We all know what the shitfest Assassin's Creed - Unity is, but what interested me is Ubisoft's demand that reviewers not publish their reviews until twelve hours after the game was released. Corruption and dishonesty has always been a staple of the video game news industry, but I'm on the fence whether this case is unethical. Let's compare this to Kane & Lynch and GameSpot: An editor was fired because the website posted a bad review, and Eidos threatened to pull advertising. There's no black and white there. GameSpot is not demonstrating journalistic integrity and instead bows to pressure.

I agree that Ubisoft's decision is not consumer-friendly, but they're not telling news organizations to lie. To be honest, Ubisoft isn't obliged to give advanced copies to anyone. The BBC notes Sega didn't for Sonic Boom, and I wasn't upset at them for doing so. It doesn't benefit the company itself in any way because reviewers can warn about potential problems. Would that help customers if they did? Of course. But I view video games like movies: If it's a big-name game, people are going to buy it anyway so there's lots of revenue opening day. If it's shitty, word gets out and numbers drop. That's irregardless if journalists are involved or not.

It's not like I'm comfortable with the agreement that Ubisoft made with news organizations, but both sides were brutally honest here. Ubisoft wanted their pre-order and first day money, and news were allowed to complain all they wanted... so long as it was after the release time. If it really bothered them, they wouldn't've signed the agreement with Ubisoft. In reality I don't give a shit what places like GameSpot have to say considering as I've mentioned above their morality is dubious and reviews in general don't sway me. At the end of the day it's an opinion, and I often have a different opinion than other people. I have a lot of respect for Yahtzee and Zero Punctuation, but he and I disagree on a lot of things. He derided many things I loved, and that didn't stop me from buying it, much like anything I write here won't stop him from loving things. Admittedly here it's dealing with facts and not opinions — a glitch exists regardless of how you feel about it — but at least it's not like the old days where once you buy a cartridge, that's it. And Ubisoft learned their lesson this time around.