Vindictive retaliation to negative reviews

It appears Bandai/Namco is a publisher that will take flagrant action against negative reviews of their products & I have quite the story to tell about it.  The problem started after I started streaming Dragon Ball XenoVerse to YouTube.  Before that however, I was having a lot of problem with griefering in the game, which lead to writing this review.  That review was linked to this thread on their forums (a plea to get the developers to do something to mitigate the abuse of the game; this link was later replaced with the PDF backup after Bandai/Namco closed their public forums), which was created shortly after the review was published.  I later decided to start recording particularly bad spamming incidents, had them uploaded to YouTube, which got linked over not only to the review, but also that thread on their forums.  Using the videos that were linked over, Bandai/Namco started targeting my YouTube channel with copyright infringement complaints on gameplay streams, which is pretty well the same thing that happened with Wild Game Studios (Day One: Garry's Incident) & Digital Homicide Studios (The Slaughtering Grounds) when reviewed by well known YouTube game reviewers such as TotalBiscuit (a.k.a. The Cynical Brit) & Jim Sterling.

The first attack from Bandai/Namco happened on July 11, 2016, where it didn't become a problem until somebody entered the stream chat to tell me that Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2, was coming out & I made a statement via voice over the video that I wasn't in any hurry to get the game if they weren't going to do anything about the griefing problems in the first game; the stream was prematurely ended before that discussion was even completed, with a YouTube ToS Violation in response to it (later reversed after an appeal was filed), so it's expect that individual that was trying to build hype on the sequel was an employee of Bandai/Namco & they didn't like my response, so they quickly filed a copyright complaint against the stream.

On Sept. 23, 2016, that stream page once again got hit with a copyright complaint, even though there was no active stream at the time, but the link to the review was still in the description of the stream page, so apparently the purpose of the complaint was targeting the unchanged description from the previous attack.  While an appeal was filed with YouTube on it, it was either rejected or ignored (probably ignored, as I expect even a rejected appeal would get a response via email) & a BBB complaint was filed against Google for the strike issued on my YouTube account.  At the time the appeal was filed & the BBB complaint opened, it was still undetermined as to what caused the attacks on my channel, but after checking the Events page on my channel for Live Streaming, it because painfully obvious that it was the publisher(s) of Dragon Ball XenoVerse, as only publishers can file copyright complaints against videos on YouTube.  At this point the details on the BBB complaint against Google were updated with documentation as to how it was Bandai/Namco at fault for the strikes/violations that were getting issued on my YouTube channel.

Once it was actually determined where the attacks on my YouTube channel were coming from, I had to start taking action to get that information to the public.  While I did decide to make my YouTube video listing public again, there were some changes to prevent Bandai/Namco from further targeting my YouTube channel in retaliation to the review on Dragon Ball XenoVerse & expected retaliation not only to this review, but the boycott as well; while details about it were given in the Discussion tab of my channel, no direct links were given to them as this would have only given them further reason to continue filing complaints against my channel (and that's not to say they still won't on the videos of griefers & technical problems in Dragon Ball XenoVerse, but I have those backed up & can easily move them to another site).

As for the steps taken here on WonderGamer.net, 3 YouTube reviews were updated with details of the spiteful retaliation from Bandai/Namco, the review for Dragon Ball XenoVerse was updated, the review you are reading now was published, as well as a public boycott against Bandai/Namco for unbusinesslike retaliation to reviewers of their games.  I expect this issue will continue to be a problem, so for the time being, I will be looking to move content related to Bandai/Namco products to another site & off of YouTube, but for the time being, they are just going to sit on the account as unlisted & be linked off of other sites until I decide on a site to move them to.

UPDATE:  I was intending on filing a Customer Protection complaint against this company, but for the time being, I've just decided to submit a BBB review related to problems I've had with the company in their games, as well as over their community media sites (including YouTube & Twitch).  I expect they are going to dispute the review, so for the sake of not wasting the time put into writing it, I will also be publishing that review here (red highlights indicate words that got censored when the review was accepted & published on the BBB website; further details below):

This company is known for showing hostility towards users who write negative reviews on their games & ignoring requests of their customers. They are aware of my YouTube account & (mostly negative) review of Dragon Ball XenoVerse only because I posted links to the review & videos of excessive spammers on their forums, requesting something be done about the griefing problem on 4/10/2016, to which I still have not received any official response on it (only one response from a player who was supporting counter-measures be taken against the griefing).

Bandai/Namco has made it a point to attack my YouTube channel with copyright complaints in retaliation to the review; the first one was on 7/11/2016 for a standard gameplay stream (expected to be because of the link to the review in the description of the stream or the thumbnail, which was a Dragon Ball XenoVerse desktop; this ended the stream prematurely & limited my YouTube account to nearly being unusable for around 13 hours), the second on 9/23/2016 (no stream was active at the time, so there's no way it could have been targeted for an actual video, yet it still got issued a strike for a copyright violation). The appeal on the first incident reversed the violation & set it back to good standing, however the appeal on the second incident was unfortunately ignored by YouTube & even though a BBB complaint was filed against Google (owner of YouTube) to have the strike reversed (I wasn't concerned about streaming abilities being revoked, as I already decided I wouldn't be doing gameplay streaming to YouTube again after the first incident), Google used a loophole stating I needed to re-file the complaint under the correct email (using a Hotmail account rather than the email account associated with the YouTube account) to verify ownership of the, where I think they were aware that I wouldn't be able to open another BBB complaint against them for the same incident, so this was manipulation of the system to avoid having to do anything about it. None of this started happening on YouTube until after somebody joined the chat of the first stream I attempted, tried to build hype to get me to purchase Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2 & I responded to them I wasn't in any hurry to get the game if they couldn't fix the current problems in the original game; the stream ended up getting killed in the middle of that discussion. I have checked other YouTube channels & also searched the web looking for other incidents such as I have had to deal with, so far I haven't found anybody else having the same problems...

To further complicate things (before the YouTube incidents started happing), I was having problems with archived streams getting muted on Twitch due to the music in the opening movie of the game. I contacted Namco/Bandai requesting to obtain a legal documentation (if any) for right to share videos of Dragon Ball XenoVerse online to be presented to Twitch when appealing muted videos. The Support Rep. gave me an email to contact for their Legal Team, to which I never received a response to it. Shortly afterwards, Twitch streams of that game started getting hit with misdetections of other songs that weren't in the game; the misdetected music (using audio detection algorithms) in those videos were appealed on Twitch, but never actually processed to the point of being unmuted & I never received a response from Twitch on a decision. The muted videos on Twitch was what made me decide to try streaming to YouTube instead, which was a BIG mistake & only escalated the situation to overbearing abuse from YouTube that I can't get to stop even thought I'm no longer streaming the game (or any other game for that matter) to YouTube.

For this reason, I REFUSE to continue purchasing anything with the Namco/Bandai logo on it or anything that originated from a Namco/Bandai franchise (i.e. has a character they own copyrights to). They have lost a customer because of this & no more of my money will be going into their pocket. A PSN friend of mine that I made in DBX was talking to me about DBX2 over Twitch yesterday, my response was that I wouldn't be getting it due to the attacks on my YouTube channel (only way that would change would be if they publicly apologized for the attacks & made an effort to reverse the strike they caused) unless somebody gifted it to me (I've told 2 other friends I've made in DBX this, 1 stated that he felt like throwing away his copy of DBX2 afterwards); despite my reluctance to accept the offer, that 1 friend stated he was going to gift me a PS4 & a hard copy of DBX2 when he had the money (and this isn't even a family member, which only further added to why I didn't want to accept it, beside the fact I don't want to mess with the company anymore, don't expect I'll be getting the DLC since I won't purchase it myself while the boycott continues & PSN doesn't have the ability to gift unless through gift cards).

UPDATE:  Originally I couldn't find anything on the web when I was searching for proof that Bandai/Namco was retaliating to negative reviews; somehow I had the fortune of running into somebody tonight while playing Evolve that verified I wasn't the only one & I was lucky enough that I was not only streaming the game, but also recording it, so now I have verbal proof of the situation.  As I already know what Bandai/Namco will do if I upload/export it to YouTube, I'm going to be linking to my Twitch account for the time being.  I still have the backup of the original video however (which is going to be better quality than what's on Twitch), so I can host it on my site & attempt to find an external player to play it on or simply allow people to download it so they can play it locally on their computer.  Seeing as Twitch forces auto-play on videos, I won't be embedding the video, but rather linking to the video on my Twitch channel through the image below:

The user that was speaking to me in this video who verified my belief that Bandai/Namco was retaliating to negative reviews was looking to see if he could find his review of Dragon Ball XenoVerse (Steam version) so he could send it to me to be published without fear of being censored; unfortunately the review on Steam had already been deleted, not that I can say I'm surprised if they're going to go as far as to stalk a YouTube channel looking for ways to pin strikes on them.

At this point I think I have enough proof of the matter to file a complaint with Consumer Protection, might even bring it to the attention of Steam as they might remove their games in the same manner they removed Digital Homicide Studios' games.

UPDATE:  The BBB review was accepted, however it was highly censored & makes it very hard to actually understand, so there was perhaps little reason in submitting one to the BBB:

Download PDF of BBB censored review

Words that got censored include Google, Hotmail, PS4, Twitch & YouTube (although it appears the BBB didn't get all of them, there's still a few instances where YouTube shows up).  The original review is above (with some color alterations to show censored words), so you can still make sense of it if read here, however reading it on the BBB website is pretty much a lost cause, as was the attempt in filing it (I can only expect the same thing is going to happen with my Twitch BBB review...if it gets accepted at all; I'll create a new page for it if that happens)...

Review last updated 10/24/2016

NOTE:  First two links on this page were leading to the wrong URLs when this review was first published; those links were corrected on 10/19/2016.

NOTE:  Downloadable version made available on 10/19/2019 in preparation for subscriber-only restriction on Twitch channel early 2020.