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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."
I'd normally be skeptical of any game publisher for doing something like this, but none of the sites mentioned recieved official review copies of Alone In The Dark, which means they're all pirated. I'd say Atari's justified in that regard alone, not to mention AITD has recieved incredible press thus far (the tech demos alone are worth watching). I'd hate for a good game to sell poorly due to bad or no coverage... but I guess the opposite is also true.
God I love Slashdot's fluid moral code.
Do people tell you that you turn into a humorless prick when drinking?