At what point does a review embargo seem unethical to you?

I usually buy games when I feel like playing them. Which is rarely launch day. So I'm not particularly bothered by embargoes unless they're quite literally unethical ie. when the reviews can only run if they give a high score. That's a bit too blatant a pull of games journalism in to game marketing.

PS. I don't actually mind if the embargoes are set upon certain things (bugs etc) as most of the time there is an explicit promise from the developer that a D1-patch of some sort will fix them.

I don't think there's anything unethical about it. Ubisoft doesn't have to provide anyone with early copies of the game, and asking reviewers to wait until the day of release seems reasonable to me. I get that it can seem awkward when some places start selling copies early, or delivered early, but I don't think that some small store in Nowhere Kansas selling games early should negate a legal agreement between a company and reviewers.

It's only unethical if you're the type of person who can't wait until the reviews are out, and you need to have the game on release date otherwise it's too late. For everyone else, it's a non-issue, really. Ubisoft's pre-order/editions web of mystery on the other hand seem to be a bit out of hand and not really consumer friendly, but that's another topic all together I feel.

I do feel like very restrictive embargo's are silly though, the quality of the game will be known eventually either way. And sure, maybe you'll get a few more people buying the game if you manage to stir up a good hype train than might otherwise not get the game due to reviews. But at some point that'll just hurt your reputation in the long run.

So.. it's not really a big deal to me personally.

I don't think any reviews before release day are unethical, because it is inherently a publisher providing an early copy which they are under no obligation to provide.

Embargoes past midnight on day of release, though, are certainly shady in my book, and if an embargo requires the reviewer to wait until 8PM or the next day, that's just madness. Then they might as well just buy the game themselves that day, play it, and release the review rather than wait.

Embargoes make sense before the day of release, but anything after that is ridiculous.

The only way to make them unethical is if the publisher puts a stipulation on it, such as "you can only review this if the score is high/you can only review this if you ignore these elements", because then you're not getting a reliable review. You're getting the "review".

Release day embargos are fine I think. Publishers don't owe it to you to let people review their games. Just like you don't owe it to publishers to pre-order or buy their games on day one.

If companies don't want to allow reviews of their games before they are released they should not be shocked if people do not pick it up immediately either. Show some faith in your product if you want consumers to do the same.

@vierastalo: Because day 1 patches always fix everything and it's all good bf4

You don't have to buy a game day one, so I don't care if they embargo them past the release date. Until I feel I know enough about a purchase, I can wait, as most pre-order "bonuses" are bullshit anyway.

As others have said, if they let positive reviews run early and embargo negative ones, that's a problem.

I find it really stupid and insulting when reviews aren't allowed until the day of release. I don't really think of it as " oh no, they probably think the game sucks! " since that's usually not the case, but it's still just so scummy to me anyway.

I only take issue with companies trying to influence or censor the review and the odd time where the embargo lasts until after release day. Otherwise it's whatever, your game, your rules.

This sums up my feelings pretty succinctly. The current structure punishes those who foolishly buy games on day one, and the stupidity of pre-order bonuses tries to get more people to make that mistake. Smart people wait to see how a game is before buying (or know when a game is something they want regardless of its score).

I think anything on the day of and afterwards is supershady, pre order bonuses or not. To me it just looks like they want to get the first day hype people in there, THEN see how it's being received. Just comes off as a lack of confidence in the game.

Review embargoes are usually fine, since the reviewers should be free to reject any embargo and get their own copies at release, but I feel like not allowing them to even mention certain issues is a violation of professional ethics. That's basically bribery, isn't it?

I also think about what happens when there isn't an embargo date/time sent. A bunch of people rushing to get the exclusive first review out there and doing a shoddy job. I think most of the major sites have enough people with sense to avoid that because there's less "fighting for every scrap" mentality as well as some good sense, but then it still puts all the more pressure on the reviewer to marathon the game as quickly as possible , thus also probably not having a great experience with it.

And yes, the worst part is when the embargo is either slightly before or even after the release of the product. In my mind, it flags it because someone along the line doesn't have enough faith in its quality. Especially for a game like Watch_Dogs, which I've always been very skeptical about aside from the graphical prowess (and even that, when we're talking about the console side of things).

I'll also grant you that most pre-order bullshit is just that, but sometimes it does feel a little shitty missing out on content because I purchased it the day it came out and not the minute *before* it was officially released. I'm the type of person who waits for reviews because taking a leap of faith that my whatever dollars will buy me a good experience on an unknown is a terrible mistake, especially since gaming time is so limited anyway.

Not allowing reviews until the game is released is scummy.

However, breaking an embargo you agreed to is unprofessional and a shitty thing to do.

Also this is a terrible poll. It really didn't need more than 3 or 4 options.

I think review embargoes are generally a crappy thing, however I can accept them up to release date.

Though calling it unethical might be a bit too strong of a word in my optic.

I personally don't find timed review embargos unethical. Preordering games is almost always unnecessary, don't buy stuff unseen unless you absolutely trust the product or you can return it. Limiting reviews by score or demanding omission of problems is unethical

I tried to write out a reply to this, but I kept stumbling over why NDA's are even still a thing. I mean, if a publisher sends out a complete copy of the game to reviewers early... Why even do that if you don't want them to talk about it? Is it really just paranoia over poor review scores pouring in and affecting sales? Do they have some algorithm that shows that "Day One" reviews have a greater affect than ones that come out earlier?

I respect that the game belongs to the publisher, and are in no way obligated to send out their game for review, but what do they gain from putting an arbitrary date on discussion of said game? I don't find it unethical to do so, I'm just really curious.

While I don't think it's "unethical", not allowing a review to be published until the game is out seriously bums me out. I'm generally against pre-ordering games unless I know they will be good and won't have any major issues on release, so witholding what seems to me vital information can have the exact same opposite effect than what the publisher intended. In this case, making me buy the game.

There actually is a very good and logical reason why some sort of embargo is pretty much a necessity. Let's say you and I are both reviewers, along with 50 to 100 other people. We all get a review copy a week before launch. Whoever publishes their reviews first will naturally have more people reading their review, because it's the only option available. And publishing a review first would often mean not playing a game to completion, which would be unfair to the developer, the publisher, other reviewers, and your readers.

If a game took 50 hours to complete, and I had my review published the day after we received our review copies, think how pissed off you would be. On the other hand, if we all promised not to publish until the day before release, that would put us on an even playing field, and that's really the main reason to have embargos in the first place.

Review embargoes are fine. If the publishers are requesting people not to discuss certain issues, that's bullshit. People should just learn to control themselves and not preorder stuff, it's not that hard.

People also seem to forget that embargoes, in some cases, are good for everyone because it prevents bullshit reviews. Every site trying to get their review out first means there are going to be some rushed reviews, which don't benefit anyone.

Preorder bonuses have never been meaningful and should not be taken into account. Other than that, anything after the release of the game is ridiculous.

There's nothing unethical about them. I'd argue those Gameblog guys come closer to being unethical.

They purposefully break embargo that has been established between the publisher and them. They receive the game early under the condition they won't post a review until release day. Then they break that condition, for what reason really? The people going out on release day can still read your review before purchasing if they feel unconvinced. The ones going to midnight launches just don't care about your review, no matter how much you may believe in them yourself.

Contrary to what they may think, people who want to read a review before buying can still do that if the review is posted on release day. The way they are doing it is just spitting in the face of the publisher with whom they came to an agreement. They just want additional hits to their site by posting the review earlier than anyone else. They are the ones being unethical.

I don't think it's unethical at all. If you have everyone reviewing your game a week before it's out you might have less excrement on release day because not as many people will be talking about your game. As long as their not letting more positive reviews go early or giving some places a exclusive early review I see no problem.

I actually had a very similar thought shortly after writing that post out. Setting a "starting line" for reviews makes sense, but then I have to wonder why would they have that that starting line begin after the game is released? I'd also like to think that review sites that are getting sent these early copies would have enough professionalism to not publish a review based solely off of an hour or two of playtime, but then again this is 'games journalism' we're talking about...

I personally think reviews should be available on the week of release. Games are released weekly so reviews hitting on monday of release (when most games are released tuesday) won't really detract from the conversation.

Review embargos that cut too close to (or even exceed) the release of the game will always seem dodgy and make me less confident on the game, because it appears the publisher is trying to hide something from me.

I wouldn't say it's unethical though, it's just bad practice.

Pre-order bonuses up the wahzoo and microtransactions are unethical.

I'm not going to spend money on a $60 game until I've seen release-day reviews (and hopefully a quick look or live QL) so I don't care.

I think it's fair to some extent. The companies have no obligation to give a review copy but I never buy anything with no reviews available and I hope there's a lot of people who have the same mentality.

The only thing I would find to be somewhat unethical is changing embargo depending on the tone and score of the review. I've heard of companies placing the embargo and then asking the reviewer to send the review to them beforehand, and they can come to a new arrangement based on it. I heard this from someone on Gametrailers I believe, but that was years ago.

Anything exceeding the actual launch date of the game is a bit much for me to swallow.

As far preorder stuff, if you preorder shit then fuck you for being apart of the problem, you deserve whatever you get.

Embargoes are necessary to keep the gaming press honest - or at least to prevent punishing them for being honest. It stops publishers and reviewers from sacrificing quality in order to be first to print, as embargoed games can have their content prepared to be posted at the time the embargo ends.

Where embargoes turn messy in my opinion, is when they aren't worldwide. It's rather punishing to press to have their european or north american counterparts able to print things about a game when they cant. This is less apparent in Japan, as the language barrier stops most people from reading about games early.

A good example here is Nintendo with Pikmin 3, which released three weeks earlier in Europe - British gaming press could post reviews and commentary while their north american peers could not. North americans could just go to european sites and read about the game, and the embargoes meant that the only people who weren't allowed to talk about it were north american reviewers.

While regional releases are a different topic altogether, I think publishers need to treat game releases globally at least in terms of how they deal with the media, or at least consider the english speaking world as one entity in order to solve this problem and regain the level field the embargoes are meant to establish.

In short, I don't feel they are unethical as long as everyone with pre-release information is treated equally by publishers.

Preorders, i've never really understood the hate. Retail has done far more to force them on us than the industry (publishers get no money from them - retail holds preorder money in escrow until delivery) The only one that might is Steam preorders, and Valve might still hold the money in escrow as they are obligated to provide full refunds up until a game unlocks. Amazon takes no money in advance, and you can still cancel a retail pre-order after release, so theres no real obligation to buy a pre-ordered product.

Any embargo lifted before the game releases to the public is fine with me. The only point I see in an embargo is that you can't experience how online multiplayer will truly fare if only a small group of people have a copy to play around with, since there's no real server stress, but most reviews will focus on single-player anyway. If the publishers had any real faith in their product, they wouldn't try to lock down reviews after the game has already released.

I would believe the sweet spot for lifting embargos would be the day before release. The game will most likely get favorable reviews, the DAY 1 DAY 1 DAY 1 crowd will rush to the stores and use the reviews as their crutch, then word-of-mouth takes over for the subsequent days.

Or you could just be a boss like Rockstar and make a gazillion without review copies, iirc about GTA V and RDR.

I have no issue with embargoes if they are before the release day though I'll listen to the argument that the embargo should lift a few days before b/c of the preorder bonuses. But release day embargoes are shady as fuck. There needs to be a balance between what is fair for the publisher/dev, the reviewer/website, and the consumer. I think the day before is a good compromise but that seems to happen less and less these days which I find a bit sad honestly.

Never.

There are no standards or rules when it comes to game reviews so I'm all for developers and publishers protecting themselves, their people and their product from the no-creditials-necessary wild-west that is games journalism.

I think 'ethics' is too strong a word for this. But whatever. Reviews in general seem to be barely used as pieces of buying advice anymore. They seem to be used more for talking, and bitching, points for forums, twitter, and the like. So to think that a reviewing publication should break a contract for 'ethics' seems silly.

Publishers are in the business making money not helping consumers make good purchasing decisions. That responsibility falls to the consumer. The consumer needs to do their research before deciding what to do with their money. If they get burned by a purchase of a released or preordered product they have only themselves to blame. Not the publisher. Not embargos.

The only embargoes I see that are unethical is if they try to favor more positive reviews to be released first or if reviewers are told to ignore issues and spin the review in an dishonest manner. The timing of embargoes isn't that big of a deal to me.

And pre-ordering games can be a gamble. I learned the hard way with SimCity... although I pre-ordered Watch Dogs so maybe I didn't learn my lesson. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

I don't think embargoes before the game is released or those that ask not to mention some elements of the story for considering them spoilers are unethical. Its within the rights of the publishers and, while not talking spoilers should be common sense for the reviewers, its best if its written down.

Embargoes that are dependent of game score or don't want to divulge certain aspects are really shady (like the example of MGS4 that didn't want people to mention the 45 minutes opening cutscene). I would like to know more about cases were those embargoes are put in place, because it says more about the game than many of the reviews does...

People also need to keep in mind that embargos are very common for all types of pop culture reviews. That goes for movies, music, tv, (probably) comics etc. In every medium where a reviewer is able to experience something before release there's embargos, and that's always been the case. That often gets lost in the discussion about NDAs for games, because some people seem to talk about it like it's a "problem" for games only.

The only ones that seemed unethical to me are ones that I have not heard of actually happening. Well, and the exclusive ones which I do feel are unethical but those are probably going to disappear and have become much less frequent than they used to be.

I don't have a problem with embargoes in theory. They are supposedly intended for the company to maintain control of coverage of their game before it's released and really that's their right. If an editorial/review site is going to get a companies product for free, ahead of release, with the terms of "they are going to give an honest opinion of the product for consumers" then they also have to play by the publishers rules.

If this French site finds embargoes troubling then they should also no longer accept the game for free from the publisher and buy it from the store themself on release day. Google translate makes it hard sometimes to make out some grammar that is translated- did they ever say they would stop accepting the product from companies for free as well?

They aren't saving credibility if they still expect to get games for free from the publisher if they don't want to follow the rules or play fair. They don't give the game out ahead of time to game publications so they can just decide one day an embargo is unethical (which, in and of itself, an embargo is not).

I see more of a problem with this French publication if they expect to continue to receive games for free. If they're going on this crusade and they intend to also then pay for the game when it is released like everybody else then I totally get that and that's fine.

Those are my thoughts on it.

I agree. When it comes to Borderlands 2, I deserved the 'Mechromancer" character class which was released a month or so after the game, that everyone else had to pay $10 for.

Battlefield 4 had a great pre-order bonus as well, with several multiplayer maps given to pre-orders for free. Knowing how much EA / Dice screwed up Battlefield 3, I did not pre-order Battlefield 4, despite their rather generous pre-order bonus. I deserved what I got then as well, which was to keep my 60 dollars and not end up with a shitty broken game.

And for the record, while I'm leaning towards buying Watch Dogs, I did not pre-order it.

Obviously only if high reviews are allowed early/BF4 not allowing early reviews to showcase its many, many issues

This is a great point. And I'd add another reason why it's good to have all of those reviews on the same day for the publisher/devs.

Reviews are free advertizing. If there was no embargo, then reviews could trickle out and may go unnoticed by lots of folks. But with a strict embargo, a review of a big game like Watch_Dogs will be on the front page of every gaming site at the same time. Ad space that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars is replaced by even better space on a site for free. And even if the reviews are middling to bad, I'm sure the exposure still has a generally beneficial effect for sales, just by making the game present in people's minds.

Whether it's ethical or not should not be based on how long after release it lifts. If the purpose of it is to prevent consumers to be informed that the product is subpar, then its unethical. Otherwise, it's fine.

Review embargoes don't seem to hurt anyone but the publisher should they issue one too soon/too late, so I don't see how it can be perceived as unethical. It's free speech, sure, but they are denying themselves press first and foremost for the sake of hype.

Pre-order bonuses with day one reviews, One exclusive review , and when they ask not to mention game issues (Ex. Metal Gear 4's loading problems)

Maybe someone with a better grasp of French can clarify this, but from what I can gather their argument is that in the age of YouTube personalities and streamers having NDAs is detrimental to the professional games journalist.

Which seems to me a little less "NDAs are unethical" and more "journalism is changing, but we're not willing to adapt".

A review being made on a game not purchased for a reviewers own money and the reviewer not ever setting him or herself in the situation of "what if I was a person who had bought this game for its full price" situation is far more unethical than a review embargo.

It only becomes unethical when the company is knowingly putting out a version of the game that is inferior to what they have shown in the press for the months and years before the game's release. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a PRIME example of this, and I think it should be the point where reviewers look back and say "remember this bullshit?!"

After THAT debacle, I just can't think of how review embargoes help anything other than someone's bottom line. It's people being shady in general. The embargoes aren't the only problem, though, and most of you will only see half of the problem with that.

When you are behind the scenes, you also have the smaller sites that are fighting with publishers regularly to get review copies, to keep a website up and running. Those smaller sites are getting e-mails with words like "incentives" and "rewards" if their game gets above a certain score from the website. Why? As long as that site is counted on Metacritic, it means the average goes up. I saw those kinds of e-mails, particularly from EA when GoldenEye: Rogue Agent was released.

Of course, Rogue Agent was a flaming pile of shit...and I reviewed it accordingly with a 5.0 score attached to it...and then sent EA a link to the review along with a note saying "my integrity isn't for sale...we'll just make sure we only cover the games that we WANT to cover from your company." Obviously, they didn't give a shit about the little guy on the totem pole, but our reviews WERE added into the overall average on GameRankings at the time, so a bad review score COULD affect the average at the time.

You know what? Looking through all of that, I take back what I said. Review embargoes are unethical as fuck. It's just a bunch of guys in suits wanting more money without giving you the whole picture.

Once the game is out, available for purchase, I feel like it should be open season on reviews.

There is an inherent catch 22 nowadays with the idea that publishers want the exposure as soon as the game is out, while also getting reviewers to say good things about it (Sending out a game that requires a day 1 patch for bugs is an example that comes to mind where the publisher would be apprehensive)

Regardless. The games out, reviews should be allowed.

I don't pre order, so it doesn't bother me. I have no problem getting a game late on release date, or even weeks later. If it's good, it's good. "Hiding" a review doesn't affect my decision to buy. I rarely even care about reviews. I can tell if I'm going to enjoy something by watching videos, live streams, or quick looks. For example, I knew from 2012 that the driving in Watch Dogs was going to suck, and guess what... the driving kind of sucks. It only takes a small bit of video to learn a lot. I'll sometimes skim a couple reviews just to make sure nothing is completely broken, but what they say about how fun a game is doesn't mean much to me.