“Review embargoes are most common, we’re given early access with a game with the condition that the game review cannot be posted until a particular date in time. Usually a day or two before the game’s release.”
A video game embargo is a two-way street. It gives games media websites, whether it be an established website such as IGN or a lesser known website, a fair shake at posting review scores at the same time. It also gives game developers less to worry about in terms of their game, the very product they have probably just poured several years of blood, code and tears into getting a terrible review score months before a game’s release.
It isn’t the fairest of systems in the world. If a game is really that awful but has a lot of hype to it, buyers should be aware of what they could be getting themselves into. There have certainly been ghost stories of AAA developers giving media outlets ridiculous demands; Fallout 4’s embargo of an embargo was one such incident and speaking of Fallout, Bethesda’s mantra of sending review copies out a mere day or two before release can be considered dodgy at best.
Nevertheless, it is a system for the most part that works and one of the benefits to this is that those of us who can access these review codes can essentially play these games a few weeks before release date, give out our two cents and you the consumer can decide whether or not to take our word for it. All for the small price that we don’t tell anyone we have the game.
Video game embargoes are like having a mistress in your marriage or dodging taxes; it’s a secret you can tell a couple of your nearest and dearest friends about, but screaming it from the rooftops, however tempting that may be could end in career suicide.
Enter the now-defunct Brash Games, who were either short sighted or nieve in the short term greed of getting that little extra revenue when it released a review of Yooka-Laylee several days before the embargo deadline. This comes amid a myriad of claims of how they treated their freelance journalists as well as other shady dealings that completely backfired. Owner Paul Ryan may not have only shot himself in the foot in terms of his career as a journalist, but has also unwittingly used that same gun to blast smaller lesser known gaming media sites in the face. A move that may prove to be a reckless endeavor, contributing to the ever dissolving relationship between company and critic.
As gaming has grown into the entertainment medium it has become today, the marketing and PA departments of AAA gaming studios have grown weary about sending review copies to anyone. This can be damaging to anyone up and down the board of the gaming spectrum. Gamers could end up investing in a game they may end up not liking which in today’s fragile economy could be considered a devastating loss of money for them. Anyone working in games media can tell you that this is a practice that potentially damages the livelihoods of anyone that works in the field. They need those review codes to stay in a job and the stunt that Brash pulled would make any games developer ask the question “If they can’t follow the rules why should we trust the rest of them?”
In other media, this can be considered a common practice. Movie studios have may not run an advanced screening if they think a movie is going to tank at the box office. Record companies have been more than cautious due to music being leaked, regardless of how tight the security is. However, a movie critic can get a movie ticket, either through their own funds or a later reimbursement, to go see the movie and get a review written up all on the same day, in time for general audiences. A music critic doesn’t necessarily even have to leave their office, they can just listen to the album for free on Spotify or just Amazon Prime their order to show up that afternoon and get an MP3 copy of the album for free.
Games journalists can’t really do that; a new store-bought game can market anywhere between £40 to £50 and getting the same game on the PS Store, Steam or XBLM can prove to cost £15 – £20 extra and you may get a season pass if you’re lucky. Not everyone can afford £40 – £70 every week to buy one of the several releases that come out every month. There’s also the small fact that in order to do a fairly good job at reviewing games, you need to invest time in order to work a game and its mechanics. We’re talking 15 hours minimum to 40+ hours, especially if it’s a huge game like Dragon Age or Grand Theft Auto.
Journalists need that time to play the game, take notes which is about several hours of writing every little thing they see, write a review, and go through the editing process several times over before it is then released to the consumer with a justifiable score. As someone who reviews games, among other full time outside commitments, I can tell you that the process is a tiring one. I can’t imagine what a full-time games journalist has to go through when they may have to review around 3 games a week, all on different platforms, time scales, genres and various degrees of quality.
Whilst I personally won’t go as far as saying that it should be considered a privilege to receive these codes, though I completely understand some may disagree with me, I am confident that we could mostly agree that there is certainly a level of trust on both parties, a trust that can easily be squandered.
At a time where developers are almost begging to find a reason to not send out review codes and completely kill off games journalism as we know it so they can ride roughshod over consumers’ wallets, Brash Games and Paul Ryan may think what they have done was harmless, but it could prove a reckless domino effect all for the purpose of clickbait.
As for the purposes of clickbait and how this is another reason why Brash made a mistake, one we may have to all pay the price for.
Anyone reading this article probably has a rough idea of how website revenue works. The more clicks, the more money, and the World Wide Web keeps spinning. Clickbait is arguably the one element that lets the internet down; it doesn’t usually promise what it delivers, it’s full of pop-up ads for penis extensions pumps and if not careful crashes your whole browser down and gives you a virus that can damage your computer. It’s sleazy, but it works and I highly doubt clickbait is going anywhere anytime soon.
Brash may as well have lead us to one of those pages and we would have forgiven them quicker. But the unnecessary greed on an ever-expanding platform is not being clever, it is convenient amnesia to how embargoes work. Combining this blatant disregard of a developer’s wishes with the greedy pursuit for click bait, Brash games didn’t just make an error in judgement, it contributed to a trend that’s going to mess with all of us sooner rather than later.
By now, if nothing else we have established that AAA marketing and PR departments are insecure; we may never know fully why, but there is insecurity. Someone has to make them feel like they are being listened to. Embargoes are just that and whilst I fully agree that we should not completely bow down to the mighty embargo and rightfully put the Bethesdas, Konamis and Warner Brothers to task over some of their more shadier deals, it really wasn’t the right time for Brash to pull off the stunt they did, especially when we need more AAA companies to feel more confident in letting us do our job properly.
The most important lesson to all of this, is if you are trusted by a developer to play their game, give it an honest critique. The price is a small one – keeping it to yourself until the embargo lifts – therefore the advice should be a no brainer. Don’t be a short sighted about breaking embargoes, don’t even humor the thought, especially if the deal just asks to exercise common sense.
No one is being big or clever by purposely breaking the rules. They’re just being morons, rebels without applause.
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