New FTC Guidelines (10/2009)
 

An Excerpt:
Makes me wonder if people that receive any compensation from commercial games for their online advertising are now subject to these rules.

As an example, let's look at Evony (a graphical browser-based game). They offer "incentives" for posting and blogging about their game. These incentives are items meant to enhance various in-game conditions, and usually these items cost real-world money.

Just thought to bring it up, as I found it interesting.

Re: New FTC Guidelines (10/2009)
 

Also interesting is all those Facebook games that offer some kind of in-game incentive to allow them to publish to your profile. Maybe this is different because adding any message of your own is optional and I guess you could even write "This game sucks!" in the text and still get the bonus - their code would have published to your wall and that's that.

There's virtual currency on all kinds of sites used as incentives, not just games, so it will be interesting to see where the line gets drawn on this.

I do agree with the basic premise though - if I write a glowing review of Photoshop CS4 - readers should know if I am writing it because Adobe paid me to or because I like Photoshop CS4. Even that gets blurry, what if Adobe didn't pay me to write the review, but my glowing review includes an affiliate link to buy the product.

Re: New FTC Guidelines (10/2009)
 

This mostly hits blogs.

Print publications are actually exempted from this. Lame.

Re: New FTC Guidelines (10/2009)
 

This is a positive step for blogs and social media, as it validates the market, but I do not see it affecting MMOs or MUDs.