It was just days ago that I posted
this, opining on
The Last of Us Part II's review drama, and on the conspiracy theories that had sprung up surrounding it. TL;DR: While I didn't believe that videogame reviewers were being consciously or overtly threatened with lack of access unless they posted positive reviews, I
did believe that they were being wooed with expensive gifts and other perks to influence their reviews in advance of the games' release dates. In short, the problem wasn't the conscious bias of the conspiracy theories, but rather the unconscious bias that was clearly at work, and which was giving rise to the conspiracy theories in the first place.
Well, it turns out I was wrong. It turns out that media outlets are being very deliberately threatened with the withholding of access if their reviews are less than glowing, and that the problem may be more commonplace than anyone had been willing to talk about before.
As reported by Polygon:
On June 12, Vice published its review of The Last of Us Part 2, in which critic Rob Zacny said that while the game had “memorable moments” that made for great “spectacle,” he was less taken with the story and characters. “Nobody ever reconsiders their quest for vengeance,” Zacny wrote. “Everyone acts under a kind of vindictive compulsion that goes little remarked and unexamined.” Zacny went on to describe the game’s message as complacent, full of “oppressive bleakness and violence.”
While the vast majority of reviews have lavished The Last of Us Part 2 with all sorts of praise, a handful of outlets — Polygon included — have been slightly more critical of the blockbuster game. According to Zacny, Vice’s review prompted a Sony representative to reach out on behalf of Naughty Dog.
“They felt some of the conclusions I reached in my review were unfair and dismissed some meaningful changes or improvements,” Zacny told Polygon over Twitter messages.
Zacny clarified that the exchange wasn’t “confrontational,” but that it was nonetheless “unusual,” as the site doesn’t typically have big publishers asking in an official capacity why a review reads the way it does. Such things can happen, of course, though often with smaller developers, or from publishers who have spotted a factual error in a piece that they want corrected.
If you're thinking that this looks a lot like Sony and Naughty Dog trying to literally "work the ref" on this one, then you're not alone. And neither, as it turns out, was Zacny.
