http://twitter.com/#!/TheRednerGroup/status/80834594424897536

"too many went too far with their reviews...we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn't based on today's venom"

The Redner Group (http://www.therednergroup.com/) is a public relations firm that works with 2K Games on marketing of their products. According to their website, The Redner Group specializes in public relations, social and traditional media relations, and event marketing. They are an outside contractor that 2K hired to promote their titles to the general public. This is also the company that decides just who gets early review copies of a title.

With Duke Nukem Forever hitting this week, The Redner Group went into overdrive to promote the product at E3 2011. A lot of word of mouth hype accompanied the title as today's release approached, and with E3 tying up the gaming media last week, there would not be any reviews until Monday online. When reviews started to be posted, the scores were rather lackluster, to the tune of a Metacritic score between 49 and 59 out of 100 (http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/duke-nukem-forever) depending on which platform the game appears on.

The Redner Group took offense to some of the reviews, the ones they deemed were venoumous. In their own words, "Bad scores are fine, Venim filled reviews...that's completely different." Their reaction is to deny these reviewers early copies of 2K titles for review. This is a dangerous precedent to set, and shows the ugly side of an industry that depends heavily on its enthusiast media, and vice versa.

In the coming days, I am sure that The Redner Group will issue some sort of apology for the public reaction for today's outburst, but they might have given 2K an unintended black eye.