On Tuesday the public relations firm responsible for the marketing of Duke Nukem Forever, The Redner Group, saw fit to use their Twitter account to threaten game reviewers with blacklisting should they release negative comments about the game. The firm claimed it would withhold copies of future games for any outlet bashing the shooter.
After 14 years of development, Duke Nukem forever has finally been released to less than stellar critical acclaim. In fact, less than stellar might just be the understatement of the year. The game had a long history of delays and in September of 2010 development changed hands from 3D Realms to Gearbox software, with publishing now falling on 2K Games. All of the negative attention garnered by the title apparently riled Redner Group CEO, Jim Redner. Redner responded to that criticism with a tweet (which has since been deleted) stating:
"Too many went too far with their reviews...we are reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn't based on today's venom."
Redner ended up apologizing to news outlets in an email soon after claiming his hard work on the project drove him to overreact to the game's poor review scores to date.
"My response was a juvenile act on my part. I know better and my emotion got the best of me. I have worked very hard on this project. I want it to succeed. I just got upset and acted out."
2K games has since fired the PR firm and released a statement that they do not in fact endorse the comments made by Redner.
The fact of the matter is that this sort of blacklisting is not uncommon in the gaming industry. There is a great deal of pressure on game developers and game reviewers to drive review scores up. EA apparently builds Metacritic scores into developer objectives and rewards teams for meeting those scores. Also problematic is the pressure journalists face to rate games higher if they are providing their sites with advertising revenue.
What is uncommon here is how public this issue has been. A PR firm openly threatening to blacklist journalists on twitter is both starting and appalling. This one open instance of these threats makes one wonder exactly how many instances of blacklisting happen quietly. It makes it hard to take game reviews at face value because it is completely unknown whether or not the review is the result of pressure on the journalist or an honest take on the game itself.
