Starfield
Another day, another Starfield controversy, this time about how Bethesda is handling review copies with some specific U.K. publications, namely, Eurogamer, which reported it did not get a review copy of the massive game until yesterday—meaning there’s not nearly enough time to actually review it before embargo tomorrow.
Eurogamer joins a number of outlets in the U.K. that didn’t get copies—MetroUK, Edge and The Guardian, reportedly. This is in contrast to a pretty huge number of U.S. outlets getting copies, and as I’ve previously remarked, loads and loads of content creators and YouTubers, even small ones (some of whom have broken various embargo stipulation in their excitement).
Bethesda and review copies of its games have a long history of being weird, and it keeps kind of finding itself in these situations unnecessarily. Some history:
There was a time when Bethesda decided that it would simply stop giving out advance review copies to press at all. This was the statement they issued at the time:
“While we will continue to work with media, streamers, and YouTubers to support their coverage – both before and after release – we want everyone, including those in the media, to experience our games at the same time.”
This was deeply strange, as most of its games were reviewing pretty well, and this seemed to end up hurting games like Prey, which was very good, but with no advance reviews saying that, the idea was that it performed worse than it would have otherwise with good buzz heading into release.
So while that practice ended, Bethesda’s odd review embargoes have stayed in place, usually only dropping the day before or in Starfield’s case, the day of. Starfield’s review embargo is over at noon ET tomorrow, with the game launching at 8 p.m. ET. While some cite this as a “red flag,” this is just how Bethesda embargoes usually work, which is weird, but it hasn’t really been hiding anything in the past.
Starfield
Bethesda also has been known to reportedly blacklist outlets or individuals. The most famous example of this is when Kotaku reported inside information on where Fallout 4 would be set (Boston). As this recent Eurogamer issue came up, Jason Schreier (formerly of Kotaku, now of Bloomberg) said he’d been blacklisted by Bethesda for 13 years as a result.
As for what’s currently going on with Eurogamer and the others, there are theories, but naturally Bethesda is not going to explain or comment. It does seem strange the focus is on U.K. outlets so specifically, as it’s unclear why that region would warrant less access than others. Microsoft’s takeover of Activision Blizzard is currently held up in the U.K., pending resolution, but it would be odd to tie this to whether or not to send Starfield copies to U.K. outlets. And it is sending them, just late, which could also be something on U.K.-specific PR’s end.
One unproven theory circulating is that in Eurogamer’s case at least, its review scale, which uses a five-star system with no half-points, that could bring down the Metacritic average of the game when Starfield is no doubt aiming for a 90+, especially in this hugely competitive year. Eurogamer, for instance, gave both Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 four out of five stars. That was one of the lowest scores given for either game, and from one of the biggest gaming sites in the market. While a 4/5 may be good for a movie review, in the video game world, that’s an 80/100 on Metacritic and almost guaranteed to bring down an average of a really well-received game. That may not be right, but that’s how it’s viewed.
This is the game. If this is what happened, Bethesda would be far from the only company to try to herd scores with specific outlets and reviewers, and conversely, sending out copies to extremely excited YouTubers who will probably produce nothing but hype, for the most part (and if they don’t like it, it won’t feed into Metacritic).
It’s not a good system, but it’s marketing, and the publisher has all the control over who gets copies and who doesn’t. But what’s even worse is that when Eurogamer revealed that this happened, the overwhelming string of replies they received from fans is “good, you deserve it,” which shows this is probably not the PR hit maybe it should be.
It’s not clear what exactly happened here, but Bethesda has had a very odd relationship with review copies for a long while now. Starfield seemed better than average with a lengthy review period of two weeks and a lot of copies going out. But while no one is “entitled” to a copy, situations like what’s happening in the U.K. are definitely strange. And, honestly, I’m wondering if even writing this article at all might land me on a list somewhere, and I don’t love that feeling.
Anyway, my Starfield review drops tomorrow, look for it at noon ET.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
