Eidos Roadblocks Some Tomb Raider: Underworld Reviews

By Joe Haygood | November 21, 2008

Some companies just never seem to learn how controlling reviews will get you into hot water.  Last year, Kane and Lynch caused Eidos endless complaints from the gaming public, due to apparent firing of Jeff Gerstmann at Gamespot over a 6.0 review of the game.  Now comes word that Eidos is trying to squelch reviews that are less than 8.0 until a couple of days after the release of the game.

VG247 got wind of a notice of a tweet on Twitter, stating that anything less than an 8.0 means that the review cannot be posted until Monday at the earliest.  When pressed for comment, Eidos reps had the following to say:

“That’s right. We’re trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos. Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.”

Score another bonus point for Eidos and their idiotic methods to controlling game reviews.  Well, if gamers are the intellegent people I think they are, they will hold off on purchases of a game where reviews are controlled and manipulated to maximize sales.