As the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory CBT goes on right now for its EN release, the game’s discord community has come under fire for citing an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) which doesn’t noticeably exist.
Over on the NIKKE CBT Discord, a whole thread within one of their channels with a bespoke reason: reporting unpartnered content creators who were selected to play the game, but not stream it.
Meanwhile, on the r/Nikkemobile, posting any kind of CBT content has also been banned, with moderators saying “sharing CBT content in this space is considered an NDA violation”.
According to a thread on r/Gachagaming, a member of the NIKKE staff has confirmed that only partnered content creators were allowed to share content from the game’s Beta.
There’s only one catch to this, though- there was no NIKKE NDA that the moderators of both communities are referring to.
We’ve reached out to the moderators of the subreddit for further comment and will update this article accordingly.
UPDATE: Moderators for the NIKKE subreddit have said that they’re doing this at the request of the game’s developers. Meanwhile, rather than an NDA, fans have discovered that it’s actually a violation of the game’s TOS:
Use of a Beta is subject to confidential treatment of that Beta and all elements thereof. “Confidential Information” means any information disclosed by us to you, or accessed or provided by you, in relation to the Beta (including any feedback provided and the Game itself).
The A In NDA Stands For Agreement
Traditionally, access for any kind of closed builds are usually dependent on agreeing to the terms of the publisher, which makes sense: you want to play our game, you agree not to stream it or not to publish anything before certain dates.
However, neither the confirmation email nor the game’s CBT sign-up page mention any such streaming restrictions, and while complaints about the rule stretch as far back as 8am this morning, the mods had only just posted at 11am mentioning about an NDA (that once again, no one was made to sign).
Some users on reddit voiced their unhappiness, especially considering the NIKKE discord is the only official place that (only after the fact) makes any mention of content restrictions and is an ultimately optional part of the process.
“The CBT invite is done by email not through discord. Even it’s popular, not everyone using discord and NDA only work if both party is agree to it not one side. So if cc need to check discord for NDA then it isn’t a NDA”, writes redditor karisan12.
Considering how serious the term NDA is in any kind of content creator circle, invoking an NDA that doesn’t provably exist is a serious problem- and a good way to lower trust with potential partners.