2K had Dr. Tracksuit in a WWE 2K16 trailer (now removed)

If you're into WWE 2K, or you follow Alex's Twitter you may have seen this:

That guy is... Dr. Tracksuit right?? Even Jeff thinks it:

Kinda crazy, but kinda funny too lol

OH! COLLUSION!

It's an example of a created character, but yeah... creepy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOz-OWBiw5M

It's kind of rubbish they didn't ask Jeff, he's hardly the type of guy who takes this stuff seriously and would want loads of money for it.

Yeah, that is strikingly similar. Especially with the colouring. If the colouring was different, then I could just as easily say it's sort of like Oddjob from the James Bond Jr. cartoon, or any other random 80s/90s character that wore a tracksuit and sunglasses.

But also do they think enough people who are Giant Bomb fans are the market they should be catering to with trailers? Or maybe they just think Dr. Tracksuit is a good character design. It's a weird created character to go with in the trailer.

It's not Jeff, the likeness is off 30%

This is kind of weird though

@bisonhero: It's worth noting that WWE 2K16's community manager is also Dan's roommate.

@milkman: Haha, oh right, that. Still wonder how much he could influence the creation of marketing trailers, though.

Somebody testing probably made Dr. Tracksuit and the marketing team thought it was cool and put it in the trailer. That said they definitely should have consulted his manager Jeff about this.

It even says "M.D." on the chest. It's definitely Dr. Tracksuit.

sue sue sue sue sue sue

This is America, god damn it

Not the push he's looking for.

You'd think they would have at least asked him first.

I just watched it, refreshed the page and they have taken it down.

Someone at 2K is probably a fan and thought it'd be a neat cameo to put in. Obviously that doesn't always work out, but the thought was kind of neat.

I'm actually surprised at the response this has gotten. It seems like a fun little nod to the site or to the Pax Wrestling stuff. Seems pretty harmless to me.

They probably should have asked though, I guess.

Hmmm... This strikes me as good intentions gone wrong. I bet someone at 2K is a fan of the site and they thought it would be fun to throw Dr. Tracksuit in. Or maybe not, maybe that thought this would appeal to the part of the Giant Bomb audience that loves wresting. Jeff is definitely not ok with it but it also seems like kind sort of a gray area. I dunno. The internet is tricky.

First: I am not a lawyer, but spent some time looking stuff up for my own business, so I could very well be wrong, but my understanding is as follows:

The name might fall under trademark law, though the video doesn't explicitly use it, but in that case a registered trademark adds strength, but generally the law favors the first one to use the name, which would be Jeff in this case. The character might fall under this as well.

If it would instead fall under copyright the character was, under the Berne act, protected the moment he used him. Essentially the moment the creation was made tangible, and he did not need to register it for him to be protected in this manner.

But again, not a lawyer. I know there have been some on the boards who claim a legal background, maybe they could go over it better and with more accuracy. If I am right though he actually does have a leg to stand on if he wanted to make a case of it.

Doesn't Dan's roommate do the marketing for WWE2K? I don't like pointing fingers, but.....

This is great and terrible at the same time.

Yeah, that's the detail that convinced me it's actually him and not just some crazy coincidence.

Oh wow, they did make the video private.

It's kind of a funny thing though. I wonder if Jeff reacted that way because they didn't ask him or if he was thinking "Great, I'm kinda connected to this thing I think is complete garbage." (On a similar note, I wonder if 2K people looked around and thought "Oh, you based this character on a guy who does cocaine and the guy who created him said our game was shit? Uh, how is this good for our marketing push again?"

Likewise.

If you don't like pointing fingers then don't. He's the community manager. He doesn't "do the marketing."

@bisonhero: Since I can't respond to you in the other thread, I'll do so here.

@naoiko said:

So random note...could he sue? Or ask them to take him out?

Not in a million years. I'd be shocked if there was a single intellectual property law that would aid Jeff in this situation. Dr. Tracksuit isn't an important enough character that Jeff would ever bother to have filed anything that lets him have a legal claim to the character, and similarly he isn't important enough to the business of the Giant Bomb website that CBSi lawyers could in any way include Dr. Tracksuit the character under the umbrella of whatever rights they have to the Giant Bomb name and brand.

They are still technically using the likeness of Jeff without his consent. So there may be an avenue, but I don't think anything can come of it.

Doesn't dan live with the community manager.... it wouldn't surprise me if somehow this was his work

Dr.Tracksuit doesn't have a lawyer. He has a knife and cocaine.

@hsghsghsg: The real issue is because Jeff is part of the games media. Using his character could easily be interpreted as a weird conflict of interest thing. It doesn't help that the WWE games of late have been terrible.

@toysoldier83: His roommate does community management. I'm sure hes part of some marketing meetings but I doubt he had anything to do with this.

Look at all the attention it is getting suddenly. There is no bad marketing.

Oh it wasn't the roommate, at least not willingly. He was coerced by Dan. Dan couldn't beat Klepek, so he decided to take his anger on Jeff and his client Dr. Tracksuit. It makes total sense in my head.

I really can't tell if any of these reactions are serious or not. Does anyone really believe 2K is exploiting Jeff's/Dr. tracksuit's likeness for commercial gain? Obviously, anyone who even recognizes the similarities is already going to be well aware of Jeff's feelings on the franchise, and this will have zero effect on sales whatsoever. Does anyone honestly think someone will see this trailer and say "SICK! they put Dr. tracksuit in the game. So that means Jeff approves of this game. Now I've got to buy it!"

@icyeyes: They are gonna think "this is dumb" i need to buy it becouse i like dumb. Only a crazy person would think "Approved by Jeff".

I'd be kind of annoyed as well if someone depicted me representing this piece of shit series.

This reaction coming from 2 seconds of trailer footage is pretty funny.

There's probably a EULA somewhere that says they can since it was made in one of the 2K wrestling game custom character things before. There usually is.

That's why you don't want to use characters you've personally created in video games these days. They'll find loop holes in the law to use it whenever they want.

One other thing -- if you remember in this year's Big Live Live Show, Drake asked Jeff if CBS owned his likeness, and he had to avoid the question and basically made it seem like they did. If CBS thinks Jeff is allowing his likeness to be used, it could have bad consequences for him, so he probably had to make it known publicly that he didn't ask for or allow this, so they don't think he's cutting deals to be added to games. At this rate, there may be a chance that CBS sues the developer because of it (not sure, but since Dr. Tracksuit has appeared in GB content as a character, it may be even that "Dr. Tracksuit" is a CBS character.

Plus there's also Jeff's integrity as a journalist. If people think he got put in the game in order to win Giant Bomb's favor, a lot of ethical things come up. It makes perfect sense for Jeff to denounce it.

I actually think it's pretty cool, but can see why there's small, but vocal contingent of others who aren't too happy about it, especially Jeff, since it could have legal and ethical ramifications for him depending on his contract.

@people saying this is overreaction

I dunno how something saying "They probably should've asked me if I wanted my likeness in this trailer" is an overreaction. Seems like a pretty sane and reasonable reaction, really. The fact that's it's both someone who doesn't particularly care for the franchise (and currently the product it's representing) as well as someone who's been burned by weird PR practices before just makes it all the more sane.

It all just boils down to that they should've asked first. And even then if they wanted to nod and wink maybe they could've used someone that...likes the game?

That is what really pushed it Over the Edge for me. I don't think WWE will stay Unforgiven but I doubt they will face Capitol Punishment for this.

I'm not sure why Jeff is talking about *his* likeness. His client should be the offended one. Sure, Jeff and Tracksuit could pass as brothers, but they're clearly two different people.

Just imagine if they would have made a fake-Dan instead, he would have loved that!

I'm sure 2k had good intentions but they did not think about the ramifications of Jeff being in games media causing concerns about conflict of interest.

I gotta say though, it is kinda cool that Dr. Tracksuit randomly appeared in a WWE2k trailer haha

This is kind of gross, but it will be worth it when we see Kane come out and yell "TURN ON THE FOG MACHINE"

@recspec: please no god no

They re-uploaded the trailer and they changed the Dr. Tracksuit part.

The MD is the clincher, but there is probably enough reasonable and plausible deniability.

Jeff actively hating WWE 2k as well as WWE is a solid way to avoid any conflict of interest.

@lotsaspiders: That actually looks like how WWE might imagine a Soviet version of Dr Tracksuit ...

@lotsaspiders: Why do I feel like Watracksuit is a D.M.D. though...