Lionsgate Marketing Consultant Built Movie Trailer Filled With AI Generated Fake Movie Reviews Of Old Films

Failures

from the natural-stupidity dept

I’ll admit, when I’ve been able to witness some of the fuckery around the use of artificial intelligence in stupid ways, some part of me has always gotten some amusement at those being fooled. I’ve gotten to witness most of this from afar, after all. It feels a bit different when you write about a situation where you were among those fooled by the bullshit.

At some point in the last week or so, I personally recall seeing the following trailer for Megalopolis, the forthcoming film from Francis Ford Coppola.

Now, the reason I recall seeing that trailer is due to those opening quotes from movie reviews of previous Coppola films. See, I’m a fan of many of his movies, as are millions of others. I recall laughing at those quotes, wondering just how in the hell reviewers could have gotten it so completely wrong when it comes to films like The Godfather and Apocolypse Now. I even thought briefly about googling those critics’ names and seeing if I could find the full reviews, just to laugh at how hilariously wrong they were.

Well, someone else did exactly that. And they found that those are AI-generated quotes from fake reviews that those reviewers never wrote.

Lionsgate has parted ways with Eddie Egan, the marketing consultant who came up with the “Megalopolis” trailer that included fake quotes from famous film critics. The studio pulled the trailer on Wednesday, after it was pointed out that the quotes trashing Francis Ford Coppola’s previous work did not actually appear in the critics’ reviews, and were in fact made up.

Sources tell Variety it was not Lionsgate or Egan’s intention to fabricate quotes, but was an error in properly vetting and fact-checking the phrases provided by the consultant. The intention of the trailer was to demonstrate that Coppola’s revered work, much like “Megalopolis,” has been met with criticism. It appears that AI was used to generate the false quotes from the critics.

That’s being far too kind. Some of these critics supposedly trashing Coppola’s work absolutely loved the films they were supposed to have denigrated. Variety was able to generate similar quotes with some trial and error prompting using ChatGPT, which is likely where this all came from. Misattributing the words and reviews of a film critic merely to drum up fake outrage as an interest multiplier for Coppola’s new film is both a complete violation of the actual work those critics did and an abdication of trust the public will have in the studio.

Now, to be fair, it appears Lionsgate had no idea that the quotes in the trailer were fakes, and worked fairly quickly to pull the trailer once it found out.

“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,’” the company said Wednesday. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

Still, at a time when both the public and every SAG member out there is concerned about how AI is going to start filtering into creative work in negative ways, this is a fairly terrible look for the industry.

Or, if Lionsgate would like ChatGPT’s take on this:

Lionsgate’s use of fake quotes generated by AI for the trailer of “Megalopolis” was a significant misstep and attracted considerable criticism. Using AI-generated quotes can undermine the authenticity and credibility of marketing materials, especially when presented as genuine endorsements from critics.

For many, the inclusion of these artificial quotes not only misleads potential viewers but also raises ethical concerns about transparency and trust in advertising. When audiences or critics discover such manipulations, it can damage the studio’s reputation and affect the film’s reception.

In the case of “Megalopolis,” this controversy highlighted the broader issue of how AI can be misused in promotional contexts. It underscores the importance of maintaining integrity in marketing practices and being transparent about the sources and nature of endorsements.

And on that, you can quote me.

Filed Under: ai, francis ford coppola, marketing, megalopolis, trailer
Companies: lionsgate

AT&T Gets A Wrist Slap For Advertising A Satellite Calling Service That Doesn’t Exist

Overhype

from the just-makin'-stuff-up dept

AT&T’s never been much for worrying about the finer points of reality. This is, after all, a company that spent years lying to its users telling them that capped and throttled wireless service was “unlimited.” It’s also the same company, you’ll recall, that tried tricking customers into thinking 4G connectivity was actually 5G by simply… changing the icon on your phone.

Most recently, AT&T found itself in lukewarm water for lying about a satellite calling service that doesn’t exist. At least not yet. AT&T’s been running ads claiming that it now offers Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS), which as the name implies, lets you make calls when out of range of cellular towers by using low Earth orbit satellites.

The problem: while AT&T has struck a deal with AST SpaceMobile to hopefully offer such a service someday, the service doesn’t actually exist yet. This has apparently rankled AT&T competitors like T-Mobile, which filed complaints with the The BBB National Advertising Division (NAD). NAD, after several appeals, encouraged AT&T to stop running ads for a service that doesn’t exist:

“AT&T, which is also famous for renaming its 4G service “5GE,” reluctantly agreed to comply with the recommendation and released a new version of the satellite-calling commercial with more specific disclaimers.”

It will likely be many years before AT&T’s SCS service is actually available (commercial satellites for the service haven’t even launched yet and there’s no clear ETA when they will be), and NAD found AT&T didn’t bother to make that clear to anybody.

The problem: NAD is an industry self-regulatory regime intended to forestall any sort of actual regulatory action against companies that engage in false advertising. NAD rulings aren’t really binding, there’s no financial penalty, and usually by the time a complaint has wound its way through appeals process the ads have already been running for months and had their intended effect.

So every so often you’ll see NAD pop up to give a light wrist slap to a telecom for misleading people (like when Comcast tried to pretend its cable network was “10G,” or when Verizon overstated 5G availability), but it doesn’t mean a whole lot. Because the end goal isn’t actually trying to get telecoms to stop lying, the goal is to ensure they don’t see real government or legal accountability for said lies.

Filed Under: cellular, false advertising, lies, marketing, satellite, telecom, wireless
Companies: ast spacemobile, at&t

Logitech Launches An “AI” Mouse That’s Just A 2022 Mouse With A Mappable Button

Overhype

from the because-we-can dept

“AI,” or semi-cooked language learning models are very cool. There’s a world of possibility there in terms of creativity and productivity tools to scientific research.

But early adoption of AI has been more of a rushed mess driven by speculative VC bros who are more interested in making money off of hype (see: pointless AI badges), or cutting corners (see: journalism), or badly automating already broken systems (see: health insurance) or using it as a bludgeon against labor (also see: journalism and media), than any sort of serious beneficial application.

And a lot of these kinds of folks are absolutely obsessed with putting “AI” into products that don’t need it just to generate hype. Even if the actual use case makes no coherent sense.

We most recently saw this with the Human AI pin, which was hyped as some kind of game changing revelation pre-release, only for reviewers to realize it doesn’t really work, and doesn’t really provide much not already accomplished by the supercomputer sitting in everybody’s pocket. But even that’s not as bad as companies who claim they’re integrating AI — despite doing nothing of the sort.

Like Logitech, which recently released a new M750 wireless mouse it has branded as a “signature AI edition.” But as Ars Technica notes, all they did is rebrand a mouse released in 2022 while adding a customizable button:

“I was disappointed to learn that the most distinct feature of the Logitech Signature AI Edition M750 is a button located south of the scroll wheel. This button is preprogrammed to launch the ChatGPT prompt builder, which Logitech recently added to its peripherals configuration app Options+.

That’s pretty much it.”

Ars points to other, similarly pointless ventures, like earbuds with clunky ChatGPT gesture prompt integration or Microsoft’s CoPilot button; stuff that only kind of works and nobody actually asked for. It’s basically just an attempt to seem futuristic and cash in on the hype wave without bothering to see if the actually functionality works or works better than what already exists.

The AI hype cycle isn’t entirely unlike the 5G hype cycle, in that there certainly is interesting and beneficial technology under the hood, but the way it’s being presented or implemented by overzealous marketing types is so detached from reality as to not be entirely coherent.

That creates an association over time in the minds of consumers between the technology and empty bluster, undermining the tech itself and future, actually beneficial use cases.

When bankers and marketing departments took over Silicon Valley it resulted in the actual engineers (like Woz) getting shoved in the corner out of sight. We’re now seeing such a severe disconnect between hype and reality it’s resulting in a golden age of bullshit artists and actively harming everybody in the chain, including the marketing folks absolutely convinced they’re being exceptionally clever.

Filed Under: ai, artificial intelligence, hardware, language learning models, marketing, mouse
Companies: logitech

Comcast Gets A Wrist Slap For Using Dumb And Misleading ’10G’ Marketing To Confuse Customers

Broadband

from the this-one-goes-to-11 dept

Back in 2019, when fifth generation (5G) wireless was getting a lot of dumb (and as it turned out, unwarranted) marketing hype, the cable industry came up with an amazing idea: they’d simply call their existing cable broadband service a “10G technology” in a bid to (1) piggyback on the hype 5G was getting, and (2) falsely represent coaxial-based broadband as something more futuristic than it actually is.

At the time, former FCC boss turned top cable lobbyist Mike Powell insisted that this was a revolutionary step for the cable industry:

“With groundbreaking, scalable capacity and speeds, the 10G platform is the wired network of the future that will power the digital experiences and imaginations of consumers for years to come. As an industry, we are dedicated to delivering an exceptional national infrastructure that will power digital advancement and propel our innovation economy into the future.”

Of course here on planet Earth, cable broadband has a notorious reputation for being much slower and less reliable than fiber, consistently overpriced, and featuring painfully slow upload speeds. Cable companies like Comcast also have a well-established track record of being grotesquely full of shit.

Quite rightfully, AT&T and T-Mobile complained to both the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) and the National Advertising Division, noting that the 10G terminology would confuse customers. Both organizations have subsequently recommended that Comcast stop using the term:

“The NARB panel concluded that 10G expressly communicates at a minimum that users of the Xfinity network will experience significantly faster speeds than are available on 5G networks. This express claim is not supported because the record does not contain any data comparing speeds experienced by Xfinity network users with speeds experienced by subscribers to 5G networks.”

Keep in mind both NARD and NAB are part of a self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs (read: corporations). It’s basically an attempt for industry to claim that you don’t need government regulators with any backbone policing misleading ads, because industry will regulate itself.

The problem is it’s all a bit performative. “Punishments” for misleading ads occur long after the ads have run (notice how this ruling came four years after cable began using the 10G term). There’s no serious penalty for telling the organization to piss off (outside of an empty threat to forward concerns to actual regulators, which usually doesn’t happen and might not result in penalties anyway).

Comcast has defended the 10G term because some very limited parts of its network (namely a very limited number of markets where it has deployed fiber) are capable of 10 Gbps speeds. And while it the company says it will make some changes to the way it uses the 10G term, it says it won’t phase the usage out entirely, showcasing the performative nature of the entire numerical charade.

Filed Under: 10 gbps, 10g, 5g, broadband, cable, false advertising, high speed internet, marketing, nab, narb
Companies: comcast

WotC Denies Using AI Generative Art In Promo Materials, Later Admits, Yeah, It Did

Overhype

from the whoopsie dept

D&D and Magic: The Gathering publisher, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), has certainly been pissing folks off as of late. Between its attempt to change its OGL license for D&D both in the future and retroactively last year combined with sending the literal Pinkerton Agency after someone who received some unreleased Magic cards in error, the company appears to have taken a draconian turn in recent years. Then, over the summer, there was a bunch of backlash when WotC was found to have included art from one of its artists that had been partially generated using AI generative art in one of its books. After that whole fiasco, WotC publicly swore off using any art in its products that was not 100% human created.

And it’s important to note that this is a huge thing in the D&D and Magic worlds. The books, cards, and associated items that players and fans buy from these games have always been revered in part for the fantastic art that has come along with them. And the artists contributing to them have been equally celebrated.

So, when sharp-eyed observers of recent promotional art that came out for Magic pointed out it sure looked like the images around the cards showed signs of having been generated by AI, well, WotC came out with a very strong denial.

“We understand confusion by fans given the style being different than card art, but we stand by our previous statement,” the company tweeted. “This art was created by humans and not AI.”

And even as many sleuths on social media and elsewhere kept up the pushback insisting with example after example within the images themselves that, no, this had all the telltale signs of being AI generated, even that PC Gamer article was referring to all of this as an unfortunate “false positive” resulting from a hyper-sensitivity to the intrusion of AI in art and image generation.

But, no, it turns out that the images around the cards was in fact generated in part using AI, as admitted later on by WotC itself.

After sharp-eyed Magic: The Gathering fans cried foul over a recent promotional image’s seeming use of generative AI, Wizards of the Coast initially asserted that it was fully human-made. However, just two days on Wizards has deleted the offending marketing post and acknowledged that generative tools were used in the image.

On Twitter, Wizards of the Coast stated that the image background was sourced from a third-party vendor, and claimed that “It looks like some AI components that are now popping up in industry standard tools like Photoshop crept into our marketing creative, even if a human did the work to create the overall image.”

You can go read the company’s additional full statement on its website as well. And, as statements about such things go, it’s a fairly good one. It points out that this wasn’t done intentionally or with knowledge by the company, that the company would be working with its 3rd party vendors to make it clear that human-made art is a requirement, and it promised transparency moving forward when it came to this sort of thing.

But the real lesson here is that companies have to be very careful with this sort of thing. The internet has enough well-trained Sherlocks out there who are holding companies to their word, looking for anywhere where AI generated content is being snuck in to replace human-made content that, as the technology stands today, there’s a good chance any such uses will be found out. They might as well save themselves the trouble and just make sure the humans are doing the work.

Filed Under: ai, marketing, promos
Companies: wizards of the coast, wotc

The AI Journalism ‘Revolution’ Continues To Go Poorly As Gannett Accused Of Making Up Fake Humans To Obscure Lazy AI Use

Journalism

from the I'm-sorry-I-can't-do-that-Dave dept

While recent evolutions in “AI” have netted some profoundly interesting advancements in creativity and productivity, its early implementation in journalism has been a comically sloppy mess thanks to some decidedly human problems: namely greed, incompetence, and laziness.

If you remember, the cheapskates over at Red Ventures implemented AI over at CNET without telling anybody. The result: articles rife with accuracy problems and plagiarism. Of the 77 articles published, more than half had significant errors. It ultimately cost them more to have humans editors come in and fix the mistakes than the money they’d actually saved. After backlash, Red Ventures paused the effort.

Gannett, the giant media company that owns USA Today (and very likely whatever’s left of your local newspaper), was also forced to pause its use of AI earlier this year because the resulting product was laughably bad and full of obvious errors. Even when used for the kind of basic writing LLMs are supposed to excel at, like basic box score journalism.

Fast forward to this week, and Gannett is once again under fire for allegedly making up writer bylines as cover for a different low-quality AI experiment. This time the problems bubbled up at Reviewed, a USA Today-owned product review website, where staffers noticed that badly written product reviews of products staffers had never seen were popping up under the bylines of people who didn’t exist:

“Not only were Reviewed staffers unfamiliar with the bylines on the stories — names like “Breanna Miller” and “Avery Williamson” — they were unable to find evidence of writers by those names on LinkedIn or any professional websites.”

All of the articles in question are sterile and not particularly engaging, and all shared notable similarities. Here, for example, is one of their reviews for scuba masks, contrasted to their reviews for water bottles:

While “AI” can definitely improve journalism efficiency on everything from transcription to editing, the kind of fail-upward types at the top of the media industry food chain generally see the technology as a way to cut corners and assault already woefully mistreated and underpaid human labor, especially of the unionizing variety.

Unionized writers at Reviewed say that Gannett was trying to obfuscate its efforts to undermine unionized human staff after its embarrassing face plant earlier this year:

Carrillo, a shop steward for the union, said the mysterious reviews — which appeared just weeks after staff staged a one-day walkout to demand management negotiate on a new contract — harm the reputations of actual employees.

“It’s gobbledygook compared to the stuff that we put out on a daily basis,” he said. “None of these robots tested any of these products.”

Amusingly, when approached for comment by the Washington Post, a Gannett spokesperson first tries to deny that the articles were AI generated, then implies that if they were AI-generated, it was all the fault of a third-party marketing firm:

“In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson said the articles — many of which have now been deleted — were created through a deal with a marketing firm to generate paid search-engine traffic. While Gannett concedes the original articles “did not meet our affiliate standards,” officials deny they were written by AI.

“We expect all our vendors to comply with our ethical standards and have been assured by the marketing agency the content was NOT AI generated,” the spokesperson said in an email.”

The marketing firm in question redirected questions back to Gannett. WAPO reporters couldn’t find evidence any of the writers exist. The site’s human writers say it’s obvious that AI was used, noting the marketing firm in question clearly advertises that it engages in “polishing AI generative text.”

Again, the problem here generally isn’t the technology itself. AI will ultimately improve and become increasingly useful in a myriad of ways. The problem is the kind of humans implementing it. And the way they’re implementing it without involving or even telling existing staffers.

The affluent hedge fund brunchlord types that dominate key positions across U.S. media “leadership” clearly see AI not as a path toward better product or more efficient workforce, but as a shortcut to building an automated ad engagement machine that effectively shits money. And, as an added bonus, a way to undermine staffers peskily demanding health insurance and a living wage.

Large U.S. media companies are filled to the brim with managers who are terrible at their jobs to begin with, making their failures on AI unsurprising. When it comes to the folks shaping the contours of modern journalism, ethics, product quality, accurately informing the public, staff happiness, or genuine human interest very often never even enter the frame.

Filed Under: ai, content, journalism, llm, marketing, media, reporting, reviewed
Companies: gannett

FTC Fires Warning Shot At ‘AI’ Companies Like DoNotPay: Do Not Oversell Your AI

Legal Issues

from the you-may-need-to-pay-the-ftc dept

Over the last few months we’ve had a few articles highlighting the pretty serious questions raised regarding how much of DoNotPay’s (“the world’s first robot lawyer”) marketing is pure bullshit and nonsense. It’s not surprising that there might be a bit of puffery from a startup, but DoNotPay’s claims are so outlandish, and its CEO, Joshua Browder seems so allergic to just telling the truth, that it’s increasingly looking like DoNotPay is not just puffing up its claims, but more or less making them up wholesale, in a manner that is fraudulent to consumers who are paying it a monthly subscription fee of up to $18.

Browder, for his part, refuses to serious address any of these allegations, continuing to double down on his “I’m a martyr schtick” in which he pretends that the concerns and complaints raised are simply from bad lawyers and paralegals who are worried about AI taking their jobs. Nothing can be further from the truth. As we discussed with investigator and paralegal, Kathryn Tewson, we both believe strongly in the potential for legal technologies (including AI) to have a tremendous, potentially transformational, ability to improve everyday access to justice for people who can’t currently afford lawyers. But, if DoNotPay is simply scamming people out of $18/month, making promises it can’t deliver, changing its terms of service to avoid transparency and scrutiny, failing to shut down accounts after promising to do so, and other such things, it raises questions not about “taking away lawyer jobs,” but about defrauding the public.

Even the fact that Browder not only lied about making a charitable donation (which he’d already misrepresented as being more generous than it was), but then forged the date on the eventual receipt to mislead people into thinking he had made the donation, raises serious questions about the ethics and honesty of the company’s CEO.

This week, Browder continued his “woe is me, the persecuted entrepreneur, with big bad lawyers out to get me,” by appearing on the a16z podcast.

He continues to just make shit up in that podcast, but given that a16z was the lead investor in DoNotPay’s seed round, and appears to have continued pumping more money into it, I guess it’s not much of a surprise that the host fails to actually push back or challenge Browder on any of this. I’m actually a fan of the podcast, and think the host often asks pretty thoughtful questions in other episodes. But not here. From the very top, she trots out the bullshit marketing line that DoNotPay lets you “sue anyone at the press of a button.”

Remember, Browder insisted that after Kathryn Tewson exposed his “AI lawyer” stuff was bullshit, that the company would remove claims about using the lawyer to go to court and file lawsuits? Of course, those claims are still on the website, and the podcast host repeated them. While she does bring up Tewson’s claims, she doesn’t do so in detail, and lets Browder trot out his well-practiced, but wholly misleading, lines about how the complaints are actually from lawyers who are worried about their jobs.

Of course, in the very same breath, he insists (as he’s done a bunch of times) that “lawyers won’t get out of bed” for the kinds of services DoNotPay claims to provide (whether or not they actually do provide those services remains a pretty open question).

Either way, last week, the FTC put out a very interesting notice to companies to “keep your AI claims in check.” While it’s likely that the notice is directed at many of the new AI companies appearing every other day or so, it reads almost as if it’s addressed directly to Josh Browder and his bullshit claims.

It calls out specific things, all of which seem likely to implicate DoNotPay and Browder’s overly zealous marketing (i.e., bullshit):

When you talk about AI in your advertising, the FTC may be wondering, among other things:

Are you exaggerating what your AI product can do?  Or even claiming it can do something beyond the current capability of any AI or automated technology? For example, we’re not yet living in the realm of science fiction, where computers can generally make trustworthy predictions of human behavior. Your performance claims would be deceptive if they lack scientific support or if they apply only to certain types of users or under certain conditions.

Are you promising that your AI product does something better than a non-AI product? It’s not uncommon for advertisers to say that some new-fangled technology makes their product better – perhaps to justify a higher price or influence labor decisions. You need adequate proof for that kind of comparative claim, too, and if such proof is impossible to get, then don’t make the claim.

Are you aware of the risks? You need to know about the reasonably foreseeable risks and impact of your AI product before putting it on the market. If something goes wrong – maybe it fails or yields biased results – you can’t just blame a third-party developer of the technology. And you can’t say you’re not responsible because that technology is a “black box” you can’t understand or didn’t know how to test.

Does the product actually use AI at all? If you think you can get away with baseless claims that your product is AI-enabled, think again. In an investigation, FTC technologists and others can look under the hood and analyze other materials to see if what’s inside matches up with your claims. Before labeling your product as AI-powered, note also that merely using an AI tool in the development process is not the same as a product having AI in it.

If the FTC comes knocking on Browder’s door, he’d do well to (1) hire a real lawyer, not his pretend AI lawyer, and (2) start being honest about what his company can actually do. But, I fear that instead he’ll just go on yet another rant claiming that the FTC is just trying to “protect” the “lawyer’s guild” that he claims is out to get him. Browder is good at marketing stunts, and he seems to now be turning the fact that everyone’s calling out his claims as fraudulent into a marketing tool (“oh, woe is me, the persecuted entrepreneur,”) but the FTC isn’t going to like that very much.

And, honestly, even as his lead investor may have incentives to fluff up one of their startups with uncritical marketing nonsense, a16z should realize that if the FTC is going to come down on one of their companies, encouraging them to further misrepresent themselves is not a very good look.

Filed Under: ai, ftc, joshua browder, lies, marketing, puffery
Companies: a16z, donotpay

Google Strikes $9.4 Million Settlement With FTC For Paying DJs And Influencers To Praise Phones They Never Touched

Legal Issues

from the artificial-enthusiasm dept

The FTC and four state attorneys general this week struck a $9.4 million settlement with Google over allegations that Google covertly paid celebrities money to promote a phone none of them had ever used.

The FTC’s announcement states that the agency had previously filed suit against Google and iHeartMedia for airing nearly 29,000 deceptive endorsements by radio personalities and influencers, promoting their use of and experience with Google’s Pixel 4 phone in 2019 and 2020. The FTC and state AGs said the DJs and influencers had never actually so much as touched the phones, violating truth in advertising rules:

“It is common sense that people put more stock in first-hand experiences. Consumers expect radio advertisements to be truthful and transparent about products, not misleading with fake endorsements,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. “Today’s settlement holds Google and iHeart accountable for this deceptive ad campaign and ensures compliance with state and federal law moving forward.”

Of course, this kind of obscured financial relationship is happening constantly, especially in the influencer space. But like most U.S. regulators, the FTC lacks the staff, finances, or overall resources to police this stuff with any meaningful consistency. So instead, they occasionally fire a warning shot over the bow of the biggest and worst offenders, in the hopes that it scares others into behaving.

The Pixel 4 is a three-generation old phone, so, as usual, any regulatory action on this kind of stuff happens pretty late, if it happens at all. It sounds like Google would have been fine if it had just had the influencers more generally imply that they loved the phone, and it was the phony first-person endorsements that got Google and iHeartMedia in trouble.

More generally, poorly or non-disclosed influencer marketing arrangements are everywhere, and the FTC’s simply too inundated with other responsibilities to take aim at the problem with any real consistency. Still, the agency issued warnings to 700 companies in 2021 that it was at least paying attention to the problem, something that can’t be said of previous incarnations of the agency.

Filed Under: disclosure, ftc, influencers, marketing, phones, regulatory enforcement
Companies: google

Netflix’s Gaming Offering Is Being Largely Ignored By Customer Base

Failures

from the notflix dept

You might recall that almost exactly a year ago, Netflix announced that it would be getting into the “gaming” business. While the announcement led many to believe that Netflix was going to jump into competing with Google’s Stadia platform and offer streaming AAA video games, in actuality, it turns out to be… not so much. Instead, Stadia collapsed faster than a poorly maintained Miami condo building, and Netflix’s plans were revealed to be a couple of movie/show-related mobile games siloed behind Netflix’s mobile app. While this felt underwhelming, at least the games were free and contained no micro-transactions.

So, it’s been a year; how’s it going? Well, on the one hand, there are plenty of reviews of the 25 or so mobile games that are fairly positive. That’s good!

Back in November, Netflix began offering games as part of its subscription service, launching with five initial titles: Stranger Things: The Game, Stranger Things 3: The Game, Card Blast, Teeter Up, and Shooting Hoops. It’s since added more and now has over 25 mobile games that people can download through the Netflix app on either Android or iOS devices. Some of these games—like Into The Breach—are really good, too. And all of these games contain no ads or microtransactions.

However, that positive outlook on the quality of the games only adds to how perplexing it is that the number of Netflix subscribers who have even given a single one of those games a try is essentially a rounding error. That’s bad!

As reported by CNBC, via data from app analytics company Apptopia, Netflix’s games have been downloaded just over 23 million times and have an average daily audience of 1.7 million. That might sound good on paper, but it’s basically nothing compared to Netflix’s 221 million subscribers. What this data seems to show is that about 200 million people who have access to Netflix’s library of games are currently not playing them or maybe don’t even know they exist.

Still, with a solid list of games that continues to grow, Netflix is struggling to get anyone to care. Apptopia’s data shows that all of these games have a combined daily audience of 1.7 million. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of crappy mobile games that have twice that alone.

This should ring as strange on multiple levels. Usually, when user adoption for a product is garbage, it’s because that product is typically trash. That isn’t the case here. Very few people seem to think that the problem here is the quality of the mobile games relative to the rest of the market. On top of that, while Netflix has certainly had its struggles as of late, the company’s longer term success has largely been about great marketing and nimble business models that react well to change in customer demand. Yet here we are, with a mobile gaming market that’s never been bigger and a company with all kinds of marketing power and name ID that can’t seem to marry those two things together to get people to play its games. That’s just odd.

But it appears to speak to a larger issue at Netflix, one that is less about quality of product and more about an inability to align its pricing and messaging, and, perhaps now, user experience when it comes to getting at these games through the Netflix mobile app, with consumer demand.

Netflix is currently facing a problem with keeping users. Since the beginning of this year, the streamer has lost 1.2 million subscribers. In response to downward trending numbers, Netflix has cut jobs, spending, and canceled shows. Building and supporting a library of games that can compete with Game Pass or Apple Arcade isn’t cheap.

For example, earlier this year, Netflix paid over $70 million to buy up the studio behind a Stranger Things puzzle game. That ain’t nothing and in a time when the company is looking to cut costs and compete against other steamers, it’s questionable how long it will continue to finance this gaming experiment.

If I had to put my chips anywhere, I’d guess that by the end of 2023 there won’t be a Netflix gaming offering unless something massively changes. Netflix would need to cease bleeding subscribers, would need to rework how subscribers get these mobile games (or stop siloing them with subscribers), and would have to increase the number of games on offer while still maintaining or increasing their quality.

That is what is called a “heavy lift” in the gaming industry.

Filed Under: marketing, mobile gaming
Companies: netflix