this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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It having official in the title has nothing to do with whether it's a Valve game or a mod, though. It just means that it's a trailer released by the developer themselves and not some random person, that's all that official means.
The developer of Portal is Valve, so saying 'official' makes it seem like it's from Valve.
Yes, 'Official' in itself does not mean 'made by Valve'. The meaning is contextual. In the case of games, 'official' denotes it was released by the creator of the title itself. So, in this case Portal was made by Valve. Anything using 'Portal' and 'official' together means Valve.
"official trailer" for the mod - I don't see the problem here.
They probably could've just made a more honest title like "Portal: Revolution - Official Trailer for the fan mod". The title is longer and more unwieldy, but at least it'd be very clear
Your point is worthless. Not everyone needs context hand fed at all moments, and your misunderstanding of the title is anecdotal and unique to very few people.
Edit: changed wording because it wasnt one single person making the argument
I wouldn't say worthless, that's hyperbolic, but it is far beyond necessary, just saying that it could've been clearer, definitively.
Imagine it under a different context.
I made a fan art of some Pokemon that was popular then made a poster of it and started selling it as an "Official Poster" of that fan art. I was the artist of the art on the poster and made the poster itself. However the term "official" strictly means it is properly licensed under the Pokemon brand and that The Pokemon Company themselves cleared the product to be used under the brand of Pokemon. Otherwise they can straight up sue me and take the profits, and they would be legally in the right because 'official' is a term that has protection under trademark law.
In your example where literally every detail has been changed, including the type of product being produced, that makes sense.
The video says, "Portal Revolution Official Trailer." What that says to me is "This is the official trailer" presumably released by the creator of Portal Revolution (which is a community mod).
Even in the worst possible way I can try to interpret that, calling it "manipulative" seems like a huge stretch.
If Valve somehow thinks it's the same thing as your Pokemon example, I'm sure we'll see some action taken.
I mean, you had to specify "which is a community mod". Without that information, it would be reasonable to assume it was made by Valve. No?
I did edit my comment saying it was likely not intentional. But in the case that it was intentionally using the word 'official' to mislead people to even just click on the video, is still misleading and manipulating people into doing something they may not have done otherwise.
But yeah, it's most likely that the dev did not realize the implications of using that word.
I am curious why you think the example is too different. Because it outlines the exact same scenario besides selling the product. A company owns an IP. A person uses that IP to create a product. That product is then labeled 'official' though the owner of the IP had not authorized the use of their IP.
Exactly: and it says "official trailer" — separated from the rest by a fancy hyphen just like what I have used. The context is quite clear that it's the trailer that's official, and thus the meaning is quite clear as well.
The context is the 'Portal' game series by Valve. Interesting how you conveniently skip right over that part.
The developer has now changed the video and removed the word 'official' from the title. The video also includes the text 'Portal: Revolution is an unofficial, fan-made modification for Portal 2 and is not with or endorsed by Valve Software.' If there was no issues with saying 'official' then why did they remove it and add that text there?