Eidos PR Politely Requests That Journalists Delay Poor UK Tomb Raider Review Scores

Fri, Nov 21, 2008

In a move highly reminicent of last December's "Gerstmann-gate" fiasco, sources are reporting that publisher Eidos has yet again determined that an average Metacritic review score is simply unacceptable -- and taken steps to ensure that such scores for Tomb Raider: Underworld fail to sway would-be buyers.

Wednesday, GameSpot UK journalist Guy Cocker twittered the following message from Eidos: "If you're planning on reviewing Tomb Raider Underworld at less than an 8.0, we need you to hold your review till Monday."

And in a bizarre turn of events, Eidos' external PR firm has confirmed the dubious request.

VG247 reports:

Said a Barrington Harvey rep on the phone this afternoon: “That’s right. We’re trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos.”

When asked why, the spokesperson said: “Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.”

Needless to say, this is grossly unethical -- one of the primary purposes of a game review is to keep readers from wasting their money on subpar titles -- and not that good a deal for the journalist, either, considering the game's already on store shelves.

While we shudder to think what happened to the particular Barrington Harvey rep who owned up to this practice, the firm has issued a clarification of sorts, here printed in its entirety:

Barrington Harvey is not in the position of telling reviewers what they can and cannot say. We love Tomb Raider and believe it merits a score of at least 8/10, but if someone disagrees that’s entirely their prerogative. No problem at all. Seriously: no problem.

Our original NDA stated that in order to receive an advance copy of the game, reviewers agreed not to post reviews ahead of 5:00pm, Wednesday 19th November 2008. Nothing else. No further obligations whatsoever.

As you can clearly see from the scores posted so far, Barrington Harvey has no issue with scores of below eight out of 10 being posted online. The Eurogamer review in questions caused “problems” in so much as it originally contained a couple of minor factual inaccuracies which, to its credit, the site has quickly rectified and addressed (without, quite rightly, changing the context of the review).

Any site, be it Gamespot or whoever, is entirely within their rights to post whatever score they want and no-one is under any sort of obligation to delay any review.

As an ex-journalist myself, I firmly believe in editorial integrity and the right to express an individual opinion. As an agency, we never - ever - make demands of the press in terms of awarding scores; at the end of the day, they are free to score as they wish.

Barrington Harvey has been working hard to ensure the launch scores of Tomb Raider Underworld are in line with our internal review predictions over the launch weekend - but to suggest that we can in some way “silence” reviews of the game is slightly overstating our influence.

While this would seem to smooth things over somewhat, it is important to note that Barrington Harvey is here only suggesting that they don't have enough influence to delay reviews -- not that they haven't tried or intend to stop trying from here on out. "At the end of the day, they are free to score as they wish," says Simon Byron, a director at the PR firm. It's the rest of that day that we're worried about.

While it seems that Eidos does indeed not have enough influence yet to stop sub-8 UK reviews of the game from pouring out (Eurogamer and OXM UK gave it a pair of sevens), GameCyte notes that GameSpot UK's review has yet to materialize.