Hsu: New Vegas Review Pulled Due to Pressure, Bethesda Denies - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 21 October 2010 / 10,816 Views
It's no secret that the nature of game journalism forces outlets to rely more on developers and publishers than they should. Information bottlenecks compel news organizations to stay in the good graces of the people in control of information, lest they lose their exclusive access, advertising, or review copies.
Sometimes that close proximity between news makers and news reporters can go wrong. Remember the firing of Jeff Gerstmann, who was allegedly fired for giving a negative review to Kane & Lynch, despite reports from GameSpot denying the allegations.
A new controversy may have emerged regarding the recent release of Fallout: New Vegas and its subsequent review coverage. According to Bitmob Co-Founder Dan Hsu via his Twitter feed, at least one site pulled down an unfavorable review of New Vegas, allegedly due to pressure from Bethesda, publisher of the title.
Hsu would not reveal his two sources nor the publication in question due to fears of repercussions to the sources in question.
According to Hsu, Bethesda has since categorically denied the allegations. You can check out his feed here, or check out the important tweets regarding the issue below.
If some more people start talking, this could turn into quite the story. Stay tuned to gamrFeed for any updates.
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So, what was the site that is purportedly behind what bitmobshoe references, has anyone ever figured that out? I know bitmobshoe kept saying he cannot reveal the source, but seriously, if revealed, it says more about Bethesda than it does about the gaming site, when Bethesda knows that Obsidian is still crappy with QA on their games, just as they were when they were Black Isle Studios.
I'm about 10 hours into the game, and it is NO Fallout 3...Oblivion has really falling off the respect meter for me, first with Alpha Protocol, and now this game. Don't get me wrong, I liked Alpha Protocol, and thought they did some cool stuff, and I'm liking F:NV so far, but they are both totally unpolished games, with glitches all over the place. For F:NV, this is even more pronounced, since it's only a gloried expansion, and probably should have been priced at $49.99.
@pariz Independent journalism does exist. You're at one site that strives for it.
No matter what the possible incentives thrown our way, we would never condone a biased review and have striven for unbiased news coverage.
If anyone is actually still surprised by this, I have a really nice bridge to sell...
We all should now at this time and age that independent journalism does not exist.
Who's surprised?
Also the review copies sent out to game reviewers need some sort of advanced DRM which tells the publisher, developer and reviewer they are contracted with just how much they have played.
If they have not played more than halfway through the game, as measured by main quest completion, then their review should be rejected outright.
This way if you have a set of reviewers who consistently only play the game less than halfway through before reviewing, the industry will know who these people are and inform them of their lack of journalistic standards. If they continue this behavior of playing the game just a few hours before reviewing then blackball them out of game reviewing altogether.
You know what really grinds my axe? Inconsistency from gaming sites such as IGN and Gamespot.
When Far Cry 2 was released, IGN gave it an 8.8/10. I bought Far Cry 2 a week after it's release. My first 3 play throughs all came to the same conclusion, corrupted save file, making me have to restart an entire new game each time it occurred. This was game breaking and should have been shown in the review.
Then again, how do we know with 100% accuracy that these game reviewers play the game through once instead of spending 8 hours playing it then typing up the review?
Second, many PC gamers complained of game breaking bugs and glitches with the PC version of Grand Theft Auto 4, yet Gamespot gives the PC version a 9/10?!?
Total lack of consistency. Ways to establish consistency:
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Have a consistent review format outlining how much bugs and glitches detract from the overall score.
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Review games as new games in of themselves. Don't review them with a hindsight look to their predecessor and detract because they did not live up to you, as the reviewer's expectations of what the predecessor should have had or did better.
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Have one to three editors reviewing the big games to establish consistency. Farming the big titles out to no names who may not like the series, are a fan of the series, or have never played a game in the series just leads to inconsistency.
Did I miss any criteria?
I am loving the game so far (PS3 version). I am only 4-5 hour in
unless they got the game very early, they hardly played it. im 24 hours in, and its great so far.
i'd like to see the review, but sounds to me it was a low score like a 3/10 which is obvious crap.
its like fallout 3, with lots more quests, more open ground, more choices, more guns, more survival feeling.
hardcore mode is crazy, don't starve or you die.
Bet it was given a poor review score because it looks like it uses all the same assets that Fallout 3 used...? Still fun!
... but really just more Fallout 3. Sigh, game journalism.
Really sad if turns to be truth (Which I could believe, game industry is ran by a lot of idiots nowdays)... I really liked fallout 3... ;_;
