Jade Raymond Debacle
To Summarize the issue:
- Someone made a offensive comic picturing Jade Raymond in sexual acts.
- A link to the comic was posted on the humor site, somethingawful.com
- Ubisoft threatened to sue somethingawful.com
- somethingawful.com posted the threat and basically told the lawyers to piss off.
- The Internet explodes with outrage at the treatment of Jade Raymond and laughter at the response of somethingawful.com.
What’s your opinion? Is Jade Raymond being treated unfairly? Should legal action be involved? Was the comic inappropriate? Should gaming sites cover this kind of petty drama?
Not to take the discussion to the shotbox, but come on..? Nobody likes all games, its that simple. Some like the mother, other like the daughter 
Keep your "hate-articles" coming, Gary!
November 21st, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I think she should show us how she really looks in said situations
November 21st, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Well, I have no idea where the legal basis is… but
Since Ubisoft “used” Raymond as their “sexy” figurehead to sell their buggy game, such a backlash is sort of predictable. I mean, I saw the picture… It was a bad photoshop of her showing her spreaded eagle… Yes, they may seem offensive, but it is NOT a real photo. Ubisoft too is guilty of photoshopping their gamepics!
Both ain’t real and I for one would never sue because of such a bagatelle. But since I am Germany, my sense of justice is hugely different than an Americans etc.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:55 pm
A picture too? I thought it was just the comic. Well there are other people who worked on this game yet they let her take the lead on it. Patrice Desilets was creative director and he is barely ever mentioned….IMO..There was no need to defame her character and take it that far. I have the game and I say I expected a lot more from it. They should have delayed the games, fix the bugs, put more thought into the missions and push the engine further.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I actually hope somethingawful looses on defamation grounds.
What this whole mess has done was show the majority of gamers are still too immature to handle a woman that doesn’t look like Gabe Newell in the gaming scene. It’s her job to sell the game to the press.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I agree Sporty. Behaviour like this is disgusting. Why is it not possible for gamers to behave like mature human beings instead of depraved animals?
November 21st, 2007 at 2:54 pm
I believe the comic was intended to make fun at marketing tactics used by Ubisoft in the said matter. I find it inacceptable to use female charms to get media coverage. Ubisoft threats are ludicrous and will be dropped eventually.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I disagree. Sure, the personal attack is wrong, but who cares? Some random guy on the Internet takes a cheap shot at a celebrity? So what, that happens every day. You can’t sue about it.
As Segitz said, this type of backlash is understandable. Ms. Raymond is completely overexposed. She’s probably a smart, hard working, great person, but as iFlash pointed out, there are thousands of other people like that in the games business who never get any coverage.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Hmm,
well seems we are on different fronts here Henning and Sporty^^
Since this pics wasn’t even made by somethingawful, I would find it a bit bad for them to lose a case in which they aren’t the culprit. Yes, such a pic is immature and whatnot, but it is not something to sue someone for (imho). We did such stuff with pics of our school comrads back in the 90s. It was great humor and nobody was really hurt (some where… well a bit ashamed by it, but nothing major).
We surely are a bit older and more mature than the users of somethingawful and thus see those pics with a complete different view as the younger ones over there.
And, as I said earlier, people who are in the media voluntarily need to accept that such stuff happens… There are pics from every second celeb which feature her crotch exposed (not Paris, but photoshopped Sandra Bullock and the like) and… well this is how stuff just is.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I’m still searching for that picture. Everybody seems to know it, but I just can’t find it wtf?!
November 21st, 2007 at 3:59 pm
This is ridiculous. She wants to put herself out there act like such a media magnet, this is the kind of thing that will happen. People have been making photoshops of game industry employees for years. I didn’t have much respect for Ubi Soft to begin with, now I have none.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I wouldn’t have known the existence of such a cartoon if they hadn’t made such a big deal about it. I still haven’t seen it tho.
p.s. Jade roxors. I mean it.
November 21st, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I’ve seen the comic and it wasn’t funny.
I understand that Jade is offended by it but trying to stop it that way, actually gives it more publicity.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:56 pm
“I agree Sporty. Behaviour like this is disgusting.”
While the behaviour might be disgusting, it’s covered under the law of free speech. It’s really only libel and defamation if it is something that can be passed off as speaking for the subject, or if there was a credible threat of it being interpreted as really her.
In this case, somethingawful is widely known as a satire site, and even if Ubisoft brings the wrath, any competent defense attorney will be able to show that most, if not all of the content, on somethingawful is comedy and thus would be covered under the law.
To sum up, while it maybe in bad taste, it’s very obvious that somethingawful is poking fun at the fact that Ubisoft very blatantly used Jade’s sexuality as a means for driving a lot of their press and marketing.
You might not agree with the way they did it, or the taste in which they chose to do it, but if you come down on them for doing this, you should come down just as hard on satiric television shows such as the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, even late night talk shows like Leno or Conan since they always take pot shots and it’s deemed satirical as this image from somethingawful does.
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:41 am
This is getting a bit ridiculous IMO, gamers feeling insulted because of a random guy on the internet? Come on!
No, the actual issue is the reaction of somethingawful, invoking freedom of speech or whatever bull for that??? They should have behaved like adult webmasters, moderated the slime out and get it done with, but instead they played it like teenagers. Sheesh…
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:19 am
That’s probable because they are just that… teens.. no?
November 22nd, 2007 at 8:00 am
Yes, it’s immature. Yes, it’s satire. And it may or may not be wrong.
But let’s face it, at the end of the day… you would! ;-p
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:14 am
I really don’t care about this issue too much to debate it.
But, First it’s Ubisoft lawyers not Jade that are pissed. So any backlash against her is just as immature. She seems to be caught in the crossfire.
And Freedom of Speech doesn’t cover Libel, Slander, Defamation or threats. Not saying it’s a threat at all but just pointing out that freedom of speech isn’t a defense for anything in todays age really. Being on the Internet actually adds a few charges if they wanted to go that route.
November 26th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Uh it wasn’t a picture, someone made that years ago, and to think that they haven’t noticed that. Oh well. Yeah it was a comic strip, witht he Jade barely resembling Jade and it wasn’t funny, just random.
If you want to know what it was it was three guys, a geek, fat geek and black dude and they basically meet Jade who is in bikini wear and says ‘hi guys please buy my game’ and they totally fall for her and say ‘ofcourse well buy your game jade’ like worshippers then she gives them blow jobs though you dont actually see her do it you juts see her head in front and the guys going oh yeah etc, then she is covered in spunk and it says buy assassins creed 13 th november. the end. no nudeness, not funny, and definetly not very offensive.
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:02 pm
SPORTY — It’s SATIRE. Poking fun at the fact that Ubi put a Hot Babe as the face of Assassin’s Creed. I picked up the game. It’s decent, but it surely didn’t hurt to have a Babe towing the company line for it.