Eidos Reduces K&L Fake Rating Complaints to 'Eidos Bashing'Posted 1:57pm Tue Dec 04, 2007 by Shiva Stella
Tags: editorial, eidos interactive, scores, kane and lynch, jeff gerstmann
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While gamers and gaming journalists everywhere are currently in an uproar regarding GameSpot's firing of Jeff Gerstmann over a poor review score for Eidos Interactive's Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (you can check out our own review here), what's interesting is that Eidos itself has refrained from commenting on the K&L fiasco.
In particular, the company's blatant graphical lie about the game's review scores, which we noticed were preview quotes paired with star rankings that didn't exist (GameSpy was recorded as having given the title a five star rating when the actual review issued three stars; similarily, Game Informer was recorded as issuing a five star rating when it scored the title a 7/10, which is funny because Game Informer doesn't even use a star system).
While Eidos Interactive has remained quiet on the issue, the company's PR trolls have been hard at work handling the damage control on various Kane & Lynch "fan" sites, including this one, which contains a post in which an "Eidos Official" comments that, indeed, those cheeky five stars weren't meant to be viewed as scores because obviously it's common practice to issue star ratings for game previews. Here's the full quote:
One of the sites quoted gave us a score of 7, however it still showed 5 stars. Reason why? they were not actually supposed to be seen as a score. Yes i know you are all gonna say `pull the other one`. However look at the facts (which people seem to ignore), those quotes and stars have been there since the page launched, before ANY review code or scores were received. So the only reason they are being picked on now is cos its fashionable right now to hate us and bash us and everyone is scaling the wall trying to find something new to bash us for.
FYI this is my personal thoughts and opinions and should not be seen as an official comment in any way shape or form.
FYI this is my personal thoughts and opinions and should not be seen as an official comment in any way shape or form.
In the words of our own Aaron Dunlap, who broke the original story, "Silly us for thinking that a star near a review had something to do with reviews giving stars."
What's infuriating about this "graphical misrepresentation" of game scores that don't exist is that Eidos would "forget" to remove the intentionally misleading star graphics and then explain away the fans' negative reaction to being outright lied to as simple Eidos bashing - "bashing" Eidos apparently being the hip thing to do.
What's even more hilarious is that while the stars have since been removed from the official site's splash introduction, the site still parades preview quotes around as though they were the official "review" word on the title.
In other Eidos news, the game's official Eidos forum has been unlocked and is now available for posting. At one point an Eidos admin actually responds to a fan's statement that "they [the stars] are MEANT to be misinterpreted so that people will be misled into thinking K&L is a better game than it is and [buy] it" with:
You mean this is an [advertisement] that is not quite scientifically based? Wow, I never thought I would see the day an advertisement tried to sell me something.
Read: it is peachy to outright lie about your game's review scores if you can get away with labeling them as "design decisions". Thanks for the heads up, Eidos.
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