So, This Tomb Raider “Controversy”

Over the past few days there have been numerous articles on various sites about Eidos’ apparent underhanded tactics regarding Tomb Raider reviews.

To save you the bother of having to read and understand what went on, here is a quick time line:

Wednesday 19th: The embargo for Tomb Raider reviews is up. GameSpot’s Guy Crocker (who doesn’t like Tomb Raider) tweets that Eidos told him to hold any review less than 8.0 until Monday. Various reviews get posted, covering a range of scores.

Friday 21st Breakfast: VG247 write about how Games Radar has been re-branded “tomb radar” and is one of only two sites to give the game a 9/10. (The other site was ConsoleMonster)

Friday 21st Lunch: VG247 contact Eidos’ PR company, Barrington Harvey, after noticing Guy Crocker’s tweet. The PR contact fails miserably at being good at PR and says “That’s right. We’re trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos.” When asked about sites like Eurogamer going live with their reviews and giving a score less than 8, the PR guy said that had caused “problems”.

Friday 21st Dinner: Other sites begin reporting on what the PR guy said and the comparisons to Gerstmanngate start flying around (same company, Eidos, same website, Gamespot). Barrington Harvey then release a statement to VG247 who says it’s all basically bollocks and they didn’t do anything. He also says the “problems” with Eurogamer’s review was one of factual errors.

Saturday 22st: GameSpot’s review goes up, and it’s a “good” 7/10. More sites start reporting the “controversy”.

Sunday 23rd: Halfleft doesn’t care still. (See comments below)

So what the hell happened? Well, using my keen nu-skool journalist senses, it looks like somebody at Barrington Harvey asked Guy “Already stuck on Tomb Raider Underworld. On the FIRST LEVEL” Crocker if he liked the game. Guy “Wanted to finish Tomb Raider today, but not sure I can take much more of it.” Cocker probably said he didn’t and implied he was going to give it a low score. Barringdon “working hard to ensure the launch scores of Tomb Raider Underworld are in line with our internal review predictions” Harvey probably asked him to hold off his review. Hence the tweet and the following forecast of mild shit-storm.

Did something shady happen? Most definitely, but it probably isn’t something that hasn’t happened before and nobody got fired (yet). So is there an exciting controversy? Not really. Shame.