22 October 1999

VTed abuses the fan sites

Westwood wants some hype about their Tiberian Sun game. Hype on their own web server would look too much like a commercial to be a real hype. The only real hype about anything is made by independent fan sites. Now Westwood tries to control the contents of Tiberian Sun fan sites. How do they do that?

VTed publishes a list of "official TS fan sites" on Westwood's server which contains only fan sites who follow Westwood's rules for contents. Furthermore VTed gives out prices for that fan sites who follow WW's rules at best. Every few weeks VTed sends email to all that webmasters with new rules about the needed contents on their fan sites. Who doesn't follow their contents rules is eliminated from the official list and cannot win any price.

That way VTed and Westwood abuse the fan sites for their marketing strategy. They abuse the high credits those fan sites have among the CnC community. Nobody knows that they're all influenced by VTed. None of these official listed fan sites is really independent. They all are hot to get some prices and sell their souls for a gameboy or so.

Sorry that this is no good news about You, Westwood! Real fan sites are no slaves of Your marketing engine. Real fan sites don't accept any orders from Westwood telling them what to say and what to publish! Got it?

Some emails from Ted for example:

  • "... #1 I'm getting ready to update the Tiberian Sun fansite listing page again. I'm going to be deleting those sites that haven't been kept up to date and are serious about the new stuff we are doing with TS in the next 2-3 months. #2 I have a chat scheduled with Joe Kucan later tonight (actually, just 2.5 hours from now). Show up early! ...
  • "Last but not least, I will be shipping a copy of TS platinum to all the website owners currently on our official fansite list in a few days. Thanks again to all of you. We have many more events and news coming up, so stay tuned."

Usually he includes in his emails what to publish on Your site like new sites of Westwood or new informations about Tiberian Sun.


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