“WE’RE NOT WRONG… wait, we are? Oh… then…. YOU’RE STUPID!”

What an odd morning.

After arriving at the GameAxis office, I was told that a story I’d posted on the GameAxis blog had been pulled by the editorial team at the request of Singapore Press Holdings. For those of you that don’t live in Singapore, SPH is company that runs the local newspaper. It is also owned by the government, in the same way that SingTel, the local phone company is also owned by the government, and the Television Corporation of Singapore is also owned by the government, in addition to Radio Corporation of Singapore which is… you guessed it, owned and operated by the government. Recently SPH actually bought out the company that publishes GameAxis.

The reason I mention all this is because last week, in the blog post which is no longer there, I wrote a story about how the local newspaper ran two articles in the same paper. One story in their technology section called Digital Life, called the Playstation 3 the must have Christmas gift of the year and urged people to buy it. The other story, in the “Home” section of the newspaper, claimed that the PS3 violated voltage standards for Singapore and so any retailer that was caught selling the console would be fined by the government.

Yes, you read that right. The newspaper told people to buy the console, but told retailers not to sell it. In an amazing second round of even greater confusion, the two articles were written by the same person.

At this point you might be thinking “That’s incredibly stupid,” and if you thought so, you’d be thinking exactly the same thing that I was thinking, which is why I wrote the story pointing out this amazing contradiction. I also pointed out that said contradiction was based on a factual error, because the Playstation 3 comes built-in with a universal voltage convertor and can thus safely operate anywhere in the world without bursting into flame, unless Singapore is operating on some unique Cold Fusion generator that I’m not aware of that requires a canister of hydrogen be present and attached to all consumer electronics.

So I–and the rest of the GameAxis team–were a bit cheesed when we were told that the story had to be pulled now our new “owners” had heard about it and weren’t entirely happy with the criticism. They also said that they wanted an e-mail out of me explaining why I would tell such a hideous story.

Unfortunately for them, I don’t think they have much knowledge of the game industry or how things work around here. Most of the points of contention they wanted explained were wholly on my side. For example, one of the points I mentioned in my article was that since journalist had written a glowing article reccomending the PS3, it must have been one of the “illegal” consoles. SPH didn’t take kindly to this and insisted that the console they used for review was completely legitimate as they had received it from Sony itself.

Sadly, what they weren’t aware of was that Sony gave them PS3 models from the Taiwan/Hong Kong region, which, according to their definition, made the consoles illegal. They had, in fact, just admitted to using contraband technology as they had quite precisely defined it in their article.

Suffice to say after the e-mail was written and a few other people made some relevant points to it, it was sent off and the basic message was “You’re getting mad at us for telling the truth.” After it was sent, we didn’t hear another word from them again.

I suppose we could lie and say that the PS3 doesn’t have a universal voltage convertor, but then Singapore would be the only country in the world that believes this, and I think the country is more interested in not looking ignorant than it is about having one magazine apologize for pointing out they were wrong.

Still, I can guess I can add them to my list of People Gunning For Me. Just a couple of months ago I annoyed the Media Development Authority (owned and operated by the government) and now it’s the press. Man, I just can’t play nice anywhere…