Do the guys need companies permission to do quick looks?

Something that just dawned on me and I never really gave much thought to, do you reckon they can do quicklooks of any game they want, or companies can in fact "veto" the quicklooks if they choose to? It's a bit weird that 2 of the biggest games recently, Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 didnt have quick looks, and if the first I guess its a bit hard to do a quick look of, the second is quite easy, especially with multiplayer (which I'm sure many people would like to see being played to make a decision). 
 
Another one that springs to mind is Heavy Rain, which they have had a preview copy for a while now (back when Ryan did his preview) and there is a demo out (well, it's "out" if you do the game site mini game thing, but I'm sure they would get around to it). So, do you reckon these games just slipped through the quicklook cracks so to say, or they just couldn't do it (maybe because they cant show too much footage or something, like back with Killzone 2). Thoughts?
 
PS: Not a OMG CONSPIRACY topic, just something I'm wondering

They do it on anyone they want unless there's an embargo out on the game then they can't do it until a certain date.
I'm pretty sure companies can ask them to take videos down at a later though.
 
If they needed permission we'd probably have never seen Ride.

Well ME2, Bioshock and Heavy Rain are all games that people mainly play for their story. Any QL of those games (especially the significantly shorter Heavy Rain) would have to be filled with spoilers I think.
Regardless of their reasons I'm kind of glad they didn't do QL's for them.

They get sent the games to do quick looks don't they ?

They can do whatever the fuck they want, while the Quick Looks aren't 'reviews' in the strictest sense of the word, the usage of the game/ game footage in the falls under the same branch of copyright law and basically they're allowed to make use of the footage for the purposes of criticism or review.

" They get sent the games to do quick looks don't they ? "

" Well ME2, Bioshock and Heavy Rain are all games that people mainly play for their story. Any QL of those games (especially the significantly shorter Heavy Rain) would have to be filled with spoilers I think. Regardless of their reasons I'm kind of glad they didn't do QL's for them. "

As longs as they don't post a Quicklook before the embargo ends there is no problem, the embargo is to manage the hype so that reviews start appearing near the release date, if you get like universal acclaim in metacritic and there is still one month between that and the release, the hype could die in the middle

I think the Quick Looks tend to focus on games of more interest. I guess they assume people know what ME2 and BioShock 2 are going to look like.

Yeah I think the qls fall under the umbrella of Journalism, so they can pretty much do whatever they want legally. Review "embargoes" aren't legally binding, it's just that if you break the embargo date that game company will probably cut you off from getting early review copies.

I think it's more about those games being plot-heavy. Brad avoided any spoilers in the ME2 review, respecting the fact that people were literally barricading themselves from plot reveals.

The Quick Looks will probably come under fair use copyright laws. They're showing 20 minutes or so of the game, so I can't imagine it being copyright infringement. Although if a company told them to stop, it wouldn't be worth their while contesting it legally, so they'd probably have to take it down.
 
However something like the Endurance Run could probably be legally contested, if Atlas decided to. They recorded THE WHOLE DAMN GAME and put it on the internet, there has got to something against that in copyright law somewhere.

I agree with the Plot-Heavy remarks.  Games like Heavy Rain shouldnt be QL'd in my opinion. They could probably do a ME2 one if they wanted, just to show off the combat, like they did with the Dragon Age Quicklooks.
 
But everyone needs to remember the awesomeness of the Killzone 2 QL,  they couldnt show certain things in the game, so they had to cut it out and re-edit it with stick figures..remember that?...good times...

" The Quick Looks will probably come under fair use copyright laws. They're showing 20 minutes or so of the game, so I can't imagine it being copyright infringement. Although if a company told them to stop, it wouldn't be worth their while contesting it legally, so they'd probably have to take it down.  However something like the Endurance Run could probably be legally contested, if Atlas decided to. They recorded THE WHOLE DAMN GAME and put it on the interne, there has got to something against that in copyright law somewhere. "