Eidos Accused Of Review Score Tampering Again, Denies It
Author: Rees | Date: July 10, 2009
Think way, way back to the good old days of December 2007, and you may just remember a little bit of controversy surrounding the game Kane & Lynch. Well, I say a little, but as GameSpot’s head reviews guy got sacked under mysterious circumstances for giving the game a bad review, then Eidos put up a site implying that the game had been given 5 stars all round, I think it was maybe a little more than that.
So it’s not really surprising that people weren’t willing to give them the benefit of the doubt this time around, when allegations surfaced that the company was, once again, trying to fiddle review scores for a new game release. I’ll let original source The RAM Raider explain it in his own words:
“Several mags have their review code already, but have to sit on their reviews until a hateful embargo expires at the end of the month. But Eidos, ever the helpful fellows that they are, have been offering a way around this embargo. If you dedicate the cover of your mag to Arkham Asylum and guarantee a score of at least 90%, Eidos will allow you to run the review early.”
We’ve been following Arkham Asylum quite closely and it seems like an excellent game, so I’m not entirely sure why they’d try to pull a stunt like this again and potentially ruin another big product launch. To their credit Eidos have refuted the claims, with their Head of UK Marketing John Brooke responding to popular gaming site Kotaku with this statement:
“…no discussions have been held about review scores with any magazines. In short there is simply not one shred of truth in this article, except for the title of the game.”
And so the plot thickens. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if any gaming magazines mysteriously meet the criteria and release their 90% reviews early, with front cover features in tact, or if this is all just a publicity stunt by a crazed internet blogger.
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I will hopefully have my hands on this game before the release date and I certainly won’t be holding anything back if it turns out to be poor, especially after this additional wait.
That being said I was left with nothing but good impressions after my hands-on experience earlier in the year so I can’t imagine why it will be anything but great.
Kane & Lynch was a horrible experience and one I wish I could erase from my memory. I bombarded my Xbox Live friends list with a message declaring how terrible the game was!
This, on the other hand, is shaping up to be solid gold so I don’t expect to be anything but pleased….but we shall see.
Thing is, it’s an easy bit of bullshit to flood the Internet with, if you think about it for a moment, this is a huge game we’re talking about and I fully expect it to be plastered all over the front covers of magazines regardless of its quality. Now, after this rumour, many people will see it on front covers of magazines and jump to a conspiracy-related conclusion.
Indeed, in fact this whole conspiracy faded into obscurity just as quickly as it appeared. Where are the outraged magazine editors coming out in their droves to voice their disgust at Eidos? Where are the screenshots of the emails, the recordings of the phone calls, the scans of the letters… anything that would give this story any credibility?
I think we should start making up our own games industry rumours. We’ll be famous!
Sounds like a plan!
I’ll start!
Nintendo’s next console will be on par with their NES as far as graphics, sound, and memory are concerned but a friend of a friend of an acquaintance assures me that their sister’s hair stylist overheard Reggie telling his gran that the controller, which will be shaped like a Porcupine, will change gaming forever!
The PS4 will actually interface directly with the human brain. Sony won’t announce it until very late on in the development cycle, (shortly after Nintendo announce the very same feature for their next console in fact), and developers will never use it for anything useful anyway.
Also, in the Xbox 720 the “red ring of death” will be totally eliminated. It’ll be a purple triangle instead.