From Shacknews:

Atari has filed suit against German gaming website 4Players for publishing a negative pre-release review of Alone in the Dark, alleging that it was written based on an illegally obtained copy of the game.

I find it interesting that a games publisher can start legal action against a gaming review site all because the game ended up being crap and the reviewer was being honest. Not only has Atari asked for the review to be pulled but they are now saying the game was pirated while 4Players are saying the review copy was purchased from a reatiler. An update to the article above has another gaming site being chased up by Atari for a negative review of Alone in The Dark.

Gamer.nl staffer Erwin Bergervoet has informed Shacknews that Atari also asked the Dutch gaming site to pull its 5/10 review of Alone in the Dark posted Thursday, a day before the game's official European street date.

This brings up a point about whether game reviews are accurate enough to base a purchasing decision off if this is the result of an honest review.. do all those 9/10 ratings we see on review sites mean the game really is that good or was it a 90% chance of not being sued that week? promoted forum item

I find it interesting that a games publisher can start legal action against a gaming review site all because the game ended up being crap and the reviewer was being honest.

What's honest about illegally acquiring something? They are getting sued beacuase they are dirty pirates.

You can trust reviews from reputable game sites like IGN and Ausgamers, because they don't do stupid s*** like pirate games and review them.

I can totally understand why they'd pirate something and review it. The lure of getting a couple extra days review time is pretty big - it can mean the difference between having the first review up and getting a lot of traffic and missing out completely.

I suspect if the reviews had higher scores they wouldn't be asking them to be pulled. Atari don't seem to get how the Internet works and have now drawn even more attention to these low scores than otherwise would have happened.

Reading the article suggest that copies were sourced legally.. both direct from Atari and purchased at a retail store.

Our review copy was sent directly to us by Atari and [was] not a pirated copy.

and

argued in its editorial that it procured a copy through a retail connection who sold them a copy

Is there another article out there which says they obtained the copies illegaly?

There is a post at the start of this thread that suggests that they may have aquired a copy of the game illegally.

hey domino
try reading the article ticman linked to
even if you just read as far as the second paragraph

It's the same tactics used by Scientology: sue people to make them cower into submission.

What phonies.

It's the same tactics used by Scientology: sue people to make them cower into submission.

What phonies.

Watch it! you might be next! *Tinfoil Hat on*

u can't sue me - i'm a lawyer. i do the suing.

Is there another article out there which says they obtained the copies illegaly?

You mean aside from the first quote in your post?

4Players argued in its editorial that it procured a copy through a retail connection who sold them a copy of Eden Games' horror shooter before the game's European June 20 street date.

I don't know if it's illegal or not to purchase a game before its official release date. But I do think that Atari has a right to sue/ask for the review to be pulled down if the game was purchased before the official release date. However...

"Within an hour [after posting], Atari called to have the review pulled off, claiming there was an embargo till Friday," Bergervoet said in a comment to Shacknews. "Our review copy was sent directly to us by Atari and [was] not a pirated copy. They explicitly told [Gamer.nl] that they only let high scoring reviews break the post-release embargo date."

this is completely bulls*** and Atari is being a complete dick about the whole thing.

last edited by sif greazy at 10:46:44 23/Jun/08

How stupid.

Atari shouldn't sue them and request that the review be pulled down unless it was a pirated pre-release beta, that had major flaws in it the final product didn't. Other wise, what the guy wrote is 100% correct for a review. They could sue him for piracy how ever, but they'd have to live with the review either way.

I used to like Atari, they usually publish decent games. I'll be passing on this though. It's similar to the way that no one was allowed to talk about MGS4 having huge cutscenes in previews of the game (part of the NDA they signed to be able to preview the game).

This will go down in history as well as the gamespot kane and lynch review (think it was kane and lynch). Where the reviewer bagged the game to pieces (by all reports an average game), and was later fired over it, because the site was riddled with kane & lynch ads.

Reviewing, srs biznez.

Well, at least everyone now knows that it got 5/10...

Way to go Atari

And not just from one review site, looks like scores of 3/10 - 6/10 are where the game is gonna rest.

I also loved how atari told one site "we only allow high scoring reviews pre-release date".

Even if it was obtained illegally, shouldn't they be prosecuted and not sued? Sounds like they just have a bee in their bonnet because of the s***ty review score, not because it was allegedly (according to Atari) obtained illegally.

I trust AGN reviews, they are very unbiased which is clearly reflected in the low scores that some games do get but is it a matter of time before a games publisher cracks the whip and crap games suddenly won't have a review.

When you're spending $90-100 these days you have to do a bit of market research but on the upside if there is no reviews then you know what the quality of the game will be like.

At least Atari now know what this new fangled internet craze is all about.

Proving they purchased the game would be easy enough, as long as they didn't pay by cash and lost the receipt.. But as someone said before, I imagine they wouldn't care so much if it wasn't for the dodgy review score. But if the game sucks, the game sucks.

I trust AGN reviews, they are very unbiased which is clearly reflected in the low scores that some games do get but is it a matter of time before a games publisher cracks the whip and crap games suddenly won't have a review.

Big Steve hasn't led me astray yet!

I trust AGN reviews, they are very unbiased which is clearly reflected in the low scores that some games do get but is it a matter of time before a games publisher cracks the whip and crap games suddenly won't have a review.

Nope, the only reason a game won't have a review here is because there is only a couple of us reviewing at the moment. It's tough to justify wasting time playing a s***ty game just to be able to objectively critique it when there's other more worthy titles to check out.

If a publisher doesn't want to provide us with a game pre-release then we'll just wait until retail like everyone else.

I trust AGN reviews, they are very unbiased which is clearly reflected in the low scores that some games do get but is it a matter of time before a games publisher cracks the whip and crap games suddenly won't have a review.

We typically only review games that get sent to us by publishers - not because we don't want to go buy them, but because we don't have time to do any more than that. If they stopped sending us them we'd just go buy them. So regardless of what publishers do to us, we'll still be retaining the same objectivity in terms of reviews.

Oh sweet, well the point of the thread wasn't to call out AGN (you guys make me feel funny in the nether parts) but just to raise awareness of what Atari are trying to do in the industry.

Whether the reviewer here pirated it or not, it sure seems like a boneheaded move to sue the reviewer. The resulting story "Reviewer says game sucks, gets sued" is so utterly predictable regardless of any possible legal correctness that you really have to wonder whose running this company.

I guess its the same reason they're losing money hand over fist.

Atari hasn't heard of the Streisand effect.

I've often wondered what it would be like to get paid as a game reviewer or tester, then I think of some of the garabage out there and I shudder at the thought of playing through the whole thing just so I can say "It's rubbish!!" with absolute certaintly, now you risk a law suit - reviews will have to start coming with disclaimers.

"Warning - Gameplay subject to change depending on just about anything, this review is the opinion of the reviewer only."

This is almost as bad as the latest Metallica "early" album "leaked" debacle....

last edited by Opec at 13:42:37 23/Jun/08

It's tough to justify wasting time playing a s***ty game just to be able to objectively critique it when there's other more worthy titles to check out.

isn't this a bit of a conundrum?
so how do you know it's s***ty if you haven't played it to critique it?

isn't that the whole point of the exercise?

so how do you know it's s***ty if you haven't played it to critique it?

they read other reviews.

they read other reviews.

is this just a way to minimise the crap based on general consensus?
do all reviewers use the same criteria?
how much personal opinion goes into reviewing?

i rely on reviews a fair bit and base my purchases on them and of course word of mouth. so i imagine there'd have to be criteria or you couldn't objectively review say a FPS if you hated the genre without set criteria.....

i'd be interested in knowing some of this...maybe trog or dan can elaborate?

so how do you know it's s***ty if you haven't played it to critique it?

I use the term s***ty pretty loosely but sometimes it's pretty obvious. Just from the trailers we've mirrored I had a fair idea that Alone in the Dark probably wouldn't be the kind of game that I would enjoy.

If I'm reviewing a game, and it's already on shelves, I try to steer clear of other reviews until I'm done. I'm pretty sure Steve's the same.

We could probably cover every game ever if we were to only spend an hour or two playing each then spit out 300 words. But I think the way we're doing it now, even if we're a week or two behind and some titles miss out all together, it's the better option.

You can be confident that the reviews that we do have up are well researched.

s*** ey, thought this may have been worth a whirl. Shame that Left 4 Dead has been delayed (again) until november. That game looks like it could be up for the steven farrelly medal.

Lets just pray that when/if Duke Nukem Forever gets released it gets high scores or the entire gaming industry may disappear in a law suit of anger

thanks for that Dan.
i imagine you'd be overwhelmed if you tried to review every game.
does this case have any implications on your work here in Aus?

Implications? Not really. We try to respect embargos, even when they're often ridiculous like local publishers asking us not to host a trailer or demo yet that's already available on dozens of international sites.

Really, if they want to keep certain things under wraps then they should be making press sign NDAs before spilling the goods. This is sometimes done, but not often.

If ausgamers had half a clue, they'd write a bad review of alone in the dark, get sued by atari, submit their story to digg, then profit from the phat lewt ad revenue.

hahaha awesome. Someone said earlier that they trust IGN reviews. That gave me a good laugh.