FTC Endorsement Guides

With the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 press package I received there was a sheet included titled "ATTENTION - IMPORTANT NOTICE" which seemed a little redundant given that it's all in underlined bold caps. Here's a scan of the document:

I had to Google "FTC Endorsement Guides."

"FTC" stands for "Federal Trade Commission" which was established in 1914 "to prevent unfair methods of competition in commerce as part of the battle to “bust the trusts.”" Being a Canadian (living in Canada, no less) this is kind of the first I'm heating about the FTC ant its endorsement guides. More than ten years into the enterprise of The Armchair Empire and I don't think I've ever acknowledged that we receive review copies of games. I feel so guilty! It's on a rare occasion that any money is spent on a game to review it -- usually a copy just shows up from the publisher. (Dead Island was the last game I had to buy.) This note from Activision got me thinking about the topic. I can think of only a precious handful of gaming sites out there that make any effort at offering this particular information. (I mean, aside from the usual unboxing videos and casual bragging that happens on gaming podcasts.)

I'll certainly be making some changes to how this information is conveyed to our readers in some obvious way, until then I have to admit that Activision sent us the "Hardened" version of Modern Warfare 3 (for PS3).

I feel better already.