http://www.gwn.com/news/story. ... core_Bribery_Scandal.html

What think ye, inhabitants of the insta-web? Does anyone think EA are low enough to bribe GamePro to write a poor review of a competitor's game? Does anyone have anything concrete on this? Seems possibly overblown, yet a sub-60% review for a game that's been getting 80-90% elsewhere does seem somewhat scaly and wet ...

It wouldn't suprise me with C&C3 also due for release around the same time. Both games are very similar looks like EA wants the customers. Looking at recent EA titles many of them seem to be flawed and full of bugs requiring multiple patches, they aint dumb they obviousley know their rep is going down the pan whereas THQ's recent games such as company of heroes and dawn of war have been great.

Gotta love the stunts those guys in marketing do to sell their product.

With EA, nothing would surprise me. Either way, its a whole lot of advertising for SC

Honest difference of opinion is enough to explain away the disparity in scores. Witness, for example, the enormous differences of opinion that exist about LFS and, say, rFactor. That's why I usually pay little heed to any single review of any product, unless it's from a particularly trusted source whose opinion I know I can rely upon, and instead prefer to either try a product myself or, if that's not possible, look for a general concensus of opinion e.g. www.rottentomatoes.com, www.metacritic.com.

That said, the rumour that EA possibly bribed the reviewer to write a poor review of a competitors product is worrying and reminds me of the recent influence peddling scandals that have broken over the last year e.g. nVidia surreptitiously giving free product to influential posters on gaming hardware forums and the various stealth marketing campaigns in which marketing 'sleepers' are planted in gaming forums, build up a history as a regular poster and after a time start to praise whatever products they're marketing and denigrate the competition. All that just lends even more weight to the 'trust no single-source' approach.

Disparities & differences in reviews I can understand, but 80% reviews everywhere and then a 50% score in only one source? That just reeks! I'm pretty forgiving (except when it comes to race sims) so a game would have to be utterly unplayable, un-fun, unintuitive and bloody frustrating to get 50% from me (the PS2 Transformers game leaps spectacularly to mind - Melbourne House oughta be ashamed). Lots of people slammed C&C: Tiberian Sun but I played through it twice (though I did understand what the critics were getting at, it was quite frustrating in parts).

Stakes in the gaming world are getting higher by the month, with gaming overtaking just about every other past-time in popularity. It's been years since gaming was just a "kid's thing" too, with so many people my age (and over) still playing hard and spending even harder I wouldn't be surprised if software/hardware developers occasionally stepped to the dark side and got dirty. Doesn't seem to be any evidence that EA bribed anyone so far but honestly, if it were true, I don't think anybody would be surprised. Such is their reputation right now (deserved or not), people would easily accept they were acting unfairly to harm another game's sales...

Every game always gets at least 70% or 7/10 or a similar score regardless of how dire it is. If I ran a game mag I would be handing out 20%s left and right, especially for derivative triple like a by-the-numbers RTS.

Stuff them and stuff EA too. Grow some nuts and put your cash behind an innovative game for once.

I've done a bit of poking around online and can't find anything to back up the claim that there is a "huge buzz" circulating around the internet about this allegation. Now admittedly, I've only done a cursory search but the few links that I've found point back to the original GWN article. Coupled with the shameless plug of their own review at the end of the article, I'm starting to wonder if this is just one gaming site spreading FUD about one of their competitors out of spite.

Considering SupCom wipes the floor with C&C3 - I would not be surprised if the rumors are true.

Quote from BuddhaBing :

I've done a bit of poking around online and can't find anything to back up the claim that there is a "huge buzz" circulating around the internet about this allegation. Now admittedly, I've only done a cursory search but the few links that I've found point back to the original GWN article. Coupled with the shameless plug of their own review at the end of the article, I'm starting to wonder if this is just one gaming site spreading FUD about one of their competitors out of spite.

That actually wouldn't surprise me either (I've had no time to look around today, stupid work - how dare they make me, um, work?).

Hell, I really wouldn't put it past anyone to act like bastards to big themselves up in this industry. Except maybe Scavier and the Grand Prix Legends Mod Team

Quote from spankmeyer :

Considering SupCom wipes the floor with C&C3 - I would not be surprised if the rumors are true.

Averything wipes the floor with C&C3

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It has been going on for years. Magazines and gaming sites get their "exclusive demos and reviews" (only) if the do good review, write stuff the publisher wants to see or anything similar. I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine.

Anything more is just optimistic :/ It seems EA knows how to scratch

Quote from Hyperactive :

Averything wipes the floor with C&C3

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It has been going on for years. Magazines and gaming sites get their "exclusive demos and reviews" (only) if the do good review, write stuff the publisher wants to see or anything similar. I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine.

Anything more is just optimistic :/ It seems EA knows how to scratch

They should stop scratching their balls and make a decent game for a change. By the way, what the hell you doing up this time of night?

Quote from spankmeyer :

They should stop scratching their balls and make a decent game for a change. By the way, what the hell you doing up this time of night?

Nothing really. Been trying to get my GPL track to work but the damn car just flies around the track with nice explosion sounds. Basically I'm tryint to waste time until it's morning so I can make few phone calls and go to bed

editedit! It workz now! Flat like fern bay and boring like carpark but it workz! Looks aweful but it works, flawlessly

At the link in the first post, it now says that the originator of the rumour has since said it was a lie, so I guess that's that... Unless they were forced to say so

I really can not for the life of me figure out why companies spend so much time in bashing other companies instead of producing a half decent product. EA is a big pile of crap as far as I'm concerned. Although, you have to remember that EA doesn't actually make any of their own games (AFAIK), they are producers, not developers. I think half the issue lies within using a poor developer to start with; the other half of the issue comes with not letting anyong do anything unique or new coupled with the fact the developers are never given enough time to properly fasion a title, and many times are not given the opportunity to produce fixes for the things that are wrong; past a first patch anyways, because they are thrust into the next version of the title for the following year. (Which is essentially the same game, with maybe higher poly models and a shinier box)

The only decent things to come out of EA in the last several years are the games from Maxis; which are not the cup of tea for a lot of people, but are still extremely popular and unique. I for one am eagerly awaiting the release of 'Spore.'

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Every game always gets at least 70% or 7/10 or a similar score regardless of how dire it is. If I ran a game mag I would be handing out 20%s left and right, especially for derivative triple like a by-the-numbers RTS.

Stuff them and stuff EA too. Grow some nuts and put your cash behind an innovative game for once.

I agree with you 100%!!! Magazines and online review sites should give honest reviews for games. If they think a game is crap they should not be scared of giving it that 20%. Too many reviews these days are in the 60% - 70% and most of those games are really bad.

With the EA pribe, I wouldn't put it past them, watching how EA goes about its bussiness, buying out smaller studios, rushing game titles for prifit gains, not to mention their FIFA, NHL, NBA yearly updated textures they charge full game price for. EA are a massive company and they want to control as mush of the market (i was worried when they bought 20% of UBISOFT)as possible and when someone gets this big then they can start leaning on other people to change reviews here and there.

Stuff EA and their games, I'd rather play and support other companies that actually make games that are worth playing.

mad

edit:

Quote from MAGGOT :

I for one am eagerly awaiting the release of 'Spore.'

Yeah, I was really looking forward to Spore, untill I found out EA were involved! Game does look good though and will probably be the first game worth playing from EA in years.

Nothing would surprise me when it comes to EA - they are notorious for having absolutely no scruples when it comes to getting ahead.
That said, I have to say that according to MetaCritic, a couple of reviews for this didn't even make it above a lukewarm 70%, meaning that 50 isn't quite as out of context as it might otherwise have been. But the vast majority of worldwide reviews have been overwhelmingly positive (85% and up), so whether or not these reviews were done by a neutral party is anybody's guess.

The annoying thing is how many pies EA has it's virtual finger in. I'd like to be able to boycott their products because their customer service and responses to reports of serious bugs is absolutely appalling. But you can't do it without screwing yourself out of some decent games as well. Annoying, because back in the early 90s EA were fantastic.

i wouldnt get my hopes up too high for spore ... itll most certainly be way oversized for a 96k compo

Spore will enter the 96k gamecompo at Breakpoint 2007 demoparty but will be disqualified for being 1 GB in size.

Its obviously just a poor review, I always look on IGN to get my game reviews because they always do in depth reviews and they include user reviews too. They gavie it 9.0 out of 10 and called it superb, I was thinking about buying it but TBH I get bored with these RTS games...they aint big enough.

I want something like Risk, Global scale but the ability to zoom down into different sectors to have the close combat stuff like in C&C.

As for Spore, it will be a great game, even EA can't ruin the work of WW. You will probably need a good system to run it well, but WW always makes games that everyone can play. Look at the Sims and Sims 2, the most popular computer games of all time, even I still play them!

Quote :

in the early 90s EA were fantastic.

Also, they were pretty great in the 80s. An EA game usually meant quality and innovation. I remember liking their logo at the time too- the cube, sphere and pyramid thing. Times have changed. (?)

So people are not allowed to have oppinions anymore? I thought the game was shit. Let them have that opinion too. Just because everyone's jumping off a cliff doesn't make it right, now does it?

Quote from MAGGOT :

Although, you have to remember that EA doesn't actually make any of their own games (AFAIK), they are producers, not developers.

While they are also a publisher, EA actually have three large development studios in Canada and a further dozen or more worldwide. The three studios in Canada are in Burnaby (EA's largest development studio located in a large campus just outside Vancouver), several floors of an office block in downtown Vancouver (which is where Need for Speed is developed) and in Montreal. The EA Canada development studios employ more than 1,000 people and are among the largest technology sector employers in Canada.

I dunno, I still remember that class action suit brought out against them
by employees & former employees they screwed out of pay.
I had heard EA was like a sweatshop from people that worked there.
Hence all the bugs and crap I imagine.
I also noticed in their Employment brochure they had this really nice campus style facility with weightrooms and a gourmet cafeteria and all this other cool crap. I never seen anyone in those gyms or the cafeteria in any of the pictures and it was kinda creepy.