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

A good example is 1ups review where they tell metacritic what their "grade" system translates too.. With the result that 1up is listed at metacritic having given the game 0 out of 100.

How is that grade at all fair ? and then from a big site like 1up ? That is a review that's simply made to bash the hell out of a game and it is completely uncalled for. As many games that are broken, don't even get that grade.

I think Redner was in the right, he had every right to voice his opinion. If reviewers can say the kind of crap they've been spewing about Duke then he should be able to respond likewise. I think a tweet may have been a bad way to convey that message maybe he should have sent out emails to all those reviewers and voiced his concerns. Or maybe he should have written an article and posted it on the Duke website or contacted 2k to get their opinions.

Either way some of the reviews go way over the line, nobody should have to put up with that, everyone should be able to voice their opinions and defend their products!

If, and only if, something inaccurate is said about the game, he is perfectly within his right to privately email the reviewers to explain the errors in the review and request that they be changed. This does happen.

He should not, under any circumstances, post a tweet expressing his dissatisfaction. It's between the PR company and the reviewer, nothing else.

Also, he should never complain about poor reviews for his game. And in no parallel universe should he ever even suggest the idea that review copy distribution is going to be based on review score. That's the sort of thing that destroys your reputation.

@Staude

There is a hypocrisy in such arguments. People damn the weighing of content when it is detrimental to a game, but will also praise the practice when it gives a game a serious boost. There are a multitude of games which have scores that are almost fifty percent plus a result of the content.

Want an example look at Mass Effect. A game which has a whole host of issues. The game play mechanics are really weak, it suffers from bugs, crashes, and lag. On the visual side the game is poor, the environments are generic, and the layout was fairly heinous. Which makes Mass Effect a below average shooter. A game that mechanically speaking should be scored at around fifty or sixty, but it is the content that drives the game up to a average score of over ninety.

This is where this bashing of 1up is hypocritical. You cannot accept a thirty to forty point upswing for a game based on the content, without accepting that the opposite cannot be valid as well. The content is a constituent of modern reviews. The gamers expect this, and they apply the same logic themselves. When judging the value of a game. So if good content can make a game awesome then it is only logical that supremely bad content can see a game being marked down to total crap.

Exactly. It doesn't matter how "broken" a game is, as long as it's worth pushing through. Basically, different people value different aspects of games. 1Up (and most games writers) value game content and fun factor over a lack of glitches or performance issues. They very well could've just been bashing the game, I won't count that out, but the score reflects the level of fun they had with the game.

Who cares about the tone in a review. If it sucks,it sucks,there's no way to sugarcoat it. All game reviews should be as honest as they can be. I find that most reviews are right on.

From the article I didn't gather he was particularly upset the game was getting low reviews. The article made it appear that he was getting defensive about some of the reviewers despicable comments. Comments like “Shame on Gearbox for wanting their name on this stinking pile of crap!” should not be tolerated.

Reviewers are journalists, having been a professional game and movie critic I must say your job is to report unbiased opinions on products. Your job as a reviewer is not to attack the company that made the product or get offensive, your job is to review a product and give the consumer the best quality article you can.

From his comment he was not referring to low scores at all. Lets read the tweet “Too many went too far with their reviews … we are reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom.” When a company sends a game or movie for review they expect for the product to be treated fairly and for the journalist to have some journalistic integrity. Many of the reviews I read were not okay journalistically, very hurtful things were said and the reviewers went way to far with their comments.

One of the reasons I read VGChartz reviews is because so far the quality of them has been decent. The odd time a reviewer goes a little far. But sites like 1Up are notorious for being biased and filled with hate and controversy. Reviews like the ones Redner was talking about are not okay. If I was the PR company I would not send review copies to them anymore either.

Review copies should be sent to real journalists, not crying moma's boys who decide to get personal and childish attacking a person's integrity for the product they produce. Only journalists who are credible and quality reviewers should get review copies. Review copies are not a right for every journalist. When I worked for one of the biggest newspapers in my city, I didn't get review copies I got some advanced movie screenings and a few perks. Before my paper laid me off I was in the process of trying to get on the reviewer list, now I wanted to get review copies, but guess what not all journalists deserve review copies. I didn't work in the industry long enough and I was unproven as such I wasn't worthy of review copies.

No childish unprofessional journalist should receive advanced copies. Its not fair to the other good journalists who are denied copies. Its not fair to the publisher and developer who slave over their product for years and its not fair to the reader who deserves a decent quality review.

P.S - I also know I have bad grammar but with Word and a good editor anyone who wants to report news and be a journalist should feel free to do so. I worked for my paper for nearly 2 years and have worked at several sites. No good journalist would write the kind of crap that these reviewers did and expect for the PR company and publisher to keep sending them review copies.

With all due respect, you just identified a major problem here on the internet: The difference between bias and a passionate opinion. Most people don't know what bias truly means.

Anywho, I would agree with you to a certain extent, but a truly objective review is impossible (another fallacy of the internet realm). People cry for objectivity but I promise you won't like it if you see it. Games are just that, games. They're fun and we're passionate about them. The developers are passionate about making them. So why should reviewers bottle that same passion? It's ok for a reviewer to gush over a fantastic game (Outland, for example is absolutely brilliant and everyone should play it right now) but if a reviewer displays that same passion in a negative fashion they're biased, mean, and unnecessarily brutal.

I just don't believe that anything should be sugarcoated...ever.(I don't write the way some others do, and I most likely wouldn't produce anything in line with these, but I don't have a problem with it.) Our "journalistic responsibility" is not to the developer, or the publisher, or the families of either, it's to the reader. If we feel a reader should avoid any contact with a game at all costs, it's our job to say so. You don't read our reviews to see whether or not we think the developer tried really hard. Is it harsh, possibly. But it's not wrong.