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Sony contacted Vice due to more critical review of The Last of Us Part II
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
It seems like they just wanted some feedback just because that review is an outlier or they just wanted to get a better understanding of what the reviewer was saying. No they didn't force him to change his score or his opinion. They just wanted a better understanding of his opinion and this was entirely Sony PR. ND is probably celebrating at the 94 Avg and millions of copies sold lol
They reached out on behalf of Naughty Dog. Way to be overdramatic. It is odd that you are way more upset about this than the actual reviewer who was happy to reply.
Except the reporter has been constantly making snide digs and petty remarks, and also has thin skin by blocking people who call him out on twitter.
There was nothing wrong with Jason reporting on the crunch issue. However he constantly uses it to rub it in the face of people who work at the studio as a defense for making snide comments about the work, not the conditions it was made under.
Comparing some behaviour of some online stans to the reaction of a plattform holders is weird.
Fanboys are always gonna act up, that's a given - a publisher reaching out like that to reviewers isn't a good look.
Ah, I see we're at the stage where people are now attacking the review and the reviewer, and it's Rob Zacny of all people in the industry lmao. Took longer than I thought lol. Almost to 10 pages. But yeah, time to bounce, nothing at all productive to say at this point when you get that point. Maybe it never was considering the Naughty Dogites in general, but especially once you get there, you know even the smallest morsel of intelligent discussion is lost.
Austin is good people. His thread is important too
And note that "the phone might even ring BEFORE your review is out"
This is going to do the game no favours and will do more to harm its reception on the internet than a bad review.
This breaks down to two factors:
1.) People already think reviews are paid for by AAA publishers, and this only helps more people think that.
2.) People have been fired before for giving negative reviews. Or been pressured to change their reviews. It's in the best interest of everyone if everyone involves stays far away from the appearance of impropriety.
Yep, the only embarrassing is actually some of the posts here. Nothing wrong with what they did to understand the criticism more. :)
User Banned (Permanent): Inflammatory trolling, numerous prior bans for inflammatory behaviour
Are you OK with me screaming bloody murder and you being a racist based on your post?
If you're not, are you really OK with people having different experiences and interpretations?
So silly, think before you post
Next time, VICE won't receive an early review copy. I really don't get the high metacritic score for that game. For me, this game is more like 75-80, not >90. I guess Sony had few more calls of this kind.
Some people really need to read the full quote from the article about how and when companies contact reviewers.
"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."
So while review contacts do happen it's not usually from companies the size of Sony or about non-objective issues.
Obviously there's no allegation Sony tampered with review scores but it's also not standard practice or normal for a big company to contact a reviewer under these circumstances.
It just makes them look insecure about the scores. Which is ridiculous both because they are just review scores and because it's got great scores regardless.
"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."
So while review contacts do happen it's not usually from companies the size of Sony or about non-objective issues.
Obviously there's no allegation Sony tampered with review scores but it's also not standard practice or normal for a big company to contact a reviewer under these circumstances.
It just makes them look insecure about the scores. Which is ridiculous both because they are just review scores and because it's got great scores regardless.
I'm not really a fan of Jason Schreier but he didn't do anything to deserve having Neil, Cory, and Troy get their fans to harass him.
Something I'm sure Neil Druckmann knows is the effect him screenshotting tweets has, with him being buds with Colin Moriarty and all.
Exactly. It's incredibly frustrating to see sentiments like this on era of all places
I would argue that it is a part of their job, at least in essence. The reviews they write is a form of feedback that developers can take into consideration in making their next game a better one.
Now their job ends after they have written their review but I don't think it is a bad thing to ask them for clarification/additional feedback if the developers feel that some things in the review are unfair. It is another thing though if they pressure the critic to change his review which didn't seem to happen in this instance.
Is it unusual? Yes, the article said as much but it also said it isn't unheard of.
Ok, now we're just back to if "it's too long" is too unacceptably snide for you to take sitting down, you probably shouldn't be making public-facing creative media for a living. If you legit believe that Jason Schreier is out carrying out some personal vendetta against Naughty Dog by "rubbing it in their faces", you've gotten way too paranoid about this stuff.
I played on moderate and found much of this to be true. Game was just throwing resources at me and felt way easier than the first game, which I replayed on normal the week prior.
I don't know how you can look at the game play from 2 compared to 1 and say it's not improved.
Either way this shit is so weird, game is almost universally praised, it's not a good look to be asking why reviewers felt a certain way.
Yes they will. Vice is too big not to. Not worth the news story for Sony.
So do I, and it's completely immaterial to the fact Sony's reaction sucks ass, and Vice can have their own opinion.
Great reply very informative. If you have nothing to add just say nothing. Or you just want to keep adding more negativity to the world.
Are you implying the Vice reviewer did not play the game and just made shit up? That's a pretty big accusation.
I knew this was going to get a thread and the responses don't surprise me at. I never thought people would side with a company's PR over a journalists review, but here we are.
Yeah thinking this isn't a big deal is just incredibly weird to me. The central point of the article is that this combined with all the other crap surrounding the game fosters an environment where you can't have an honest conversation about what's actually in it. This shouldn't be normal. But judging by some of the responses in this thread all people are concerned with is the cycle of hyperbolic praise with each release is preserved.
Totally inappropriate behavior from Sony/ND. The discourse surrounding this game has been a complete mess; from alt-right gamergaters, Playstation fanboys, and defensive creators it has been impossible to have a nuanced and adult discussion about this game. I can't imagine things getting much better until the end of awards season either. Shame this had to happen with what should be a landmark title.
No. When information needs to be corrected the editor in chief gets contacted so that the publication can correct the error if it's an online review or print a correction in the next issue back in the magazine days. This only applies to objectively wrong information, like saying that a game lacks a certain feature that it actually doesn't. Not for expressing an opinion on the game itself.
Maddie and zacny talked together on triple click and both shared similar feelings fyi. That might be it