Zhukov said:
That strikes me as rather petty on your part.
It doesn't effect you in the slightest if someone else gets the game for free and/or early as part of their job. You're just being envious.
Bethesda is not doing you a solid. This does not benefit you in any way. They are doing this entirely for their own benefit then justifying it with bullshit about fairness.
On the other hand, I don't mind them doing this. Publishers don't owe critics anything and this doesn't affect me since I don't bother reading reviews when I can just look up unedited gameplay on Youtube whenever I want.
If Bethesda releases a broken game, I know I'm probably going to hear about it on Twitter or Reddit or any number of places that the game is broken and has problems. I then know what I'm getting into by if I choose to buy the product.
Early reviews don't help me in anyway. But I'll tell you something that would annoy me.
Angry Joe.
I'm just using this as an example, I don't even think he got an early review copy of Mafia 3, because his review came out later. But I'm watching his review, and I'm watching him ***** and moan about the fucking skybox. Cause the friggin' clouds aren't pretty enough for him.
Now in a fantasy world were he does get that free early review copy of Mafia 3? As a hypothetical consumer that is enjoying Mafia 3 inspite of it's flaws, yeah that kinda does tick me off he gets a game for free and instead of digging how cool it is to live out a revenge fantasy of killing the KKK in the 60s he's ***** about the fucking clouds.
And on top of that? Joe did that review ON TOP OF streaming his entire playthrough of it. If you watched that stream? You didn't need to watch his review.
So I ask, in the world were Lets Plays are a thing, why do we need Game Critics?