Eidos and censorship

What the hell? Take careful note of the last sentence if nothing else. What that bit of PR fluff boils down to, is that Eidos has at least a fair inkling that some Tomb Raider reviews will be less than favorable – possibly floating below the 70 per cent line – and as such don’t want readers to have access to them before they’ve managed to have a shot at selling you the game anyway. So what then, is the point of a review?

In Eidos-land it would appear that a review is designed to be something you get access to after purchasing a product, so you can exclaim ‘well damn I got me a lemon! Wish I’d known about that before!” and drool a little more into your bib.

It’s a sad state of affairs on two fronts – the first is that online gaming journalism suffers from a bit of an image problem, a problem that stems from the fact you can in theory give any monkey 40KB of web space and a HTML template and they can become some sort of online critic. There are those few online outlets that we trust to review products – games included – in amongst the noise, and to see companies like Eidos attempting to affect the way those outlets conduct the business of providing unbiased and timely reviews further erodes our trust.

The other thing that brings a tear to our eye is that it isn’t the first time Eidos has been involved in something like this. Those with a decent memory might recall the Kane & Lynch ‘Gerstmann’ fiasco from last year, where a reviewer was believed to be fired from a review outlet for an unfavorable write-up of the title. Come on Eidos, don’t do this – don’t deal this way. If you publish games, make them good and if they’re at risk of stinking, then suck it up and wear it, don’t erode the last vestiges of faith in online journalism that remain intact.