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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
> 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.
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.
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.
Granted, I don't approve of online activation of this type at all. But that really is exceedingly ridiculous.
And, hilariously, the only way those sites managed to review the game early, was because Atari turned on the activation servers. Way to use that DRM you paid good money for to prevent early leaks, Atari.
Ok, so I wasn't the only one wondering.
Back in the days (the good ol' ones, a few of you might remember if Alzheimer didn't get you yet) there were basically five categories for games.
The 90-100 games which were absolutely awesome. That's a grade a handpicked few got. Getting a 91 already meant that you made it. You created a game that will be remembered a decade from now. Every year, about 20 or so games got to this lofty realm of divinity.
Then there were the 60-90 games. They were good. Really good! The kind that's worth its money. If you were at least halfway into the genre, you had to have them.
Then there was that area of about 40-60. They were ... well, half baked, usually. Quite ok, but nothing to write home about. If you're into the genre really badly and if that really was your thing, you could buy them, but it was anything but a must-have.
After that it got rather ugly. 20-40 was reserved for games that were quite bad. Even if you're into the genre, you might want to wait until it's in the bargain bin. And even then, you might want to avoid them lest you start to hate what you used to love.
And then there was the rest, the kind of games you don't even want to hear about, where paying you to play them would have been an insult because of the time wasted. 0-20. Usually, about 1-2 games per magazine got that review, just to show that yes, there ARE games this bad and companies DO actually try to sell them. They were more a comic relief than a review, usually, and the writers also got quite creative describing them. Often, those reviews were more interesting and witty than a lot of the "average" ones.
This all changed somewhere between the 80s and today. Today, the reviews are usually in the 90-100 range if the game is at least halfway playable and grants you more than an hour of fun. Go to your average review page and check for yourself. How many games hit that formerly so lofty grounds? 20? 30? Of the 50 reviewed?
A review of 70 is already bad. A review of 60 a disaster. Anything lower than that probably mean that it won't even install without an error.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
His mod is incredibly well done. It's the only single-player mod I've ever played through twice.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
They also censored reviews from mentioning the mandatory installs. Not just one, but one per act and they take a while to install. While MGS4 is an epic game, and well worth the purchase, it is frankly weird it has a mandatory install and clearly someone in Konami was paranoid enough to make early reviewers sign NDAs about it amongst other things.
I do believe PS3 games do get picked on but frankly I would prefer this to be the norm across the board. I want to know the good and the bad points about a game, not some gushing PR piece. I am disgusted by the attempts to bribe reviewers or coerce them to give favourable reviews by imposing conditions on exclusives. I've played GTA IV and think its a great game, but some of the "exclusive" reviews were so unbelievably uncritical and gushing that they might as well have been written by Rockstar's PR department. The game is great in many ways but it has faults and reviews that fail to mention them are doing their readers a massive disservice.
Hype and shill reviews are poison to gaming. I understand why studios do it (to sell more games), but gamers should be disgusted by the practice. The sad thing is hype works. All we can hope for is a few more incidents like this get published. People really need to be far more skeptical and cynical to understand how the industry works. At the end of the day it's better for everyone if a little honesty gets pushed back into the system.