Duke Nukem Forever Reviewers Threatened By PR Firm

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All professional reviewers have an interesting relationship with the public relations firms and people that represent various products (movies, games, cell phones, tablets, etc.), and the reviewer-PR relationship can be tenuous and stressful for both sides. Differences can arise, but both sides need to know when to give and when to take. I think for the most part, everybody understands the song and dance. But, PR man Jim Redner of The Redner Group, who was representing Take-Two’s Duke Nukem Forever video game lashed out at reviewers and threatened them on Twitter, causing a pretty big hubbub.

Some background for those out of the loop, Duke Nukem Forever is the sequel to the popular 1996 PC game, Duke Nukem 3D. Forever has been delayed so many times in the past 15 years, that it had become a joke in the gaming community, but it was finally announced last year that it would be finished by Gearbox Software and published by Take-Two Interactive.

Unfortunately, Duke Nukem Forever is getting some pretty bad review scores. I’m not formally reviewing it here, but I’ve played the first two hours of so, and the game feels like you’ve imagined – something that was in development for 14 years and worked on by five different development teams with no clear vision. The humor and writing in the game is also out of place, awful and flat, but you get the point, the game stinks.

The Redner Group, on their official Twitter feed, wrote this:

Too many went too far with their reviews…we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom

Obviously, Redner is upsetting a few people by his implication that he was going to withhold review copies of games from reviewers who gave bad scores to Duke Nukem Forever. To Jim Redner’s defense, he wrote website Ars Technica and explained to their games reviewer Ben Kuchera that he had overreacted and that he poured his heart into representing this game.

It’s a little bit of a dark rehash for the video game reviewer community, which saw perhaps its darkest days in 2007 when GameSpot’s Jeff Gestermann was allegedly fired after disagreements with PR and that site’s management over a review score he gave a certain game.

For the larger tech industry (including gaming), it’s nothing new. Stories from the old timers about Microsoft PR having a literal (but non-violent) “hit list” of journalists who were blacklisted from receiving review copies of Windows 95 or other Microsoft products are out there.

And unfortunately, it’s a sad final chapter for Duke Nukem Forever, a game with a long history that had been long –anticipated (and forgotten) by some.

What do you, the reader, think about this and the (mostly benevolent) give-and-take between PR and the media? Is it wrong for PR to blacklist outlets because of bad reviews? Are some reviewers too harsh in reviews just to pander to the snarky internet community? Tell us what you think about the state of reviews online in the comments section. And while you’re at it, check out TFTS’ own reviews here! (Shamless plug).