Ouch, Sony caught for it too? That has to hurt. Ubisoft and Midway don't surprise me. Midway is pretty much dead anyway.

What? It's not like they were caught bribing or something. If you were submitting your products and they get poor reviews, well then your product sucks but you're not under any obligation to continue giving away free stuff. If EGM wants to review, then just buy the product and rate it. It's tasteless for EGM to reveal this in hopes that all of the companies resume sending them stuff.

Does anyone else remember the fallout for their review of Acclaim's Total Recall for the NES? This is just history repeating itself once more... :)

Given that the game publishers are trying to blackmail EGM into giving better reviews, I don't really have a problem with EGM trying to blackmail developers into sending them review material. Turnabout is fair play. 

So EGM will still review games from those companies, but they'll just have to go to the store and actually buy copies to use for review, right!?

At least that's what I'm gettin' from all this.

 Whether it "backfires" or not, people should be applauding EGM for taking a stand on this. You say those companies might boycott EGM by not giving them previews and such, but apparently that's exactly what those companies are doing because of EGM's reviews. There may be a lot of sites and mags that do what EGM does, but apparently there aren't many who stand by their honest opinions on games like EGM has. That alone would make me give EGM my business over some glorified ad magazine like Game Informer.

I don't know the whole story behind each of these situations(Ubi, Midway, Sony sports), but given their recent trach records it's not very surprising that EGM had some harsh things to say. It does seem that EGM is overly harsh sometimes and I think a lot of them are HD graphics zealots, but boycotting them because they didn't heap praises on Mortal Kombat games? That's kind of like getting mad at someone for not enjoying their cancer. 

LOL @ the cancer comment.

And I would be very interested to hear what the companies say about this. Or even about other magazines/sites having the same problem. 

I laugh at people who go to reviews to make decisions on games. Stop being tools, rent the game, try a demo, view some gameplay vids and stop going to others for your opinions on a product, damn sometimes people are pathetic.

What a valuable contribution to the thread, thanks Auron.

:P

EGM's reviews suck anyways. They rate a game that is easily an 8/10 and give it a 4/10. Yet an 360 title that deserves a 3/10 gets a 9/10? (around the fractions posted here as there are 3 reviews for each game). It doesnt make logical sense. They are biased and deserve companies refusing to allow EGM to have any coverage of their titles. All companies should drop EGM (and the owning company 1up) from their press contacts.