being known in the poker community and being known worldwide are 2 very different things.

Im not exactly sure how PS will handle this , but i could imagine some PS published article on a part of site open to many ( and google ) where it will say " This guy from XX City just won the biggest online tournament ever for 1.5million "

Pretty f*cked up ...

Not that I'm playing the Main Event but if I had $5K laying around I wouldn't Play it either way ...

If you want to see your face and a winner's photo on the PokerStarsBlog go play an EPT ...

So all the regs are not playing now sweeeeet

I imagine a fair few fish will see that warning and choose not to play because of it as well

The "in perpetutiy" part is what I have the biggest problem with.

I'd be fine with "for one year" you're the WCOOP champion for 1 year, so advocate for having them be the WCOOP champ for Pstars for 1 year. And compensate them for using them for the benefit of your site. Give them a WCOOP ME ticket for the following year, make them a bounty in any $215+ tourney that runs for that year and a package of various tourney series BIs (TCOOP, SCOOP, MicroMillions etc) for the year as well. This costs Pstars nothing overall and then the person will feel as though they are a poker celebrity for that year and are receiving benefit for their anonymity being revoked. After 1 year, it will give them an opportunity to fade into anonymity again. It's not like Pstars doesn't keep records of all the winners anyhow. JC Tran won the 1st ever WCOOP ME and I still see that get brought up around WCOOP season.

As far as this statement goes: This is not reasonable justification to expose someones identity "in perpetuity" They are the one that put up the BI, they navigated the field over 2 days playing their style of poker and earned the right to be there. I do not want to haggle over points such as stars software/support/servers/staff etc. I know, it's a for profit business and needs to make money but saying that someone making it to the FT and claiming their portion of the prizepool is payment enough is just plain wrong.

Very cool idea. Giving them full rights for 1 year, which provides you with small perks/celebrity status for that year.

Completely agree with your second paragraph also.

and where will my substantial financial rewards be when i drop 200k before that?

dont you guys just love how steve doesnt adress a single issue raised in this thread? whatever, lets put ppl in danger to rake a few extra hundos in the future.

also, i would be very interested how stars is planning to obtain images/voice recordings of the winner. freeze winners' funds if he doesnt send them?

inb4 multi account wins and gives stars a good trolling. im certainly rooting for that to happen now.

There is little to say regarding the point that some players will have legitimate reasons to not want to give up their anonymity. We accept that this is true, and realize that some players will have a decision to make about participating as a result.

With regard to tax avoidance in particular, this is not something that we encourage or aim to facilitate, so this is not a potential impact that weighed negatively in our decision making.

I see a few other points being discussed:
1) Compensation of some sort is requested for those affected
2) Terms being too restrictive, including
a) length of rights
b) language being too broad

We will discuss these internally and I will come back to you in time, but it will be in terms of days, not hours.

Thanks for your continued feedback.

Steve,

I can see the objectives you're trying to achieve. Of course you're acting in the interests of Pokerstars, not "Poker" (yes, the two are different!) but to some degree player and site interests overlap so that's fine. However, you're going about it in the wrong way. Please consider:

(1) Some players will be pleased with publicity if they ft the event, others will be very uncomfortable (whether for personal, tax, safety or whatever other reasons). The reasonable approach is simply to ask the winners for their permission after the event. Perhaps even offer an incentive at that time if you're particularly keen.

(2) As far as I'm aware no other poker/sportsbook/gaming site has ever published players' real names. Even major lotteries give winners the choice to remain anonymous (after, not before, they win!).

(3) For many people the size of the win would be transformative for their lives and they need time to fully consider the implications of going public. That can't be done properly via a pop up message when regging for the event especially when, lets face it, most people don't read those anyway (and many will assume its just the standard ft replay message).

(4) Pokerstars has always refused to out cheaters on its site, to publish even their screennames, on the basis that its regulator/EU privacy laws prevent it. However, here you seem happy to do so. Please explain why you see it as reasonable and within your authority to do it here but not to have a similar permission from players when they join the site which allows you to publish their sn if they're DQ'd for cheating.

(5) WCOOP main is "the" online poker event of the year, the closest online equivalent to the WSOP ME. Saying players can simply choose not to play if they don't like our terms feels a bit like abuse of monopoly.

meh, standard in media rights contracts (and pretty much has to be to make them work). However, the wording is very broad, allowing general use of the name/image etc without restricting it specifically to use in connection with WCOOP publicity.

Thank you for the thoughtful and considered reply.

We have done this in the past but it has not produced the desired result.

I agree that the interests of Poker and PokerStars are different but often overlapping. I do think that the potential benefits here extend beyond PokerStars and to Poker in general, and it's definitely the case that we have other initiatives that are designed to grow Poker, not just PokerStars.

Chris Moneymaker grew not only PokerStars but also Poker.

Lotteries may allow anonymity, but they are not championships by any measure, and the participants do not interact with one another or compete directly in any way. There are other comparisons I could draw to examples such as chess, but they are not necessarily better than the lottery example as the finals are typically played out live. There are few if any perfect analogies.

Probably the closest would be online video game championships such as Starcraft or LoL. Such champions are not anonymous, but they do typically play the finals in person these days. I remember participating in early (failed) American e-sports leagues PGL and i2e2, many years ago, and my recollection is that even for the i2e2 Brood War 2v2 event with online finals, they required participants to surrender name and likeness rights for promotional purposes.

Regardless of the examples, we are aware of both the benefits and drawbacks and have decided to move forward with this change for this one tournament.

We do expect that players read the pop-ups and this thread is evidence in support. We have deliberately taken steps to publicize, not hide, the change despite knowing that the initial player reaction will be negative. The registration message is one example, the mention on the PokerCast is another, and there will be more in the coming months I am certain.

Players will have to make the decision themselves as to what is the appropriate amount of consideration to give the matter. Certainly there is plenty of time to make the decision. Even someone who wins a seat in a satellite this weekend will have months to reconsider and unregister if they wish.

I can explain that I would be uncomfortable putting T&C in the WCOOP that reflected an ability for us to make such decisions based on our own judgement. It is quite clear who makes the final table and it is not a matter that any final table participant will dispute. Sometimes those found guilty of cheating do dispute our findings. I can say that I would not be comfortable with T&C that resulted in surrender of anonymity for purposes of promotion with qualification based on judgement of our staff. That would not be appropriate for this particular purpose.

As for the precise reasons that game integrity is not able to publish names, that is a topic for discussion with our Game Integrity team and not really relevant to this thread.

Thanks for the responses.

Doesn't that tell you your customers don't want this?

Hi Steve. Thanks for jumping in on the thread.

As the person who stated this discussion I believe that the two issues of overly broad contract text and length of rights are the most important. I understand that PS is ultimately a business and that you desire to grow the WCOOP brand for obvious reasons. But if you believe you need to go down this route then shouldn't you at least attempt to emulate similar types of set ups in comparable industries?

One person has already commented that universal image rights are already usual in other media contacts. They neglected to mention that these rights usually expire when the contract expires. Meanwhile, perpetual rights in the context of promotion of a product are also limited purely for the purposes of that product's promotion.

Neither of the above are the case with the terms stated in the pop-up and that is a cause for concern. (And, incidentally, in my view it is also not appropriate to even put contract terms like this in a pop-up anyway and they should instead be listed in detail in a referable document).

I realise you said that it will take days to formulate an official response to the above. We would all appreciate an expedited response if at all possible.

hey steve would you like to have someone control the the ability to use your voice, likelihood for any reason for the rest of your life?

I found this funny, considering not long ago, you implemented those fake tax circumvention tournies to keep Greek people playing and paying the rake. Not against it, just saying.

This really

Whatever the terms are, there needs to be a fixed time limit (up until the next Wcoop seems logical) but even if you fixed it for a few years (say someone like Ivey won it, you'd probably want to run with that for quite a while) it would be more reasonable

As it's been said, it's to broad. A lot of people will be relatively happy to play along as the champ, so if you find some conditions that are more specific to this role, you'll get less blow back and more players

I may have misheard or misinterpreted but this is what I was talking about:

2:28:40 Adam: 'Just out of curiosity Steve, will there be an option for those people to switch and go back to being anonymous at some point?'

Steve: 'There are no plans for that at the moment. It can be discussed.'

Won't be playing the ME because of this. Complete ****ing joke. I hope this creates a huge backlash and Stars reconsider. If this happens it sets a dangerous precedent and maybe Stars will then start adding this clause to other tourneys. There are many good reasons why people may wish to remain anonymous, some have already been mentioned in this thread. Stars should at least give people the right to choose if they want to keep there name and image out of it. It would be reasonable to require players who ft to do interviews and answer some questions but to not only force players to lose there anonymity but to also take there image rights is an utter disgrace.

If you value your right to anonymity while playing online I strongly encourage you to protest this and put pressure on Stars to remove these t and c.

First off! So much love to 2+2 and the poker community for standing up for their/our rights. As long as we stand strong together we can make things happen. On-line but also in real life................................

No, this thread is evidence of 2+2 having a ton of users viewing this forum and that 1 person looked at the message and decided to share it.

What if a player wins a last minute satellite? Can he get the T$ if he doens't agree with it? or will the popup be absolutely clear to him before he would register the satellite?

Sorry I'm confused here!? It is clear who makes the FT, yes. this information will be publicly known... The serial names. So that seems to be extremely open card. No the real life names, addresses and phone numbers....

People who cheat, accoarding to pokerstars findings, are not known by the public and are not allowed to be outed.. I'm not even talking about real life names and addresses we can go after.. Just talking about a simple nickname. People we play with, day in and day out!

+1...

And last... So far you never went into depth about 3rd party use... So far all I heard is arguments how it benefits Pokerstars and poker etc.. But not how 3rd parties are allowed to use all information and the players image...

it is very easy: if you dont like it, then dont play it. it is your right to decide if you want to participate or not. no one is forced or has disadvantage by not participating. even supernova elite players can convert their tickets. i dont expect an overlay. by the way: almost no one participating in that tournament is completely anonymous. and the few that are and dont want to see their name published can play many 1000s other tournaments.

it would be better if you dont complain all the time and dont act like pokerstars has to justify for something or owes you something. they work together with you already. they are not an opponent. you can be happy that they give you possibility to have fun or sometimes win money with your hobby. if you dont like it do something else.
of course always something can be improved like scoop bonus, rakeback, schedule, etc. but in the end pokerstars decides. it is good that you give advice though and i think it is considered and influences decisions but one cannot make everyone happy and users of this forum are not as representative for all players as you perceive it.

My bad, didn't realize this. Pokerstars is now above reproach in perpetuity throughout the world.

Great post. Stars need to address this.

Idiot.

yeah make it 1yr maximum and give the ppl affected generous compensation, also be more clear and not so vague eg 3rd party usage

otherwise wont play it, someone should make a petition against it, will be interesting to see how stars makes the 10mio gua when 300regs*5k decide to not play it for that reason.

this! pretty bad marketing attempt from stars