I think there's more to it than most people are addressing. Gearbox, Randy Pitchford specifically, has put a lot of effort into hyping Duke. He (Randy) went so far as to say that "We know the game’s great. Any journalist that decides…to lowball it is gonna be held accountable by the readers." There's such an air of confidence there, that I think many reviewers felt the need to let him (them) know just how bad the game actually is, and that they're not ok with utter crap being released at a full price. It was arrogant of them to release such a bad game (not even good by Duke standards) and expect people to pay for it just because Duke was on the box. That doesn't make it ok, but I feel that's where a lot of the "venom" is coming from.
As far as The Redner Group is concerned, we all know that publishers blacklist writers. It happens. 2K is known for being...shall we say, "especially selective" with their review copies as it is. The statement was only an issue because he made it clear to everyone that he was blacklisting instead of doing it in private like everyone else does.
Nobody's right here, but I feel like the journalistic community was justified (if only a little bit) in their response to the tweets.
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