The Rock Band 3 setlist was officially confirmed this week, which is nice. A number of outlets have posted the news, including sites like Platform Nation, PlayStation LifeStyle, and CVG. Another thing sites like Platform Nation, PlayStation LifeStyle and CVG have done is copy and paste the setlist without really looking at it.

Have a look at any one of those three links. Go on, have a look. Notice anything? Maybe some punctuation that doesn’t quite belong? Yep, that’s right: some of the songs have been annotated with an asterisk - that’s a * for those of you not up on the lingo - but those asterisks don’t seem to correlate to anything in the article. So what could they mean?

A simple Google search revealed the answer… on Gibson.com, of all places. Y’see, there’s a footnote in the email Harmonix’ PR team sent out that says:

*Songs also available on Rock Band 3 for Nintendo DS

P*N, PSLS and CVG copy-pasted the setlist (in fact it looks like PSLS flat out stole theirs from CVG) but neglected to copy that footnote, which means that their articles are riddled with asterisks. Any reader who spots those asterisks and wonders what the Hell they mean… well, they’re not going to find out. Not if CVG, PSLS or P*N are their main news sources.

Listen, kids - if you’re going to heartlessly, shamelessly copy-paste from press emails that get sent out, you can at least do it properly. Sheesh.