General rule in life : Don't Poke the Bear.
Other similar expressions include tidbits such as "That's just the way it is", and references to Burning Bridges..
Over the past few days, I've heard pretty much every single one of these, and a whole host more.

About a week ago, IGN posted a trailer for SpikeDislike2.
A few little things annoyed me about it, like the advert, and the watermark, but I initially let them pass.
After all, IGN Exposure, right!? Woot!

Then I noticed another little oddity.
The YouTube page didn't have a link to me, or my game. It only had an IGN Subscribe link.
And on the official IGN Page.. Well, that didn't have any links, either.

If you saw that trailer, the only clickable things were IGN related.
Nothing was about me, or my game, except for the trailer.
-=-=-

In a world of fast paced iOS Gaming, one of the most important things is having something immediately clickable.
It might be easy enough to open up the AppStore and hunt for the thing you've just seen, but we've all gotten lazy, and the AppStore's gotten very very big.

"Oooh, that looks good"
So you open up the AppStore, and the screen gets flooded with Apple's Picks. You browse through them, find something interesting, download it, and forget all about the thing you initially went to the AppStore for.
This isn't a rarity.
This happens to me ALL THE TIME!
It's only about an hour later that I open up Safari and remember what it was I was originally going into the AppStore for, and by that time, I can't be bothered anymore.
Play time's over.
Moving on..

The link is vital.
The link is my bloodline.
The link.... links things!!!

If you head over to IGN's SpikeDislike2 page, you won't find a link to the App. You won't find a link to me. You won't find my name. You won't know who wrote it. You won't know anything.

I got annoyed about this, and I ranted.
I ranted in the way that I typically rant.
I swore, I shouted, I complained, and I voiced my opinion on just how crappy the whole situation was.

Over the weekend, it went a bit viral.
Ooops!

A few other Indie devs have gotten in touch. They've complained to me that I'm Burning Bridges. They've argued that I shouldn't complain. "Everyone gets the same treatment."
They've linked to their similarly crappy IGN pages, with identically useless information.
So I've looked.
I've trawled through the IGN archives, and .. yes.. indeed they do.
Everyone gets the exact same treatment.
Indie devs are being crammed into a gigantic "Independent" banner.
Nobody's getting credited for anything.

It's absolutely downright despicable.
And yet nobody's dared speak out about it!
Everybody's too scared, because "You don't complain about IGN! IGN's too big!!!"

It saddens me to see developers taking this lying down. IGN's a great big corporation. They pay people to do this stuff. The least they could do is bother to do their jobs properly, and fill in a few little bits of information in their database.
My name is not "Independent"
My name is "James Gamble"
If AppAnnie can use a data scraper to find this out, I'm sure an IGN "journalist" can spend ten seconds doing the same.

Over the past few days, I've found myself amazed by the lack of information available over on IGN.
I'll be honest, I've never much bothered to read IGN before. I'm not really a "gamer". I might write AGameAWeek, but I've never been much into the playing, more the making.
To find what I've found, this weekend, has left me saddened and disappointed by the whole experience.

The end result is, of course, that IGN have pulled the trailer. The trailer on Youtube, and it's page on IGN are now gone.
This solves the initial "He whinged about it!" problem, but it doesn't fix the underlying issue.

All it needed was the insertion of an AppStore link in the description.
That's it.

But no, not for IGN.
For them, it's easier to pull it down, so I don't have anything to complain about.

*sigh*

Links

(Because links are important...)
Socoder : My initial outburst

The Reddit Thread : With thanks to RiotBananas for posting it.
GamersBliss.com : "Indie Developer is 'Feeling a Little Angry' at IGN"
Leviathyn.com : "SpikeDislike 2 Developer Clashes with IGN Over Game's Coverage"
GamingBolt.com : "SpikeDislike 2 Developer Lashes Out at IGN For 'Stealing Trailer, Not Giving Credit' "
PlaystationGang.com : "SpikeDislike 2's Developer Jayenkai Angry With IGN For Stealing Trailer And Making Money From It"
GamesReviews.com : "IGN Steal Indie Trailer, Watermark It, Make Money Off Ads"

and finally..
IndieStatik : "IGN Called Out For Uploading SpikeDislike2 Trailer For Self-Serving Purposes Only"
which contains bonus email-interview extra bits!!

I'd like to thank each and every one of these blogs for picking up my rant, and all the people who retweeted my outburst, as well as all the folk on Reddit, some of who agreed, some of who didn't..

I can see folks point of view that "At least it was on IGN!". I do agree with that. But having it be there isn't as important as having it DO something while it's there.

I can only hope that my outburst results in IGN bothering to do something about this issue, other than simply deleting and hiding things so you can no longer see what the problem is. :