Eidos UK blocks Tomb Raider Underworld reviews below 8/10

by Justin McElroy on Nov 21st 2008 10:45AM

Reps from the UK PR firm for Eidos have confirmed that they're asking publications not to release any reviews for Tomb Raider: Underworld below an 8/10 until Monday. The firm says they're doing so at the request of Eidos, which is trying to manage the scores for as long as it can. The game is currently sporting a 78 on Metacritic.

Really Eidos? Really? You didn't lose enough goodwill being blamed for getting the world's most popular video games journalist fired and bringing a respected games portal to its knees? (Yes, we know you denied any involvement. This sort of thing certainly makes that seem credible.) You thought maybe journalists would keep this quiet because you were buds? Because they were worried about not getting advance copies of Just Cause 2?

Note to Eidos: Stop being evil. That is all.

[Update: The head of Barrington Harvey, the UK PR firm, is playing defense, with director Simon Byron saying, "Any site, be it Gamespot or whoever, is entirely within their rights to post whatever score they want and no-one is under any sort of obligation to delay any review." It should be noted that "being obligated to" and "being asked to under penalty of being blacklisted" are two very different things. Not that we think that happened, of course.]

Source

Tags: eidos, PS3, reviews, tomb-raider-underworld, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (93)

Just let the game sell itself

T&A will draw in more pubescent youngsters than bad reviews will push away

That Sucks, SEGA never do that with their Sonic games and even the passable ones still get awful scores, that doesn't mean their bad and neither is this tomb raider game.

I know this sounds kooky Eidos, but have you tried making a good game?

The did, didn't work out and now they are pissed.

You know I wish they would just get it over with and make a mature rated tomb raider game already. This "T" rating really doesn't work at all for this game. I'm not saying we need to lara getting it doggy style but if your going to have a hot heroine at least give us more than 1 stinking extra suit to dress her in. If they took the tomb raider platform, added in gears of war 2 like violence, sexual innuendo's, revealing but not cheap or trampy clothing, bad ass locations and epic boss fights the series could actually be relevant again. I'm not saying any adult in their right mind would ever want to have a "Nude Raider Skin" but we certainly need something more than they are willing to give us.

This blocking scores thing is just completely out of line and evil on a scale only known by ... Eidos's earlier actions with another not so great game. Focus on making the games good from the start and the rest will come together. No one wants this cheesy tomb raider bullshit anymore. The series really hasn't evolved that much from a story perspective since the PS1 days when it was actually cool.

Oh Great another game that would make me ashamed and disgusted to buy or play in front of everyone.

I agree with you 100%. Why not try to make it mature. Tomb Raider is an old series, maybe this might be enough of a point to make people interested again. (now that I think of it, if this WAS mature, I would have bought it).

This is much worse publicly than any bad reviews. I will still play the game, but rental for me.

Ugh. Sexual innuendo and revealing clothes are only thought to be "mature" by those who aren't. It's kinda the same way that saying "booger" is edgy...when you are in kindergarten.

More proof that people's lives are dictated by numbers.

Watch Yahtzee. He may take the piss as a reviewer, but atleast he reasons that you can't score entertainment by a number.
If you enjoy the game just go and buy it.
And devs, proof that a craply reviewed game game can sell well: Assassin's Creed.
And i really enjoyed that game.

A way for sites to counter the sub 8.0 review embargo might be:
a) point out, loudly, that their review hasn't run yet, and
b) make a list of other major sites whose reviews also haven't run.

While it would leave the Metacritic score intact, technically neither would break the NDA.

Also, since Gamespot's parent company CNET owns Metacritic, wouldn't it be possible for Gamespot to notify Metacritic when such an embargo has been put in place? Metacritic could then hold publishing the metascore until the full breadth of launch reviews have posted.

Or, as some are doing, just get the review up anyway:

http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=7080

Kane and Lynch'd.

screw eidos and tomb raider

EidoSux!

i usually don't place much stock in reviews nowadays, but when publishers pull crap like this they pretty much put a beacon as bright as a gamma ray burst right over said game's review(s). and since i haven't seen any reviews for Underworld yet, it must mean the game isn't all that good (i seriously doubt many sources review games over the weekend). not the best thing Eidos could've done, especially since Uncharted has stomped all over Tomb Raider.

and before anyone says something, yes, anything below an 8 these days is pretty much knocking on suckage's door.

same here. i use Metacritic as my source of reviews, mostly to be able to find the lowest score and read that review. i often find that the most helpful because they tell of all the games downsides (almost as good as the Nega-Reviews on Joystiq).

i rarely need a review to tell me what a game does well since i normally already know that cause i've been following it since it's announcement. i only need to know of the shortcomings.

review scores are all politics now. completely tainted.

But of COURSE they would! :P

after it blew up the last time they tried to do this, i am amazed by the stones they have to have to try it again....even after denying it the first time!

i have a solution for you Eidos, MAKE BETTER GAMES.

I run a gaming blog - I'm not here to plug. If you care, the link is in my profile. I only mention it 'cause it's relevant to the rest of what I am about to say.

This, right here, is why I'm perfectly content to keep my site off the radar as far as major publishers are concerned. I'd rather go through standard channels to get games, and review them than deal with this sort of pressure from publishers and PR firms. It's ridiculous - if a PR firm ever approached me with a request like this, I simply wouldn't review the game in question - one of my review rules is "you don't review a game if you're predisposed to loathing it" and that sort of marketing tactic would certainly give me a lower opinion of the game in question. I guess what I'm saying is that as far as my own site is concerned, I'd rather we put out reviews a few days after launch, and remain untainted in any way by the marketing machine, then put our reviews out a few days early, and have either marketing suck ups, or PR restrictions influence the opinions expressed in a review in any way.

This just goes to show how much power publishers have over video game journalism. Would this happen in any other industry?

Let's take movies for example. Yes, I know in many cases movie publishers refuse to screen a movie to critics. Even though 90% of the time it means that the movie is crap, they have a right to do that. While movie reviews are supposed to be a public service, a company is not required to show their product to the press if they don't want to. It's the same thing with the MPAA. A movie does not have to get a rating, but it's become standard for most wide release films.

But imagine if a movie came out and critics were told that any review less than 3 stars could not be published until after the movie was released. What sort of public outcry would there be? This incident probably won't get much media attention, but look what they're doing here. They're picking and choosing what the public can see.

No, I'm sorry, you either do it one way or the other. You don't allow the press to get any early copies of your game or if you do, you let them speak their mind.

I like this game it plays just like all the other ones. But it still has bad camera issues. and is kinda glichie at times. But its still fun and the story is good.

Yes, but unless you rate it as an 8 or higher, Eidos will come around and down-rate your post until it is invisible. You don't want to hurt their feelings.

And when I say "feelings," I mean "sales."

Eidos does realise that buy doing this. They're effectiveley proving they were indeed partly to blame for the firing of Jeff Gerstmann. Eidos, you suck. Consider yourself boycotted until you appologise.

Come on these tactics are hardly new, Microsoft has been manipualting the press for years, and brainwashing users passing FUD as fact.

Yeah, MS said the 360 would have 2 hdmi ports, 4d, rumble was impossible to work with their motion controls and you would want to work 2 jobs to own one. Are you really that starved for attention?

Did they, I know the PS3 PROTOTYPE had 2 HDMI, but I don't recall Sony ever promising it. You do know what a prototype is right???

You mean the 4D gaming talk? Where they said 4D meant games would include things from the real world like the actual weather conditions (which debuted on Madden Wii) and user-contributed content (which tons of games have used before and since, and LBP relies on heavily).

It's too bad people take more time dumping on Ken's speech on the future of gaming (as was the theme at the conference) than they do actually understanding what he said.

dig dug- wow...
what do you call the reviews of MGS4 that konami made reviews sign waivers and they weren't allowed to talk about long load times, game installs, or the length of each cut scene in their reviews of the game before release.

that information leaked to us.

Im sure game companies try to get away with this when they can....

In all fairness, it didn't really deserve many of those reviews. It may not be much of an improvment of Legend, but Legend itself completely revamped the series and brought it into next gen.

I don't understand why Underworld is being so heavily critisied for being "outdated". Is Uncharted also outdated? What about the new Prince of Persia, clearly it's going to get equally bad reviews then?

Eidos, Eidos, Eidos, this isn't a circus, you know. If you want better scores, then delay the game until it's better.

But for now, Eidos, you've totally lost any shred of respect I had left for you.

*repeatedly clicks refresh to see if giantbomb will post something regarding this*

Lord. The interweb and its drama.

For one thing, the Gerstmann thing was never proved to have been connected to pressure from Eidos, but does that stop the witchhunt? No. Now their PR firm is doing what PR firms do, and all of a sudden it's a scandal? PR firms are in the business of shady dealings... where's the news in that? If anything, the only thing that can be taken away from this is that Eidos was stupid for hiring a PR firm that was stupid enough to think people were smart enough to realize that their in the business of snake oil peddling and making it public.

News flash, people. Every single game company does this. Hell, movie studios do this. Record labels do this. If a company is selling something and they can afford to have PR people, they do this.

Is it right? No, but it isn't anything new, either. It's part and parcel of the consumer society and PR/Marketing.

i dont think gamestop fired their most popular game reviewer right after the kane and lynch review was made, just because.

and after all the bad press gamestop received as well, if they fired jeff for a legitimate business reason, they would have made that public to protect their image..
'something like we cannot move forward with jeff after repeated late reviews, or no shows..'

but no they kept their mouth shut because they had nothing to tell the public to make their image better.

and no not every single game company blocks reviews of their own games and makes reviewers sign waivers.
it does happen, but not all game companies do this.
most game companies want the reviewers and stores to like them, so they usually allow them to provide a real review of the game.
after what happened with kane and lynch reviews, EIDOS probably made sure to send waivers and contracts to all potential reviewers before sending the game for their review.
there was probably a small print sentence in the contract that said no bad reviews or something,, lol.

So I heard the ruckus about you guys blocking bad reviews on the new Tomb Raider?

-What us? No way.

Then what's with all the mails you sent to reviewers telling them to take down reviews below 8/10?

-Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, [...], really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.

So you tell these reviewers if they don't take down the reviews you won't do anything but from their experience they know that that'll mean exclusion from supply with future titles, in a time period when they could make money off of writing about the game, to actually tell people if it's worth buying? So people don't know if the game is bad because all the negative reviews are held back because of implied blackmail?

-Basically, yes.

Sheesh what's wrong with that?

*spot the real quote*

With the current score inflation, I didn't know it was POSSIBLE to score below an 80. It would pretty much have to crash and make your machine catch fire just to get an 82!

World's most popular video games journalist? Gerstmann? You must be joking...

The demo for this latest TR game isn't that bad. I was actually considering it one of my games to get sometime next year. I like these types of games.

Eidos, you don't have to do this, people will still buy it, because it really isnt THAT bad of a game... sigh.. you guys are truly retarded... stop fucking developers (the guys you folded in.. Crystal Dynamics) over, and let the chips fall where they may..

The 8.3 reader score on Gamespot isn't a bad score... sigh... even a 7.8 isn't the end of the world, its actually above-average... I've played plenty of 7.5-8.0 games that I've loved.

the UK needs to block EIDOS games..
who do they think they are?
they already had gamestop fire jeff gerstman for a bad review.
why does the industry or whoever even listen to this bad game developing company...
i would say if you want me to review your new game and publicize it in my magazine or on our website, then its going to be on our terms....

EIDOS bankrupt or bought out in 10. 9. 8.
well give it at least a few months or years...

This is complete bullshit. Publications who comply with this nonsense should be abandoned by readers. It's deceitful and unethical.

The problem is that there isn't a video game outlet with the credibility of, say, the perception of the New York Times.

That kind of firm can tell Eidos/their PR firm to perform a biologically impossible act, publish the review with a C score, and print the text of the letter as a sidebar to the review.

Sadly, it doesn't exist yet in North America.

This goes on with almost every game, this has become pretty standard practice these days.

Never notice how release reviews are around 80-90% for most games, and then a few weeks later all the 60-70% reviews sneak out?

Tomb Raider seems like it doesn't need this though... can't imagine the target demographic bothers with reviews.

PS/ For the record, Tomb Raider Legend was totally overhyped.

When will people realise that 50% is an 'average' review score; it represents a game that is completely unremarkable in every aspect. 70%+ deserves a look in my opinion, and 80%+ is a solid example of the genre.

There's a funny Tiger freeze glitch in the 360 version. It can happen when you first encounter the tigers in Thailand. Don't kill any tigers. Run to the stone ledge and get on top. You'll notice everytime that one of the Tigers goes to the pond and just freezes there.

Now jump off the ledge and run towards that tiger. He'll run off to the right side by the big tree and get stuck there. Now kill the two other tigers. Now go to the tree with the frozen tiger and hit Y to smack him. He'll come to life again, run and dive and freeze in mid-air. Hit Y again to hit him and he keeps doing it. While he's frozen. Rotate the camera all around him. You can get some funny screenshots if positioned right with Lara.

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Eidos UK blocks Tomb Raider Underworld reviews below 8/10

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