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PR company admits to trying to delay negative reviews, but insists they were requests and not demands.
Tomb Raider: Underworld hit stores this week, and in an effort to craft a high early ranking on Metacritic, Eidos has tasked a PR firm to try and convince publications to hold off on their reviews if the scores are below a certain threshold (via Shacknews).
The story first broke when GameSpot U.K. journalist Guy Cocker posted on Twitter that he received a call from Eidos' PR firm, saying that if Underworld was going to get a score below 8.0, they wanted the review delayed until Monday -- three days after the game's release on Friday. Videogamer247 then contacted the U.K. PR firm, Barrington Harvey, which confirmed they were indeed calling publications to try and quell negative reviews.
"That's right. We're trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos," a representative said. Explaining why, the representative said, "Just that we're trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the U.S. 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."
However, a statement released by Simon Byron, one of Barrington Harvey's directors, insists that no demands were made to delay reviews, and publications are free to put their reviews up whenever they like, whatever the score. "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," the statement read. Byron noted that there are already scores up that are below 8 out of 10, and explained that, "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."
The statement did, though, admit that "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," which is where you fall into the grey area of semantics in this sort of situation. Sure, they're not demanding that reviews be suppressed, but is merely asking for reviews to be delayed any less devious?
As many likely remember, this would make for Eidos' second reviews controversy just within the last 12 months, after a firestorm erupted around Kane & Lynch when it seemed as though then-GameSpot executive editor Jeff Gerstmann was fired partly over his negative review. Both Eidos and GameSpot, however, denied that was the case.
