This week sees the release of a major AAA Xbox 360 title, Fable III. The Lionhead poster game has been the focus of some positive previews, comes from a well respected studio and is probably the Xbox 360’s big exclusive for the remainder of the year. Hopes are high, but you’ll have noticed there’s no reviews for the game yet – and that’s because reviews of the Microsoft published title are embargoed until 5am BST Tuesday, the day of release. *
What does that mean, though? Well, put simply it means that sites like ours can’t give the game a score until the embargo date and time expires, although we can do previews and talk about it. This, as you may have heard recently in connection with a number of other titles, isn’t uncommon – almost every publisher enforces these restrictions on their big games and for a number of different reasons which we’ll cover in this blog.
The first reason that publishers lock down reviews until the game is out is that they know the game isn’t particularly strong: this isn’t the case with Fable III (our review is locked and loaded in our queue ready for publication and I’ve read it) but it is the case with some other games we’ve come across over the years. I’m not going to name any particular ones as it doesn’t really matter for this article, but it’s safe to say that on occasion reviews are held back as a wave of negative ones could damage sales.
Likewise, though, there are positive reasons for a game’s reviews to be embargoed: when a game’s embargo is up every site that’s reviewing it will ‘go live’ simultaneously, immediately creating a diluge of free press and much discussion about it. The game will get its 15 minutes of fame, plastered all over every gaming website and news aggregator across the world – you won’t be able to miss it.
In addition, it’s not unrealistic to acknowledge that if there’re two big games out in a single week, especially from different publishers or on different platforms, the embargo date is a delicate juggling act for the PR companies in charge: which goes first, or do you blast them both at the same time to do battle for column inches? And remember that embargo dates and times can change right up to the last minute.
Also, in relation to embargoed reviews, there’s the phenomenon of the ‘early’ review: this is when a website or publication gets exclusive rights to ‘go before’ everyone else, be that for a week, a day or an hour. Take Medal of Honor, for example, which saw Computer and Video Games publish their review a day ‘early’ and Eurogamer go a few hours later. Naturally I’ve no idea of the circumstances, but CVG’s review was the top story on N4G (a popular news aggregator) for the day which means that there’s lots of traffic at stake.
And then there’s mistakes – something I’ve seen a bit of over the years. Quite how a website’s server clock can confuse BST and GMT on a regular basis makes me wonder how the guys in charge manage to tie their own shoelaces in a morning, but it happens, often meaning that whilst our scheduler keeps our stories in check until they’re meant to go live, these timing accidents often give other sites the chance to push their stories out an hour early.
It’s not always about reviews though. About three weeks before the world knew about the latest MotorStorm game I was invited, along with representatives from other sites, to attend a press event in London which would serve as the game’s first outing. We were given the name, the chance to ask questions and a single track to demo at our leisure. Thankfully, and presumably because the attendees in this case could be trusted, any leaks of the game came from other sources – most gamers didn’t even know the name until the embargo was up. In this case: instant mass excitement over a brand new game.
But what happens if you break an embargo? Well, it depends on the situation. Sometimes you’ll get an angry ‘phone call, sometimes you’ll be asked to take down whatever it is you’ve put up and sometimes you’ll be breaking an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and could be responsible for the costs of the publisher and PR company having to fix your mistakes, which obviously isn’t ideal. Sometimes it’s even illegal to do so.
Worst of all, for sites like TheSixthAxis at least, is that any embargo breaking will be the end of your relationship with the company in question.  Thankfully PR agencies, publishers (and indeed developers, who we have lots of behind the scenes dealings with) know they can trust us and know that we don’t break embargoes. Sure, we’ll get angry and moan about it when others do, but we try to stick to our principles wherever possible. You certainly won’t find us pushing something out and then changing the publication date…
Now then, Fable III eh?
* The embargo in this particular case relates to the release of the US version of the game, but the embargo holds worldwide.
This blog is the personal opinion of the author.
SpikeyMikey23
im ignoring the the title and subheading! :-P, just like some sites ignore embargo’s. fable 3 eh, ive never tried a fable game, the mrs loves em, got 3(collectors) on pre-order for her birthday. had a nice email of shopto this morning saying they have reduced the collectors edition from £52, to under a tenner. Wish they hadnt realised the mistake.
PoorPaddy89
Very interesting article :)
What about different laws in different countries? Isn’t it difficult to enforce the same embargo ‘laws’ wordwide?
Serebii.Net
“Likewise, though, there are positive reaons for a game’s reviews”
You need to fix that =P xD
Liberi Fatali
Doesn’t every human make a mistake?
Paranoimia
Alternatively, as I suspect is the case with the Kinect embargo, it’s because the product is shit, but they want everyone to pre-order and buy it before they actually find out.
colmshan1990
Imagine the attention it’ll get if it’s actually good though…
Everyone finding out at the same time could cause an internet explosion.
Juelz345
I was wondering when someone would turn this into a eff MS &/or Kinect is “shit” post. You win!
Next Post:
Kitten drowns in Bathtub.
User Comment:
Kinect is “shit” and can’t save kittens from drowning in bathtubs!
DJ-Katy
It’s true though, it can’t.
3shirts
I was just thinking and actually Move probably can. With the ball on the end and being plastic it might float enough for a kitten to cling to. It might not work so well afterwards of course
Boomshanks
Great article. I was always interested in how embargoes worked.
Myself I can’t wait for the reviews for Rock Band 3. The embargo ended a couple of days ago but so far there have only been 7 reviews of it. Still waiting for the ones from TSA and Gametrailers
Jimster71
Interesting article. I would guess that the US embargo is the most important one for the publishers, due to the size of the market.
Since the internet is global, there would be little to stop us looking at US sites for their reviews, making specific territory embargos less effective.
tonycawley
Bloody good article that, which is why i love Tsa, you don’t just talk about games, but the industry as a whole. The only thing i didn’t know from that was that it can sometimes be illegal to break an embargo, i thought it was just a gentlemans agreement with obvious ramifications for the people that did the breaking.
bunimomike
With the pint-meister on this one. Great article, nofi. Informative and downright fascinating to see how embargoes play out.
The only downside is Fable III. Meh. :-)
BIGAL-1992
This article=Why I love TSA.
Mike
Fable III looks like a quality game. Fable II was awesome so will deffo pick it up sometime, perhaps when prices drop a bit.
TSBonyman
Interesting and Informative? – It must be TSA!
Great article, I’m sure Fable III will do fine as it’s their third game and they’ve probably honed it to perfection by now.