'sigh' Not this again. Pretty soon, no gamer is going to trust any review anywhere.
You may remember the whole Gerstmann/Eidos/ Kane & Lynch fiasco from a few years back and although this is slightly different in nature, the same unethical business practices sit at the root of the matter. It seems that Bethesda has been trying to keep less than favorable Fallout: New Vegas reviews from hitting the Internet. This as noticed by Duck and Cover citing Dan Hsu's recent Tweets. Hsu is the former Editorial Director at 1Up and now works at Bitmob. Here are the Tweets in question:
"One site was forced to pull its Fallout Vegas review because advertiser Bethesda was unhappy w/ score. Sad this crap still goes on."
"Heard (but haven't confirmed) two more sites delaying publishing poor review scores for Fallout Vegas until Fallout ad campaign is done."
"To clarify, the site's boss pulled that review because advertiser wasn't happy, against writer's wishes."
"RT: JustinHaywald @bitmobshoe To be clear, 1UP has not published a review because both the reviewer and I felt he needed more time with the game.
"@BenKuchera I did get a 2nd, independent confirmation on this, tho. The review was pulled by CEO, then put back up when ad campaign was over."
Advertising. Reviews. Both are necessary for everyone to stay alive and healthy. Without ad campaigns, you guys get nothing. Well, you might get something but it won't come from paid professionals, that's for sure. It's all well and good to talk about integrity and decency in business but then someone says, "don't publish this for a week or two until the campaign is over…everyone will have their money by then. No big deal." We understand why sites respond.
Whatever. We're hovering at that point where we're big enough to matter but not big enough to matter to most publishers. So if we want to post a less-than-glowing review of New Vegas or any game in existence, we'll do just that. …just have to look for other ad campaigns, that's all.
Related Game(s): Fallout: New Vegas
