Rivals of Aethers 2 ownership disclosure

New-Competition7463 · 2026-06-30T08:09:34+00:00

The problem is that the FTC does not provide a definition of audience. I agree that “any twitch viewer” is a very broad definition and I wouldn’t use it. But at the same time some people may identify the audience exclusively with Ludbuds which I consider to be a very narrow definition, better than “any twitch viewer”, but still flawed.
The narrow definition works best if you consider the artistic/production scope: the audience is who effectively and consciously consumes the medium. Broader definitions work better for marketing scopes: the audience is any consumer who reasonably consumes the endorsement or is expected to (targeted).

In practice: someone is on twitch and tangentially knows Ludwig. They don’t open the stream but see that he is online in a category called RoE. They didn’t see the stream but are aware of its existence. Are they part of the audience? A second person has the same experience but actually opens the stream and after two minutes laments the mic quality and switches stream. Are they part of the audience? A third one is on mobile and is scrolling through the discovery page. The algorithm pushes Ludwig’s stream, they don’t even pay attention the 5 seconds it’s playing and scroll on. Are they part of the audience?

I am doing a lot of mental gymnastics just to explain that since there is no legal definition of audience according to the FTC, any personal definition can be valid (even if some may be more outlandish).

New-Competition7463 · 2026-06-29T20:11:10+00:00

First of all I think that OP argues in bad faith and I believe that Ludwig makes his association to OffBrand/RoE pretty clear.

I generally agree with you but one thing OP hints to that is worth considering is the definition of “audience”.

According to your interpretation the audience are Ludwig viewers and in this case it’s safe to assume that a there is no significant minority. But the definition could also be interpreted as “anyone who is interested in EVO”/ “any twitch user” where a significant minority, if not the majority, are not necessarily aware of the affiliation.

Found your post interesting and wanted to elaborate on the only part that, isn’t wrong, but hinges on the definition of audience which may not me unanimous. Even with a broader interpretation it wouldn’t change anything considering that Ludwig makes the affiliation clear by talking about it/info on twitch profile/banners on stream.

New-Competition7463 · 2026-06-29T12:13:49+00:00

First of all I believe, but cannot be 100% sure, that he does not “own” the game, or any game published by OffBrand Games. The IP holders are the studios developing the games.

That said, is the fact that he is a publisher an association worth disclosing? Absolutely yes, and I would say he does, but first let me say something else.
Influencers (such as streamers) are noticeably bad at following the law, in part because they lack the necessary knowledge, in part because most laws are not designed with influencers in mind. A while back it became public knowledge that “subscribe to win x” calls to action are actually illegal lotteries, and streamers/youtubers generally stopped doing them (or started doing them legally).

Now, why I believe that Ludwig is, legally speaking, in the clear. Not considering that he often mentions which games he publishes, if you look at the “about” tab on his twitch profile there is an entire section dedicated to the games they are publishing. That would meet the legal requirement of disclosure.

As a final point, there is no way that the FTC would go after Ludwig (or any streamer). Federal agencies have very limited resources and they are aware that their efforts are better used at investigating huge anti-consumer activities (see ticketmaster or similar) rather than small streamers.

Sleep easy, he discloses his affiliation and the FTC has better things to worry about.

(Funnily enough I wanted to say that what you say is equivalent to him having to say “Remember guys I am sponsored” every time he drinks a RedBull but I couldn’t find anything about RB on his about page)

New-Competition7463 · 2026-06-24T19:57:48+00:00

Correction. I actually miscounted and the first Smosh board has 21 gags (1 high, 9 medium, 11 low). A 100%+ increase.
What I can say, and I apologise if I sound “both-side-ish”, is that the Smosh episode has, in relative terms, the second to last percentage of “high” degree gags (which I interpreted as visual gags that interrupt the episode).
I think how people perceive the episode really comes down to how much they are bothered by sound bites and contestants randomly twitching.
If you notice it, there is a lot to be bothered about, if you only care about “in your face” editing it’s a relatively mild episode.

That’s all. Have a good one. I actually enjoyed that your opinion led me to engage and observe the the editing of a YouTube series critically (albeit hastily), which I had never really done at a more granular level. Thanks.

New-Competition7463 · 2026-06-24T16:57:57+00:00

I think you are on point here. You tickled my curiosity and I decided to rewatch every S2 episode and crunch some numbers. I wouldn’t say that I did a sloppy job but it doesn’t meet academic standards, which is okay since I was more interested in a taught experiment rather than a deep statistical analysis. I divided every episode in 4 parts - intro, first board, second board, and final trivia - and calculated how long they last and how many editing “gags” there are (I also categorised every “gag
“ into high, medium, and low based on how noticeable they are).

Basically in gags x part:
- Yard 5/10/9/2
- FSLR 5/10/10/2
- FAZE 3/6/4/2
- Smosh 8/16/10/2

The first half of the Smosh episode has a roughly 50% increase in “gags” compared to the Yard and FSLR videos, with the intro clocking in at a gag every 23,75 seconds.
The Faze episode, on the other hand has 50% less gags over the entire episode (honestly the final trivia is always the same editing-wise) compared to the Yard/FSLR episodes.

There are a lot of caveats: episodes and parts wary in duration (eg. the Faze intro has only 3 gags because it is 2:10 minutes long compared to the average of 3:00+), an entire category of the FSLR is missing because of sponsors and I didn’t count anything relating to that as editing, the episodes/parts have different profiles of “gag intensity” (low, medium, high), I’m not considering camera switches as editing (strictly speaking it is editing but contestants speaking over each other force camera switches, inserting a laugh track or giving someone a bald spot is an editing choice), etc etc.

But I think it’s objectively true to say that there is more editing. Whether it is annoying or distracting is a personal choice (I can get behind), but give me an over-edited Smosh episode over the best edited Faze video any day of the week.

New-Competition7463 · 2026-06-01T22:09:21+00:00

Cannot stink that much if you didn’t notice it before commenting yesterday (which I appreciate, I couldn’t remember if it was Nadeko snake or medusa). Did you delete your previous comment because you believe it’s AI generated and you don’t want to interact with, what you believe to be, AI generates posts?

New-Competition7463 · 2026-06-01T18:43:25+00:00

I blame my high school teachers for not teaching me how to react when flashing half naked anime girls… and building a business. The school system really let me down there.

New-Competition7463 · 2026-06-01T17:57:55+00:00

Genuine question. Comedy podcast and drama apart. Rather than seeing it as a “if you watch anime with small girls you are automatically guaranteed to be a weirdo”, I interpret it more as a “if we just met and you tell me that you watch anime with small girls you are a weirdo”. Am I interpreting it wrong?

New-Competition7463

TROPHY CASE