Alone in the Dark V

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
A similar thing happened with 4Players … and seemingly with a few other online sites, too.

Atari threatened them to shut up.

Apparently that's just not true. No lawsuits or anything.

I've got my information from here : http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Atari…meldung/109981

I got mine from Atari, but I'll try and find some independant evidence.

I think you would agree to me if I say that Atari is not "independent" in this point.

So your idea is good.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I think you would agree to me if I say that Atari is not "independent" in this point.

Not independant, but perhaps more authoritative and informed.

4players was the only games magazine that received a letter from Atari in which Atari said they would take legal action against the review. In several other cases Atari threatened that they would do it. Why exactly should anyone doubt that? Why should several gaming magazine, which coincidently all gave AITD V a rather bad score, claim something like this if it weren't true?

Why would other sites that gave AITD a bad score not also get such things then? And if I remember, the score from 4 players wasn't even that low.

What evidence have the sites put up to show that legal action was going to be taken?

Originally Posted by kalniel
Why would other sites that gave AITD a bad score not also get such things then?

Maybe because another Atari subsidiary in different country was responsible? Or maybe Atari knew from the JoWooD G3 incident that a phone call and a nice letter is not enough to impress 4Players?

What evidence have the sites put up to show that legal action was going to be taken?

All they need to. They made the claim, Atari suffered a PR disaster and did not deny it. Such things are always denied if the denial is the truth.
4Players also posted quites from the letter Ataris´ lawyer sent them, and a short newsbit about their "compromize" with Atari, which was basically "The rating stands, Atari withdraws all legal actions. We are looking forward to working together again."
Ataris´ problem here was that they overlooked that 4Players is part of a company far bigger than them. They can afford a law suit. Maybe they could have bullied a smaller site.

Originally Posted by kalniel
Why would other sites that gave AITD a bad score not also get such things then? And if I remember, the score from 4 players wasn't even that low.

What evidence have the sites put up to show that legal action was going to be taken?

The problem in the case of 4players and a few other gaming magazines was that they published their reviews prior to the release of AITD V. Atari had an embargo planed which only allowed gaming magazines that signed a contract to review a particular test-version of the game delivered directly by Atari to publish an review prior to release. 4players however got hold of a retail copy even before the official release of the game and was therefore not bound to that embargo. That made the case against 4players especially strong since Atari more or less implied they used a pirated copy. Other sites also published unfavourable reviews, but based on the copy they got from Atari, so Atari couldn't do much more than threaten them - after all they did nothing wrong.
Apart from that 4players and Atari had a history in the case of AITD V. 4players published a preview of the game which was not particularily favourable. As a consequence Atari withdraw a advertising campaign that was planed for the game on 4players.

Not looking good for Atari here in the UK.

Stumbled upon another report:
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/spiel…561478,00.html