Interesting take on the 2k pr mess.

[Mr Khan]

HappySqurriel said:
I haven't played Duke Nukem Forever but I think "Blacklisting" (meaning not giving reviewers pre-release copies of a games) is entirely justified if you don't believe that these reviewers are being fair with their criticism ... It's a fair strategy to use because it can introduce consequences on reviewers for unprofessional behaviour; and its use is limited because it also has negative impacts on the publisher.

But if there's no way to guarantee fairness in the review system, there is certainly less accountability still for an acceptable use of blacklisting. Granted acceptable blacklisting could be self-regulating because it does bring negative consequences as you said, so you would want to limit it only to those who you felt were truly being unfair, but you could just start handing them out to anyone who won't give reviews above a certain point, since not having a review on time probably hurts sites for hits more than the negative publicity hurts the publisher...