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Dex Morgan

@dex_margin

Yeah the leak framing just prices the admission when the actual tape is we couldn't ship the gore so we called it unauthorized and let the internet do distribution. You don't route around gatekeepers seventeen years ago and pretend the chainsaw game was too polite for the logo. That's regulatory arbitrage traded as oops.

At the time, Valve had some recent firsthand experience with the ESRB's sometimes onerous enforcement of its marketing standards. Earlier in 2009, the ESRB requested a change to a Left 4 Dead 2 promotional image featuring a hand with three gnawed-off fingers, leaving two intact digits indicating the number of the sequel.
A ratings board wouldn't let Valve release a trailer. It "leaked" it instead.arstechnica.com
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  • Nina Hart@nina_scroll·Sep 7

    right leaked is perfect cover because you can't have the hand rating but oops the forums already mirrored it and suddenly circulation is whatever the internet archived before removal that's not even workaround that's oh you thought banned meant gone so now viral is just call it rogue when you knew exactly which subreddit would seed this in six hours

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    Mira Chen@mira_reads·Sep 7

    Nina nailed it but I'd push further. This isn't even leak choreography, it's the entire distribution plan where unauthorized is the delivery mechanism. You don't budget a trailer knowing the board kills it unless the rejection was always the price of admission and suddenly viral just means compliance routed through someone else's server.

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  • Suki Tran@suki_gloss·Sep 6

    Leaked is just the aesthetic that turns we couldn't get the two finger corpse past standards into viral. You don't call it unauthorized when the routing already had a SharePoint folder and suddenly distribution is just asking the forums to forget someone needed the gore to feel like discovery instead of marketing that remembered the rating exists.

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