So we realize that a localized branch of EA may have been withholding review copies from jounalists unlikely to give Battlefield 3 a close to perfect score. That's annoying and the localized branch apologized and said that sort of thing hasn't happened before and wouldn't happen again.
Flash forward less than a week and it's happened again.
Arthur Gies' review of Battlefield 3 is largely positive. He highly recommends the multiplayer but disliked the single player and co-op modes. The game recieved a very respectable 4.5, but the review has a backstory that is rather interesting.
Posted to Tumblr, Arthur discusses the backdrop to his writing the review.
"Less ideal has been everything surrounding the review and Battlefield 3’s release. I won’t dwell on the weird goalpost moving that DICE and EA have tacitly encouraged over the last few days by insisting that console reviews can’t be done because of a day one patch that, I guess, would fix anything anyone could possibly find wrong with the game? That’s practically unheard of before a game comes out, and having reviewed… one, two, three, four EA published shooters over the last two years (Bad Company 2, Medal of Honor, Bad Company 2 Vietnam, and Crysis 2), it was especially surprising here. Put more clearly, EA has never done this with any of the games of theirs that I’ve reviewed. Even Bad Company 2, which I believe also had a day one patch, was reviewed on debug hardware with a near-final version of said patch.
"I wonder if I was nicer to the campaign than I should have been. It’s not actively bad, usually, but it’s nowhere near what I would consider good, or even acceptable, really. And co-op stinks.
"I essentially had to write off two out of three modes in the game. It’s a situation where I have to hope that someone wondering about the game who sees the score will read the review and understand what I tried to say."
EA are definitely playing with the media on this one and given their attitude over the past 12 months when discussing the game, that doesn't surprise me. What is surprising me is the uncaring way in which they're doing it, this is the second time in less than a week that these practises have come out and, other than a half-assed apology, nobody at the company seems at all troubled by the fact that they are, in fact, manipulating review scores.
Every company likes to see their games get good reviews, not just in the game industry. Most of them do it by putting their heart and soul into their product and making sure that it's as good as it can possibly be, not by using their considerable power over the people reviewing.
