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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
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.
> 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?
These sites probably did base their reviews on incomplete code, and its probably the same thing being shipped to stores on CDs right now.
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.
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
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.
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...
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)
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.
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?
Unforntunately, you've just mixed a feeling with a page containing actual data. I copied the full table into a spreadsheet (copy the page source rather than the page itself, works a lot better) and found the mean score given by Edge is about 6.5, the median score is 7, and the variance is a little over 2.
Yeah, there are some 10s and a 1 in there, but the 10s are quite predictable (all had piles of reviewer-lubricating cash behind their promotion) and the one is, well, a special case.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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.
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
Doesn't calling it 'incomplete code' imply that there might some day be a complete version?
No. This is an incomplete sentence and I have absolutely no inclination to finish it at