Slashdot Mirror
Atari Tries To Supress Bad Reviews, Claims Piracy
im_thatoneguy sends in an account up at Shacknews about Atari's actions to get early reviews of its upcoming game Alone In the Dark pulled from Web sites in Europe. Atari sued the German site 4Players, alleging piracy, and also cancelled an advertising deal on the site, after a pre-release review gave the game only 68%. 4Players posted a commentary (translation) alleging that Atari is doing this bcause the review is unfavorable. Shacknews reports that Atari has also demanded that both Gamer.no and GameReactor remove early reviews — both reviews gave the game a score of 3/10. Kotaku editorializes: "[Does Atari] fear that, because these outlets may have received copies of the game 'early' (i.e. from pirated copies), that they're somehow reviewing incomplete code, which could affect their opinion of the game? Maybe. Pessimists could, however, be forgiven for thinking it's a convenient excuse for Atari to attack negative reviews of the only game they're releasing in 2008 that has any chance of making them some money."
If they have improved the game from the earlier 'privacy' version then i am sure all these sites would be willing to re-consider their reviews based on the new game play.
What Atari fears is that the earlier review was the 'final' version of the game and these reviews may harm purchase from people who may accidentally buy the game thinking it to be better than it is.
... once again. Before I read this I didn't know about "Alone in the Dark". I guess their strategy worked
This is Atari speaking. This game is the best game you ever didn't play. You WILL believe this, because we at Atari believe that as opposed to good coding and game design, intimidating reviewers is the best way to make a great game.
I keep bending the 'stick to the left hard and stupid Harry doesn't run faster :(
Kotaku article has an update:
Gamer.no was the second publication in the world to publish a review, and we also gave it 3 out of 10. The review was based on a retail copy obtained from a store on Tuesday this week. Atari contacted us just minutes after it was published, claiming that our review is probably based on a preview or pirated copy, and requested it to be removed. We never removed it, of course.Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So I guess no one has learned from the wise ways of Penny Arcade's ad campaign.
On another note, if you get a bad review, you should take it. Crying like a baby only emphasizes the ratings. You may get sales from a small fraction of people who play it to verify that it sucks, but sooner or later all the review sites will say the game sucks and it will only make the situation worse. The whole "bad publicity is good publicity" paradigm is long dead in this age of gamers.
Then again, since Atari isn't _Atari_ anymore, and just a boilerplate, I don't feel like I ought to be defending them so much.
> but none of the sites mentioned recieved official review copies of Alone In The Dark, which means they're all pirated
You lie.
And your logic is super fail.
When will these gaming companies (and others) learn that this isn't the 80's anymore. This news spreads like wildfire and makes them look really bad. Its a much better idea to try to promote positive news instead of repressing and pretty obviously trying to force a lack of journalistic integrity.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
In the UK, if you get 68% in your final year exams at university you get an upper second class degree, and might be able to talk your way up to a first. So 68% is a masters/PhD candidates mark at most places.
Game ratings are ludicrous in that they use perhaps the top 40% of the scale. Not since the days of Amiga Power have I seen a dire game get a single digit % score.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
In all my swashbuckling years (gone by, that is - I've since grown up and can actually afford to buy my games), I've only ever played 2 games where the pirated version's gameplay is actually different from the retail one - Postal (might have been postal 2, actually) and Red Alert 2. Oddly enough, both games had the same "different" gameplay in that certain pirated/cracked versions would work for about 30seconds and then everything on screen would explode and/or die.
Oh how I laughed.
Anyway, the point is that I very much doubt any pirated versions are different from the retail version of the game and Atari is just trying to stir up shit for publicity's sake - and good luck to them, but I still doubt there is actually a difference between the two (unless in-your-face-DRM counts as gameplay these days).
But for the sake of a good conversation, what other "different" anti-piracy schemes have you all come across in games, such as the above mentioned "kill everything after 30s" technique?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
The details of the story are:
Because of AitD previews, Atari pulled already paid for ad campaigns. Requests for testing versions were completely ignored.
Literally minutes after the reviews were online, Atari lawyers demanded that 4Players.de pulls the reviews, claiming they were "not actual objective product tests" (product tests as in refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, not something like games that can't objectively tested and which therefore do not fall under regulations regarding product tests). Also, because 4P tested based on the retail version before the street date, they alleged that 4P had downloaded the game illegally (they bought it early from a retailer they have contacts with). They allege that 4P just wanted "first review!" (ignoring that print magazines had even earlier reviews). The lawyers set the value of the case at 50,000 Euro.
Later, they tried the same to 2 Norwegian online mags, Gamer.no and Gamereactor.no, with the same results, namely none.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Actually we know that Atari did NOT go after a couple of reviews that gave a decent score. Just RTFA at shacknews.
And the 'pirated version' angle is just some claptrap justification they're using, this really just is about stopping the low-score reviews from helping people stay clear of this, I gather, turkey of a game.
By the way, by saying it's pirated, aren't they saying that their snazzy SecuROM Activation Scheme is a total bust?
This is surprising. Maybe I'll have to start learning German if I want to get honest game reviews now. I have a feeling the North American game reviewers will probably be a lot more accommodating to Atari's threats.
I recall the same thing happened with Anarchy online. They released the game for sale but then told reviewers to hold off on their reviews because the game wasn't actually 'final'. Sure enough, reviewers didn't do their job and waited around till the Anarchy folks actually felt their game was 'ready'. This all boils down to game companies not wanting to be accountable for their lousy work. Really if you're going to be spending millions and millions of dollars on a game, you should at the very least make sure it's actually worth playing.
I have nothing compelling to say
This one looks quite nice too.
Or some store simply sold it too them before the official release date.
Surely The Wither was released in 2007? Though we're still waiting for the 'enhanced edition'
Belief is the currency of delusion.
You spelled because wrong in the summary.
if the german game bussines plays in the same league than the america's one, that reviews can be caused by
a) the game sucks.
b) atari refuses to pay to obtain that relaxes critics that some crappy games get by big editorials.
It would be interesting when the game get finally published...
Alone in the Dark was out LONG before Atari started making trouble...
What is this game about - the same thing as the original previous version and it's offshoots? It sounds and from screen shots it looks like a rip off of the originals....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_in_the_Dark_(video_game)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_in_the_Dark:_The_New_Nightmare
Shut the fuck up Atari - go steal another game! I OWN Alone in the Dark and Alone in the Dark the New Nightmare. I sure as hell won't buy your RIP OFF!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
What a bone-headed thing to do. Like the other thread a bit earlier about google-bombing McCain, trying to suppress information rarely works, and often backfires.
I'm tired of such retards.
I'm adding Atari to the Lifetime Boycott list, right next to SONY.
It's actually the fifth in the series. Check the wikipedia before slamming it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_in_the_Dark_%282008_video_game%29
from "pew pew pew!" to "p.u. p.u. p.u.!" .... awful. sorry.
Seriously, you'd think that they'd use the opportunity to get people involved and improve their releases rather that trying to shut the door on their customers.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Atari still makes games?
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
And I didn't receive any review copies of any of the games I have in my house, which can only mean I must be a wretched pirate too! Arrr!!!
Arr, wait: I actually bought those games. You know, in shops. With money. Maybe the review sites did the same thing?
Hey! I just finished translating the whole article ;_;
Since it reveals some things about the magazine's attitude as well, I publish it here anyway:
(Note that I didn't proof-read it)
Atari really tries everything to obfuscate our reports: First they ignored our questions about Alone in the Dark in its early stages of development, then they canceled an already arranged advertising deal after our preview, then they didn't provide us with samples of the test version even though we asked, and now they're even getting out their lawyers and want to instill fear in us with a 50,000 Euro lawsuit. What's next? Activating firecrackers in our offices? Throwing soccer-balls at the editors' wives?
It's getting more and more ridiculous. The fact that publishers like to interfere with the freedom of the press has been demonstrated by JoWooD in 2006 in a most demonstrating way in the case of Gothic 3: They wanted us to take our report offline after a threatening call, and the magazine PC PowerPlay was to vanish from newspaper stands. Both magazines resisted and have in doing so strengthened the Culture of Criticism of the German press landscape.
Atari is now demonstrating that publishers tend to lose their nerves when their games receive unfavorable reviews. And now, with their specious accusations of laughableness, they're [making it worse]. [Here's the order of events:] Yesterday afternoon, we published our review of Alone in the Dark. The game got 68% and therefore got a satisfactory rating. Yesterday evening, we got a facsimile from Atari's lawyers, extracts of which we can't help but share with you. If Germany shouldn't be able to laugh about anything anymore after tonight's match with Portugal, check this out:
'By publishing this "review" (original: "test") you are violating applicable laws and infringing upon Atari's rights.'
Hello? Are we in China now? Or in Iran? Here I had to gag on this as a journalist because Atari with its sloppy dubs against the rights of German listeners - Are they now allowed to sue for damages because they are avoiding paying for professional voice actors but still want the full price for a game with amateurish voice acting?
And now the quintessence of the ridiculous accusations:
'Your "review" isn't. The game is to be published on June 20, 2008. Your "review" must therefore be based on the pre-release version that was only to be used for preliminary commentatorship.'
So is it the job of lawyers and publishers now, to determine what constitutes a "review"? The fact that some printed magazines didn't use the pre-release version either for their test, because their articles were published much earlier than ours, doesn't appear to concern Atari. Because it is quite common now that printed reviews aren't always based on the final versions of a game - See Gothic 3.
Just too bad that we actually reviewed the final version. Atari's thinks (in surprising ignorance about distribution channels), that we can't even have the offical final releases - because Atari, as a precaution, didn't even send us those, even though we asked for them. However, we're used to such methods after years of reviewing and bought the final versions for the Wii, PS2, Xbox 360, and PC already on Monday at a retailer that we trust, who gets almost all games a couple days before their official release date.
Instead of thinking about that, Atari speculated freely about how we could have managed to get ahold of the game, and accuses us of criminal activities:
'The only possible explanation is that your "review" is based on an illegally downloaded version.'
That isn't just extremely naive, that's insolent. But let's go on:
'At the same time you're ignoring standards that usually apply to product reviews. Because product reviews have to be based on objective and informed analyses.'
And "informed" is probably everything that gives a rating of more than 80%, right? And "objective" begins at 85%? Just for the lawyer who wrote this outrag
I didn't know Atari was still in business.
-- haaz.
I don't care if the reviews were giving it a perfect score, I was giving this one a pass anyway. It has even more restrictive install limits than Mass Effect - you can only install it on a single PC at a time so I can't have it on my desktop and laptop for example. I don't mind the online activation, but I refuse to buy any software that limits the number of installations. http://www.aitdunlock.com/
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
...and I think it's pretty true to the movie it's based on. I know the movie is not what the gme is (spposed to be) based on, but feeling-wise it does fit.
I can also see where the game is annoying - sometimes you go quite long distances without healing items so you might end up in a battle where you die if anything hurts you just a little bit - and if you don't want to do the battle twenty times over you have to either replay the previous part of the game or skip to the next scene.
Also, it feels badly tested; for example, if during a cutscene the camera is away from your body and passes by items on the ground the game will offer you to pick them up. Also, sometimes the game doesn't make much sense; for example, during the car escape scene there are cars parked in the middle of the street with no fleeing people around that might explain them. Getting to the car is convoluted in itself.
The game does have potential for being unintentionally funny, though. In one cutscene a homing smoking crack in the floor races towards the player. Once, the (heavily injured) player stood on a burning item when the cutscene was triggered; when the camera came back to the player he was already lying on the ground, burning. The game's deadpan delivery of this made the scene exceptionally funny.
Overall, it's a nice game but definitely not great. I can understand why Atari doesn't get rave reviews although I do think 3/10 is a bit low. I'd place it more around a 6.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Obviously not! Its silly to even ask.
But it's still not available for the 2600. Shame on you, Atari! :)
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Here in the US, 70% is the minimum passing grade. Go figure.
Okay, I am not claimining that Atari would do the same if they had gotten 9/10 so they might be assholes because of *that* but let's face the facts, shall we?
If there are a lot of large websites whose owners have pirated copies and write about the games on their websites, announcing the whole wide world of gamers "It has leaked and can be pirated already!", Atari is well within their rights to say "You guys just broke the law. And announced it on your websites. Stop it." and actually they are nice not to press legal charges which they well could and have enough evidence.
I am not saying that that is necessarily the real reason or that it helps at all for this case (by now, the damage has happened) but it might help in future cases. Really, I think that this is not only within their rights but a good thing to do. I don't claim I wouldn't pirate at all (though haven't done that in a year or so) but honestly, those who break the law and announce it on their websites should face consequences. If the only consequence is to that "Remove the review and we won't press any charges", Atari is going easy on them.
Otherwise they would be telling everyone "Piracy is so acceptable that you can announce to thousands of people publicly that you do it and tell what exactly you have pirated and it is still okay!".
I think that Atari might also have been pressed by some game reviewing magazines. If they have promised exclusive right to certain magazines to get their copy and early review, all the websites reviewing it isn't exactly good.
So while this *might* not have happened if the ratings were 9/10, I think that this isn't exactly "Censorship" and was the right thing to do.
might want to wait at least 2 years before saying you pirated something. the statute of limitations on copyright infringement is 3 years, and I would assume slashdot keeps reocords of who the ACs are, along with IPs logged in with, etc.We're not speaking of another states inside the "full of trigger happy lawyers" USA.
Here around it's much harder to sue everybody for any random trivial detail.
That *does* mean that trolls like Atari will hardly have a case for such a story in Europe.
But that also means that it'll be harder to counter sue on the grounds that Atari is attacking without a sound reason.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I don't know who said that originally, but it's a load of horseshit. Let's say you were a struggling actor trying to get your name out there, then you were falsely accused of child molestation. Let's say that you were then completely exonerated, received damages, public apology etc. Would you then say that you got a lot of free publicity, therefore it's good? And make no mistake, it's not free. You'd pay for it for a long, long time. Your career is still finished, because you're radioactive as far as the industry is concerned. The general public are morons willing to believe the worst about people, and as far as they're concerned, the mere fact that the accusation was brought is enough for them. It doesn't help that there are publicity whores like Nancy Grace convicting people on CNN. Sure you heard about Alone in the Dark when you might not have before, but how do you think most people will feel about Atari as a company now, regardless of the facts? I don't know the facts of the case, but I do know that even if Atari are vindicated, they've already lost in the court of public opinion. Their PR people have a huge headache to deal with right now.
If you venture into anything Uwe Boll has had his hands on at some point, you're doomed from the start. It got to Atari, now that company should be purged by flame to limit further contamination.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
On a tangent, refusing advance reviews and litigious behaviour towards the press attempting to produce prerelease reviews can mean only one thing. The game stinks on ice and Atari know it.
What really surprises me is that Atari have done anything whatsoever to draw attention to these reviews....perhaps one of the marketing team has misunderstood the phrase "no publicity is bad publicity" (i.e. don't be forgotten) to mean all publicity is good...
--
Funny how Joerg Luibl can say "Fuck off" then accuse Atari of being unprofessional. He seems to be trolling for trouble as much as Atari is willing to give.
are you so dumb and stupid enough to think that you can suppress bad reviews on the internet ? havent you been able to conclude that just because of the shit you pulled, there will be blog postings of that reviews all over the internet ? internet is 'the people'. and people dont like being gagged or repressed.
have fun drooling in the failure that is your new game, brought upon you by your own stupidity.
Read radical news here
LOL, now THAT was some funyn stuff.
JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
I remember playing it in 1993. Quite a fun little adventure.
Not sure why they're kicking up such a stink about it now. Better late than never I suppose.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Reviews these days are what fanboys rely on. If PS3 Game A gets bad reviews, 360 fanboys go wild and say it's the worst game ever and continue their rant about how "PS3 has no games" and how "Halo 3 is the best game ever"
PS3 games are usually nitpicked on. Gamespot's review for the new Ratchet and Clank game marked it down for "too much variety"
Anyhow this isn't about PS3 game reviews. Sorry, ranting on like I always do. Um... Rockstar threatened to blacklist review sites if they didn't give GTAIV a perfect score. Apparently MS pays to have their reviews be good. And I'm not so sure about the other two, but PS3 exclusives always get marked down for stupid things.
I'm not surprised Atari isn't doing this either. Maybe they're worried about the gameplay of SC4. I personally think they focused more on the character models(Have you seen the boobs in the game?!) than gameplay...
Also Kojima Productions put a sensor on reviews, but I think that was just to get rid of spoilers.
...too bad Atari couldn't figure out the "blame someone else" for their lousy product 25 years ago. It might have saved them from bankruptcy after the horrendous Atari 2600 versions of E.T. and Pac-Man nearly destroyed the company... I guess even after all these years, they still haven't learned that good products, not excuses, are the key to success!
And yet at Voodoo Extreme their review is OK (i.e. not quite as negative as the others, somewhat favourable in places) and is currently still available here http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39397/Alone-In-The-Dark-Review
I remember playing Alone in The Dark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_in_the_Dark_(video_game)) on my old Tandy.... It sucked then too!
Make America grate again!
So while this *might* not have happened if the ratings were 9/10, I think that this isn't exactly "Censorship" and was the right thing to do.
I guess you missed the part of the article where they say they bought the copy from the store, with their own money. See, sometimes stores sell games early, to get all the sales before the 'official' release date. Atari might have an issue with the store, but the only issue they have with the review is that it is bad.
Well, he is the editor in chief of an online magazine that reviews pirated games, so what do you expect?
Joking aside, remember that the post you replied to is an unofficial translation. Presumably the phrase Ihr könnt uns mal does mean something similar to the English "fuck off", but there may be subtler nuances that make it much less offensive or improper.
Here's a few automatic translations:
You can do us times You can do us sometimes You can us onceAn online dictionary doesn't know what "könnt" is (though I could take a guess based on the sound of it).
The others have the expected meaning. Ihr - you. uns - us. mal has a few related definitions:
Anyway, of course they're trolling Atari - that's what you're supposed to do when you receive "legal" threats that have no basis in reality. The goal is to see if you can get even more outrageous behaviour out of them. Just make sure you're right before you start, though!
"Your Honour, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk...."
Actually made a decent game instead of peddling crap to the masses?
Whats the point of reviews if they can't seperate the good from the bad.
At this rate Atari will be the ones who are alone in the dark. Lame.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
Whoooops. Headline should be spelled *suppressed*. I wrote that way tooo late last night.
The complaints seem to mainly be about the controls. As a PC gamer, maybe I'll have a much better experience?
Property is theft.
It has the same meaning as "fuck off", but the "fuck" part is sort of omitted - there are variants that specify exactly what the other party can do. Maybe it is closer to "bite me".
I have a feeling Edge always rated games on a scale of 1 to 10 (but it's been years since I read issue 1) so I suspect you are thinking of another magazine. I can't see Bubsy3D in the table of Edge reviews either...
A friend told me that a version of Spyro the Dragon had an excellent system in place if it detected you playing a pirated version. Apparently various key items would not be available (making the game unfinishable) but you wouldn't be aware of this until you had played quite a way into the game. There's a Gamasutra article talking about the steps Insomniac took to try and make life more difficult for pirates.
Yeah, but in US colleges you get 65% for writing your name without drooling on the paper.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
They allege that 4P just wanted "first review!" (ignoring that print magazines had even earlier reviews).
How did these "print magazines" manage an earlier review without pirating? If they had been sent a "review" copy by Atari then those copies may well have been gifts, which the magazines were free to dispose of in any way they saw fit. Including passing them to the likes of 4P.
Game review sites/magazines these days are sponsored by the very companies producing the games they review... They rely on those companies to provide review copies (review items often differ from the actual item on sale), and rely on their advertising to keep their publications afloat. And if they become popular, they pressure games companies by threatening them with poor reviews if they don't get their freebies and advertising revenue. It all makes a very poor environment for creating unbiased reviews.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
...Started re-using old titles for new, mostly-unrelated games? This annoyed me with Prince of Persia last(?) year as well.
I can accept sequels as a fact of life, but Alone in the Dark came out in 1992. Like PoP, it too had a number of sequels (at least two) and numerous console ports, and (unlike PoP) even a movie.
C'mon, Atari - Whether or not the game sucks, can you perhaps come up with a new name? Or failing that, can you at least stick a new number on it to avoid confusion?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_in_the_Dark_(video_game)
I remember playing it on my 3DO and loved it.. maybe i was the only one
Afaik, it's an abbreviated form of "lick my ass".
("Ihr koennt uns mal am Arsch lecken")
A lot of this seems to come down too Atari never sending him an authorized copy so therefor they assume he reviewed a pirated game. So what? Why this would even be actionable is beside my point. The reviewer says he established a trusted relationship at a POS who sells him retail versions of games prior to release dates. K, fine.
I'm not a game(er) but I went to their activation web page. The US version won't activate until at least tomorrow. Where's the discussion about activation? If he bought a shrink wrap retail version how did he get it activated prior to the release date? If it was activated, how can Atari claim it was unauthorized? It was either activated and therefor authorized by Atari or the reviewer really did pirate his copy. With that said, why it would even matter is still beyond me.
Maybe German law is different than US (IANAL) but I figure he can review any version of the game he wants too. It's just an opinion of what he saw. Besides, this close to the release date even if it wasn't the "final" version they're not going to make substantial changes anyway. The reviewer has either established trust that his opinion matters or he hasn't. That comes from reading his reviews and matching them to personal experience over time.
YMMV
...the PC port of Resident Evil 4. People claimed the port was not horribly done because the reviewers had pirated versions, where it was incomplete. Of course, upon release it turned out to be an abomination.
Sure it's not EXACTLY the same.. Capcom didn't take down the bad reviews or anything like that. That and, Resident Evil 4 is actually a good game and people only complained about the port job, while in this case the gameplay itself is horrible.
This article somehow managed to misspell "Infogrames" as A-T-A-R-I, every single time.
Also, "Infogames" seems to have an erroneous 'R' in the middle of it.
At least this story has had the effect of informing me Atari still exists and is trying to publish games... bad reviews or not, I say, "who the hell is Atari, anyways?" It's not like I was going to buy their silly game anyways... I was burned by E.T. back in the 80s, and I learned my lesson...
The code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.
I was trying to say "I don't think it was Edge that reviewed Bubsy3D because Edge gives integer marks from 1-10 and the mark you mentioned for Bubsy3D was a percentage".
I wasn't saying that the average (median, mode etc) would be 5 or that the full spectrum of the scale from 1-10 was fully utilised according to some distribution curve. At times it seemed like the magazine was biased to only writing reviews for popular games (and it was years before they gave their first ever 10 for Gran Turismo). Edge has never tried to review every last game for every system released in a given month (e.g. Bubsy3D) but instead used to focus higher profile games (or ones that drew attention/acclaim).
I understand Atari's concern if the reviews were truly based on pirated games, but some sites have retail versions and are still giving low scores. In that instance, Atari just looks like a bully, trying to twist arms and force out reviews they don't like simply to promote a game which they need to do well to keep the company afloat.