I’m not sure why Rockstar would be doing the whole begging for good reviews bit. I’ve been anticipating Red Dead Redemption since I first saw screenshots for it.

They all do it, but the extent to which this particular rep is alleged to have gone…unethical at the least (not sure on Australian laws on such things). That’s one of the reasons why we’re not allowed to accept anything (other than the game itself and the occasional accompanying t-shirt) from the reps we deal with here at the Vault. Our reps know well ahead of time that we’re going to call it as we see it, and we’ve never really had any problems in that respect.

If the action alleged actually occured, then it’s probably just that guy or office. I’ve never received any such communications from the Rockstar guys we talk to.

Wait… are you saying I wasn’t supposed to accept all the [contraband] and hookers they kept sending my way? o.O But… but… it felt so right, how could it have been unethical? =(

LMAO!!!

It might be just me but I feel that the PR person was doing their job

@Patrick: Maybe yes, but it’s the last sentence of the Facebook post that if true would make me feel dirty. “Please ensure” and “needs to respect” should send up some pretty big red flags. Granted we don’t know the context (as the intent was as a private email), but if you ever get those instructions from me, you are hereby ordered to force me to submit for a fitness for duty evaluation.

Wow. I’ve noticed a tendency for certain reviews on other sites and (in the past) in other magazines to heavily praise and/or minimize the flaws in games that I thought had serious problems, but this pretty much proves what I’ve always assumed — that the fix is in, and certain “major titles” will always get positive reviews, regardless of how people feel about them months down the road.

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about this site (both in its current and ancient incarnations) is that you guys call the flaws where you see them, and take time to review a wide range of “indie” games or less hyped titles. Other sites ignore these games, and/or seem to act as little more than hype machines for the major releases.

As for this PR person, it may be their job to promote their company and its games, but at the same time, they should fully expect to have the whistle blown on them accordingly.

Ya the PR person was doing their job because we are talking about the game. :p

At the risk of exposing my failure to read well, allow me to ask a critical question. If the game in question is already receiving nominations for GOTY from a variety of news outlets, then what would be the point of making sure “…Toby’s article reflects this…”? Do the PR reps really expect the reviewer to mention his competitors in the review? To put it in perspective, if I am reviewing Game X, should I mention “Well, IGN says blah and 1Up says blah.” If I were the owner/host/chief editor of a game review publication, would I really want to waste my own bandwidth rehashing some material from some other publication? Why even bother? That’s what we have meta-review sites for anyway.

And, to be clear, I am not saying that our readers should never look at other reviewers. In an age of lightning fast access to multiple reviews, I would hope that our readers can and do compare our material to our competitors. It just seems absurd to me that, as a matter of policy, a review publication would waste their precious bandwidth even mentioning other review sites.

Now I expect Michele will chime in and lecture me about how other organizations in the industry do things differently…

Hang on a second.

Red Dead Redemption has not yet been released, yet it’s already receiving nominations for GOTY? Why would anyone take any organization seriously that nominates an UNRELEASED game for GOTY? IN APRIL?

holy $@&*! 10 comments on one article?! this has to be some kind of record for this ghost town site.

[ed. Troll ALERT]

Bwa-ha-ha, puny mortal! There were 50 comments on my article last month!

Well heres the issue I have… We are assuming that this “writer” actually had an email sent to him and wasn’t just trying to make a fake news story to either 1.) Run up the number of visitors to his “impartial” review or 2.) To attempt to gain some reputation as a game review writer. To be honest since the post was deleted and he was fired by his own company (who would have had access to that email…) I’m kind of leaning towards the guy making this story up as a publicity stunt. I doubt very seriously that Rockstar would need to take any of these measures to “he needs to respect the huge achievement he’s writing about here?”. I’m fairly sure in the coming weeks we will get the actual story from Rockstar (assuming they still care) and for a direct quote coming from a PR guy to end a statement with a question mark as oppossed to a period kind of makes me question this whole article….

Alaric – He’s just trolling. Last month he posted comments 18 and 20 on this story: http://www.avault.com/reviews/xbox-360/dragon-age-originsawakening-xbox-360-review/