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.

butthurt
analpained
assfrustrated
rectumsore
etc.

Already apologized:

"I have to apologize to the community. I acted out of pure emotion. I will be sending each of you a private apology" -The Redner Group

This thread should be kept. Sure, it was bested by a few minutes, but that's because it's much more thought-out and detailed.

On topic once again: It's good that the group apologised, but that behaviour was certainly rash.

I feel sorry for that PR company that is about to lose probably a big client. I don't know if this is a case of a PR company that will never do something like this again (that's good, and they should be kept), or if this is in their character and they will do this again in the future.

And I wonder specifically how they got burned to get that mad. Everyone must have been telling them, "Oh yeah, it looks great" or something.

I'd like to encourage better thought-out posts so despite this thread not being the first I'm going to allow it and redirect all comments on the other thread here.

^ Mods have all this power!

The PR company needs to realize that game reviewers are there to help consumers, not the publisher/developer. If they ship a bad product, the consumer has the right to know.

It's one thing if the critical reaction is mixed. It's another if the consensus is overwhelmingly negative. The video game press has all the power in that regard and I think they realized that in hindsight.

They already posted an apology...lol

Thanks for making it blatantly obvious (the twitter fag, not the OP), for those who didn't already know, the kind of bias that PR branches have and exercise in gaming media. If you want a good review, put out a good game. Threatening to withhold review copies because someone gave a bad review is silly. Luckily for us I believe Giant Bomb buys their own retail copies of games so they can say whatever they want. PR dudes can't camp out at the store and keep them from buying it. Shady stuff though.

@weeman105: Using "fag" as a generic insult is dumb as hell and brings down the already tenuous level of discourse on these forums.

I was going to post the following to the PR company's website but their contact form was down: 
 

Ugh, the fact that whoever is responsible writes in txtspk on the companies public Twitter account (a PR company, no less!) just goes to show what they consider appropriate when dealing with the general public and social media. I hope they learn a lesson from peoples responses to this, their problems should be taken up with managing editors, not their 'followers', who probably all work at video game developers and are now super cold on ever using their services.

PR firms and game publishers SITTIN IN A TREE

T-W-E-E-T-I-N-G

A public relations company creating catastrophic PR through twitter? That would be like Beachhead studios purposely offering game breaking bugs as DLC. I almost feel bad for them, as this may produce business deal suicide. If posed the question "How would you handle a bad PR shit storm?" any answer other than "Like an eight year old." might seem quite disingenuous.

Ugggg of all the professional work branches in the world --> I rather be a janitor than a PR people. They work basically consist in repeating obvious lies, denying true or even going against common sense in extended sophist arguments.. over and over again

@weeman105 said:

Thanks for making it blatantly obvious (the twitter fag, not the OP), for those who didn't already know, the kind of bias that PR branches have and exercise in gaming media. If you want a good review, put out a good game. Threatening to withhold review copies because someone gave a bad review is silly. Luckily for us I believe Giant Bomb buys their own retail copies of games so they can say whatever they want. PR dudes can't camp out at the store and keep them from buying it. Shady stuff though.

No they get copies from publishers, they just buy games when they don't get copies.

Imagine a giant cock flying towards your mouth, and there's nothing you can do about it. And your like "oh man, I'm gonna have to suck this thing", and you brace yourself to suck this giant cock. But then, at the last moment, it changes trajectory and hits you in the eye. You think to yourself"well at least i got that out of the way", but then the giant cock rears back and stabs your eye again, and again, and again. Eventually, This giant cock is penetrating your gray matter, and you begin to lose control of your motor skills. That's when the giant cock slaps you across the cheek, causing you to fall out of your chair. Unable to move and at your most vulnerable, the giant cock finally lodges itself in your anus, Where i rests uncomfortably for 4... maybe 5 hours... That is what playing 'Duke Nukem forever' felt like

Imagine a giant cock flying towards your mouth, and there's nothing you can do about it. And your like "oh man, I'm gonna have to suck this thing", and you brace yourself to suck this giant cock. But then, at the last moment, it changes trajectory and hits you in the eye. You think to yourself"well at least i got that out of the way", but then the giant cock rears back and stabs your eye again, and again, and again. Eventually, This giant cock is penetrating your gray matter, and you begin to lose control of your motor skills. That's when the giant cock slaps you across the cheek, causing you to fall out of your chair. Unable to move and at your most vulnerable, the giant cock finally lodges itself in your anus, Where i rests uncomfortably for 4... maybe 5 hours... That is what playing 'Duke Nukem forever' felt like

@LiquidSwords: I can only recommend your review if you put it into the review system.

Also my eye is having sympathy pains right now.

Will be interesting to hear about Redner's apology. If people are reporting the tweets I'm sure some will regurgitate the phone calls. Agreed with the earlier poster about PR jobs, I know there's a lot of money in it (I'm a commerce student now and they teach it alongside marketing) but I don't think there's enough money for me to look myself in the mirror every day.

somebody's butt hurt...

Any reviews you guys think this PR guy had in mind when he wrote that? Gotta be 1up, right? I mean, they give DNF an F (0 stars). Even I think that's too much.

I sure hope that LiquidSwords poster is not Shane Bettenhousen like on NeoGaf. Anyways, it sucks to be a PR guy for this game. He could get fired for this. That destroctoid review sucks. It just reads like an asshole tried to incorporate too many adjectives to seem intelligent.

Since they are an outside contractor, it makes sense that they don't know what a good video game is and what Duke Nukem actually is. It's an end to a story of a delayed game, not a product that makes money.

If I'm unsure about a games quality and the publisher decides to hold back reviews, I'm simply not going to buy the game. Almost 100% of the time, it's a bad sign. Look at Brink or Tony Hawk Ride, for examples. There are times where this isn't the case, but still..

But if we get another Duke Nukem game that doesn't have reviews before release, or only from a few sites giving it perfect scores.. then yeah, I'll assume it's as bad as Forever anyway.

Haha, this guy is fucking incredibly awful at his job. That company is going out of business real fast.

To be a PR agency that can't handle social media in 2011 is a fucking disgrace. Acting on the behalf of a client without the clients consent to do so (I would guess that is the case) is so, so bad as well. It was obviously an attempt of damage control where the person attempting to do so had no clue what so ever on how to handle such a situation - which just shows how terrible they are. If you get bad reivews from most places, you just link in the positive ones and try to spin it and pretend like it's raining. DNF is a laughably easy product to market as well, as it doesn't matter how bad it is since people will buy it anyway. He could've just said, well hey dudes, at least it's out right?

Just read the Destructoid review, and that thing is right on. He's completely right about everything even if he might be trying a bit hard.

This is really stupid, especially when the statement came from the PR firm itself.

Why do they care, seems like it sold fine if I was involved in that game I would be walking on clouds at this moment for releasing total complete shit under the banner of "hey it's history" and raking in cash.

PR companies already do shit like that, it's not news. But talking about it openly is an extremely dumb move by the PR company.

Why are they called the redneck group?

I went into the lulzsec irc and told them if your gonna fuck over someone it should be Redner Group

and they said maby so..... lets hope they get fucked in the ass

well im heading straight to 2k games website to suggest they change PR firms or risk losing my custom in future. alone that wont be a big deal but i encourage others to do the same.

And as Redner just got done patting themselves on the back for landing 2K and about to bask in the glory of the simple task of shipping out burned DVDs and blu rays to different review companies and awaiting the gravy train of simply having to tweet "Thank you for enjoying GTA/Bioshock/Fallout/Elder Scrolls/Rage" little Johnny manned the desk for about one bullshit middle school drama hour and destroyed the company his father built.
 
Good shit Redner, how dumb can you be? Clearly the sort of moron that would write that stuff was clearly lacking some intelligence in some way before you decided he could talk to people. They did it to themselves.

So this is what they posted after the fact?

I was going to post the following to the PR company's website but their contact form was down: 
 

"Although there has already been an apology issued I want to reemphasize the point that threatening to withhold review copies of games from the press because they might write reviews that aren't favorable is a particularly heinous and low threat to make.

I understand that mistakes are made when emotions run high but there's a problem if the person(s) in charge of a twitter feed working for a PR company can't keep their feelings in check and do their job.  When a product might not be the most stellar thing in the world it's inevitable reviews may not be completely favorable.   That's life and real grownups should be able to deal with it like adults."

 
I don't have a problem with a marketing group trying their best to serve their client but bad form is bad form and needs to be called out.

@Winternet: He seemed to be making specific references to Destructoid's review.

@Ertard: So you've played the game?

@harvey_the_pooka: Have you played the game? If not you aren't in a position to make the statement "DNF is a fucking horrible game".

@Lucidlife said:

@harvey_the_pooka: Have you played the game? If not you aren't in a position to make the statement "DNF is a fucking horrible game".

Hey, I completed the PC version. I am going on the record by saying DNF is a fucking horrible game.

@groin: Good for you. You are in a position to say it. Whether you are telling the truth or not I don't know. The fact is a vast majority of those here bashing the game haven't played one second of it.

@Lucidlife said:

@groin: Good for you. You are in a position to say it. Whether you are telling the truth or not I don't know. The fact is a vast majority of those here bashing the game haven't played one second of it.

DNF would have been an average game if it was released in 2002. In 2011, it is absolute garbage.

Amazingly unprofessional. Someone does deserve to be fired. And just the mention of such a policy of holding back review copies, picking and choosing based on previous review scores, sheds light on a practice that IS going on. This is a big shoutout to consumers. DO NOT buy games that fail to supply review copies to gaming press before release.

2K would do well to cut that firm loose.

I'd be glad if reviewers gave out much more 0/5 and 5/5 reviews. As in 5/5 the game is really damn good and we highly recommend it and 0/5 the game is fucking garbage, such as DNF.
Who cares if there are games that are even worse than DNF? About 1% of those even gets tested at all, and then you can give that one a 0/5 too.

@groin: And you have played the game? It's a pretty standard shooter. What makes it garbage exactly?