like the moron that blasted nonsense for no reason. "MOBAFire is botting/faking viewers. Oh wait, they're not? Well auto-playing and auto-muting the stream is still shady." There is nothing questionable about the credibility of MOBAFire, only cavemen going crazy over sparking a fire. I've personally never heard anyone complain in-game about the quality of MOBAFire guides and any skill or insight I gained that wasn't through self experience was gained through knowledge from MOBAFire guides. And the worse part of it all is that the same people still trying to argue that MOBAFire is wrong for embedding a stream clearly aren't even reading the statement. They're still trying to defend Siv and claim that MOBAFire put a stream at the "bottom of the page". Hope to see the stream up again soon. Anyone who questions your credibility doesn't know any better and it's best to just turn the other cheek and move on.[/quote]

[quote=jhoijhoi]This Anonandonandon guy is super stressed out. Looks like he's taking this whole thing personally. Just give the dude a break, it's as if the whole thing is his problem! :) Anon, if that is your real name (haha, geddit?), MobaFire never gave any half truths. The stream was always on the front page, always playing. Never once did MobaFire deny this. There were no bots and there was nothing to lie about. I don't know why you keep mouthing off about "lack of truth". There just seems to be a huge lack of comprehension on your behalf. I'll lay it out real simple for you. 1) MobaFire TV created a Twitch TV Stream. With me so far? 2) They embedded this stream on MobaFire. Got that? 3) The stream auto-played, much the same way an advertisement would. Pretty simple, right? 4) People who visited the site, were exposed to the stream. Wooooah, gnarly! 5) If people were interested by the auto-playing stream, they'll click it and watch it via Twitch. No way! 6) If they didn't like the stream, they simply had to leave that particular page or close the tab. My goodness... This isn't a MobaFire problem. This is a Twitch TV problem. If Twitch TV wants to count viewers as people who see the stream regardless of where it is on the internet, then there will always be websites taking advantage of that. Last point, Anon, if you've been following me so far. Twitch OKAY'D this. MobaFire didn't just sneakily embed the stream, giggling nefariously. They ASKED and were granted PERMISSION. MobaFire is NOT in the wrong here. :) Hope this clears it up, Anon. If you need me to explain it in simpler terms, I'll try![/quote]

[quote=DemonRyou]+Rep for approaching it so calmly and logically jhoihoi. But I feel as if people still blindly bashing MOBAFire don't even read the text that try to explain the situation. They just go "No!" and continue flaming.[/quote]

[quote=Bryun][quote=Anonandonandon] [quote=PsiGuard] It's the same philosophy behind moving advertisements on web pages. It's more eye-catching and attracts more people to the stream. [/quote] As I said in the other thread, that logic falls apart when you auto-mute the stream and stuff it out of immediate view. The combination of auto-play, auto-mute and a player that's not prominently displayed to let the site visitor know immediately that they're watching a stream is very shady and brings up serious questions as to what was being attempted here. In addition, you guys clearly felt this was questionable, as you sought out Twitch's permission ahead of time, so there's no way you can say now that you had no idea the community might react negatively to your gaming of the viewer count. The lack of truth is part of the problem here. The credibility of Mobafire is already questionable, and the continued lies and half-truths only make it worse. I cannot understand why you guys are dicking around here instead of apologizing to those who found this offensive and simply turning off the auto-play on the stream. [/quote] Tell me how the stream is out of clear view. Do people not know how to scroll down just a bit? Who looks at half a page, and if they were they'd most likely to click on the forums or click another link? Like Psi said it's how advertisements work, Mobafire was just trying to promote it's stream. With any major site/corporation it's always a necessity to clarify things out between each other. Do you think solomid randomly put the streams on their front page without Twitch.tv's permission? They would probably ask if it would be alright to display it first as any major site would. It wasn't because it seemed shady and they wanted to make sure it bypassing the rules by 'botting viewers'.[/quote]

[quote=Anonandonandon]Oh aren't you just so cute with your attempts to condescend to me. It's exactly what I expect from such a long time member of this site, and your maturity level is truly impressive. I had a whole thing typed up here trying to explain to you in the simplest terms imaginable why it's not acceptable to artificially inflate viewer count by having a stream set to auto-play and auto-mute halfway down the front page, but frankly after your snarky bitch reply I just don't believe you're capable of any meaningful discussion on this topic. You seem to be quite happy with MOBAfire having one of the worst reputations in the League of Legends community, and you don't seem concerned that this will make it any worse. So I wish you good luck with that, and other than refuting your assertion that there has been no lying on the behalf of MOBAfire staff, I'll go right on ahead and act like you no longer exist until you demonstrate the ability to have a mature and intelligent conversation. [quote=jhoijhoi] I don't know why you keep mouthing off about "lack of truth". There just seems to be a huge lack of comprehension on your behalf. [/quote] Just for one instance of a direct lie from MOBAfire staff on this, I refer you to matt's comment in the other thread regarding there having been zero complaints or concerns raised until today. That is 100% false.[/quote]

[quote=Anonandonandon][quote=Bryun] Tell me how the stream is out of clear view. [/quote] Can you see the stream clearly upon visiting the front page? If not, it's not in clear view. [quote=Bryun] Do people not know how to scroll down just a bit? Who looks at half a page, and if they were they'd most likely to click on the forums or click another link? Like Psi said it's how advertisements work, Mobafire was just trying to promote it's stream.[/quote] Why would you mute and hide something you're trying to promote? If this was all just a matter of promotion, why wasn't the MOBATV stream right up top, and why was it muted? For fuck's sake it's so brand new it should be at the top of the page, with a big sign saying "HEY LOOK AT THIS NEW THING WE GOT", but instead it's silently stuck halfway down. That's very odd for a strategy of trying to promote as much as possible. [quote=Bryun] With any major site/corporation it's always a necessity to clarify things out between each other. [/quote] It's also a necessity for any major site/corporation to maintain good public relations with the community they hope to serve. [quote=Bryun]Do you think solomid randomly put the streams on their front page without Twitch.tv's permission? They would probably ask if it would be alright to display it first as any major site would. It wasn't because it seemed shady and they wanted to make sure it bypassing the rules by 'botting viewers'. [/quote] Do I think they put it up randomly? No. Do I think they used the embed code that twitch offers on all of it's streams onto a page to collect all currently live streams? Yes. Do I think they asked permission? No, because that's something twitch offers to EVERYONE to do just that. However, when the Solomid Invitational was running enlarged on the front page on auto-play do I think they asked permission? Absolutely. I'm not saying in any way that what MOBAfire has done here is against the rules of Twitch.tv, clearly it isn't, and they did get permission ahead of time. But it is still very underhanded to force people to add to their view count without giving them any choice or notice that they are watching a live stream. I do think that the entire reason the stream is set to auto-play and auto-mute is to inflate the viewer count and keep MOBATV in the top stream list in an attempt to drive more traffic to MOBAfire, and I do believe that the League of Legends community has made it clear that is not an acceptable business practice.[/quote]

[quote=Mooninites][quote=EvilDice] you guys aren't handling the PR portion of this very well :/ own up to it and fix the problem, that's all you had to do. [/quote] It wasn't a mistake, they had every right to do so and Twitch allowed them. It's not a problem, YOU may think its a problem, but Mobafire has every right to do so. If you have such a problem with this, you should take it up with Twitch. as far as PR it's being handled very well imo. The reason you don't think it's being handled very well is because you didn't like it being embedded (despite the fact they were allowed to)[/quote]

[quote=DemonRyou]Oh I'm sorry. Does the League of Legends community own Twitch.tv? Evidently NOT, since Twitch DID allow permission to embed the stream. It's not even the entire League of Legends community because the MOBAFire community is a part of the LoL community and we're just fine with it. Also, what business? The "community" owns neither LoL or Twitch and if it is allowed then let it be allowed. All you're doing is replying to people who have directly responded to you, yet it would appear you haven't even looked at my post that questions why this is shady and explains why it is not. "MOBAFire didn't ask for permission but SoloMid did because Siv HD didn't say they were shady" ^ See this, Anon? This is you. Good job. You just went full ******. Never go full ******.[/quote]