PC gamers its time to rebel against embargoed reviews

Its now time for pc gamers to rebel against the practice of embargoed reviews and force gaming journalists and hardware sites to put pressure on devs and hardware companies by letting them know we will not support or publicize products and companies who practice this blatant form false advertising.

Posting reviews on the day a product is released is damaging to consumers especially those that pre order an item. We have seen this practice with a number of games, assassins creed unity being the worst offender and now most recently with amd's rx 480 power draw issues.

How is that damaging? When would you like them to put the review up? A year after it's released?

Well it's the consumers responsibility for buying day 1 without reviews if the embargo exists.

If journalists get the game at the same time as everyone else then they don't have an embargo. Embargo is only for early copies of the game and the companies are fully within their rights to do so.

People who preorder take a risk in exchange for things like lower price. If you don't want to take a risk, don't preorder, don't buy day 1, in fact wait a few months cause the game will be in its best state after several patches and DLC, not to mention cheaper.

If you want to be on the hype bandwagon and play day 1, hey I'm not judging. I've done it myself. However its your own fault if you get burned.

He means the opposite. He wants the reviews lets say 7 days before product to be available.

ps: If the reviews about RX480 would be out before their launch, then reviewers would warn people about the failed PCI-E specification and people would not bought any reference RX480.

+1.

in addition its dishonest advertising and journalists who review the products and who know ahead of time that the product is not what was advertised are forced to sign NDA's, which is against the very nature of a free market, those that don't, who call out the truth are frozen out of the process as amd did with a couple of review sites when the nano was being released.

customers cannot plan properly how to best use limited resources and make informed decisions if they don't know the truth. so for example a gamer might have invested other resources elsewhere based on the info for months that amd gave regarding the performance and price of the RX 480, only to find out that they would have better off amassing resources for say a 1070.

after the whole quake/quack3 nonsense, companies should have learned this is a serious issue and gamespot needs to take up the fight, as they did with eidos kane and lynch some time ago

Stop pre-ordering and wait for reviews, regardless of when they come out.

/thread

The only issue with not having embargos is that sites will rush to get out reviews as early as possible because the earlier a review, the more traffic it gets and the more ad revenue the site gets. This promotes journalists rushing through games and giving slap-dash opinions/half-assed reviews .

Just dont fucking pre-order if there is any doubt about the quality of a game on its release.

@urbangamez: I think AMD wouldn't rush to release RX480 and would fix the problem (with lets say a month delay), if Nvidia wouldn't plan to release GTX1060 in 7 days...

They wanted to play alone for as much they can. AMD will earn a lot of cash. This would be good for the market and the competition. But earning money against unsuspected costumers is something that shouldn't be allowed to.

ps: Nvidia did something similar to beat 3DFX with quake benchmarks back then... :P

edit: This thing escalates. PCPerspective already confirmed it and contact a mobo manufacturer that stated it can damage your mobo.

ps2: @urbangamez: Better use your previous GPU till a respond/fix from AMD occurs. Or even better send it back and tell them that you will wait for an AIB model...

@Coseniath: they have not yet sent the card, I think they realize the issues so I'm gonna be waiting for awhile.

Exactly. I don't understand why consumers need people to think for them. A review won't be out until release day? Then don't buy said item before it releases, not that hard. Responsibility is a part of being alive, not everyone needs to think for you.

its not about needing people to think for you, its about holding companies to a standard, the same way if you are in a community you would be held to a certain standard of behaviour, when people misbehave and damage others deliberately, you don't turn around and suggest to the damaged party as a solution that they are responsible for the offenders behaviour, or should have known.

That's not a real comparison, these companies didn't misbehave or damage others. As for the standards, whether a company has review embargo's does not factor into how I see them at all. They are no worse and no better than companies that do not have review embargo's.

im more on the buyer beware side of this argument to be honest. if you doubt the quality then dont buy.

The best way to battle this is to stop pre-ordering games or buying them on day 1. Also by boycotting game review sites that are obviously fishing for clicks or in bed with publishers.

To be honest, I haven't really read a game review since firingsquad went under, I get more information from lets plays and word of mouth.

Games media can't die soon enough.

@Nick3306: its a good comparison, these companies have a responsibility to tell the truth not provide misleading information to gain money from others, its just above being a con artist or committing fraud, the honest approach would be to say hey we are releasing this, it has this problem we will fix it as soon as possible.

but i get what you and others are saying companies do this kind of stuff be on the lookout always, fair enough.

@pug987: I agree

You do realize that most companies products don't get reviewed before release anyway right? I am just baffled as to why you think review embargo's are so bad. I get that you think it is them trying to cover up a poor game, but they have legitimate reasons to have it in place and they were stated by other posters above. Early reviews are a bonus and should only been seen as a bonus, not a need.

@Nick3306: its the principle that's involved, they are hoping to make a lot of money, they realize they would make less if people found out that what is being sold is bad and not great as they claim, so to cover it up they hide the truth and use jounrnalists who are supposed to inform the public to hide this fact. its fraud not the worst kind but fraud none the less.

it wont help consumers, it wont help the company, but more importantly it wont help good people who worked hard on the product with the best of intentions keep their jobs because of the bad publicity and lawsuits that may follow all of which leads to a greater loss of sales.

@BassMan: This is really the safest way to go. It can be very tempting to pre-order something that looks like it'll be amazing but once you've been burned, it's easier to Resist The Pre-Order. And really, what's one more day or two of waiting for reviews?