A few different website have voiced their concern over a growing trend in publishers issuing embargo dates and times that are after the game being reviewed is already released. The latest offender is Assassin's Creed Unity which had an embargo time of noon (EST), a solid 12 hours after the game was released in North America.
Some of the sites bringing attention to this issue are Polygon, Giant Bomb, and Kotaku to name a few.
Kotaku is going the extra mile with their disapproval of this practice and have revealed that they will no longer accept post-release review embargoes tied to review copies.
The biggest concern here is the fact that due to these embargoes, reviewers are unable to tell their viewers about any issues with a game that may hinder the enjoyment of the game. Case in point, Unity is absolutely full of bugs, terrible performance, and gameplay jank that wasn't allowed to be talked about until 12 hours following its release had already passed.
Media Outlets Angry Over Post-Release Embargo for Assassin's Creed Unity
Collapse
- Created by: Shawn Zipay
- Published: 11-11-2014, 04:03 PM
- 4 comments
X
Collapse
-
Media Outlets Angry Over Post-Release Embargo for Assassin's Creed Unity
Posting comments is disabled for guests. Login or sign up to leave a comment.
Recommended
Collapse
Popular Tags
Collapse
- activision (417)
- apple (888)
- bethesda (435)
- dice (495)
- dlc (471)
- e3 (722)
- ea (1060)
- free (376)
- microsoft (4348)
- mmo (391)
- mobile (538)
- multi (6813)
- nintendo (776)
- nintendo switch (643)
- pc (8154)
- playstation 4 (2923)
- playstation 5 (670)
- rpg (693)
- sony (4802)
- square enix (688)
- steam (1950)
- ubisoft (491)
- valve (740)
- xbox one (2473)
- xbox series x (564)
"Early" reviews from some outlets are typically due to an agreement made between the publisher and the outlet ahead of time. Now, whether or not those have stipulations about how they must score a game higher than x out of y, or if money exchanges hands behind closed doors, I honestly do not know.
Other "early" reviews can come from media outlets that were not provided a review copy ahead of time but instead bought the game. I mean, you can't really stop someone from reviewing a game early that they purchased with their own money from a store that sold the game ahead of schedule. Which is why these launch day or post-launch review embargoes are absolute nonsense.
It might not even be because there seems to be a few issues with the game at the moment, this is probably just a businessman decision someone made regardless of the game's quality.
Whatever the decisions behind it, it shows zero trust from Ubi towards its community including reviewers.
I thought publishers have ways to shut down an article due to breaking embargoes, but I now know this isn't the case. It's more of a threat that they won't offer anymore games, events, or other opportunities, which damages your business as a result of not honoring the embargo after receiving anything to report on for the publisher's product/service.