Interesting take on the 2k pr mess.

[Mr Khan]

Dodece said:
His termination was utterly justified. He was caught making public threats. You will be fired by any company for that, and that is completely regardless of the job you are performing. You just don't do that. All it does is hurt the public perception of the company. Beyond that the blacklisting of reviewers is what has caused developers the majority of their review problems. It has been done, but look what it has cost them. The practice has done a excellent job of creating a monster. Which not only bites the hand that feeds it, but is ravenous all of the time.

The tactic does not work, and it has never worked. All it has done is to make a minor problem into a big headache. The thing is this low balling, slandering, and shunning will always trump blacklisting. The reviewer has all of the real power in this relationship. The only real option that a developer should consider is bolstering the most reputable of sites even if they don't hand out glowing reviews. Only then will the problem become more controllable.

On the question of reviewer power, that opens the broader questions of whether reviews mean anything to your bottom line. To a point they do, but only so much as they in some cases actually reflect how well you did at making a product that would appeal to a wide variety of consumers. Bad reviews only hurt sales inasmuch as they generate bad word of mouth, but good word of mouth that comes from a good game can on its end void any poor reviews

But that is a larger argument which i'll grant is out of place here. If we take for granted the idea that good reviews help sales, then yes, the reviewer is in complete control of that relationship