Oh they definitely will. I’m positive there will be some impressive cosplay and artwork in there, the sum total of which will require significant time and money. That’s what makes the practice ethically iffy.
It’s a private company asking for unpaid volunteers to help it profit. If this were happening in person rather than over the Internet, it would be illegal.
HonestlyIfeellike there's a weird gray area to this. If they offered fans anything of meaningful value for this sort of thing, that could also come off ethically iffy, with people feeling as though it edges on bribing folks for good press. They could just not ask for this at all, but one can't deny that there's meaningful value both monetarily and emotionally in an activity such as this. I mean Bioware regularly retweets artwork and cosplays from fans. It's not part of a formalised ad campaign, but It's definitely still free advertising. In a lot of cases, it's just asking to be directly sent stuff that people would be and have been doing already. I don't think there's a version of this that isn't some kind of ethically awkward. I personally think this is better than paying people to say nice things about the game, but I get why you or anyone would be uncomfortable with it to some degree.
As to the issues people are feeling about Larian asking for more when they've given so little in terms of communication, I totally get that too. Even just measuring against my experience with other games, Larian has been very tight-lipped, and I don't for a minute believe they had to be. I don't know how much communication would have been ideal, but again, other devs have maintained a greater degree of communication and don't seem worse off for it. I've never been someone who personally expected a lot, but seeing people who are intelligent and enthusiastic about the game getting more and more frustrated and disheartened has been a sad experience, and I feel for them. And I totally get why this would feel like adding insult to injury.
