In the gaming industry, it’s become pretty standard practice for the publishers/developers of major upcoming releases to hand out “review copies” to prominent critics several days ahead of the title’s launch, allowing them to write articles that will accompany the game’s release.
Players usually look forward to those initial reviews too, as they are an important factor in deciding whether or not a new game is worth buying. And when a game that’s considered important by many ends up not getting copies sent out to any reviewers, this is a major red flag for most.
According to recent reports, the game will only be made available to reviewers at the same time as players, so those who are still on the fence regarding “Mafia 3” will have to wait a little longer before the reviews start coming out.
At the same time, the game is already available for pre-order on various platforms, including Valve’s Steam, but players should be careful with spending their money on it before they’ve had a chance to see what the title will actually offer.
It’s probably not unreasonable to expect a good game in the end – after all, the first two “Mafia” titles were huge hits, and many players are looking forward to the next one for a good reason. But we’ve seen plenty of franchises go downhill after one or two solid installments, and nobody is really insured against this sort of thing happening.
Everything we’ve seen about “Mafia 3” so far seems to point towards a well-made, polished game. And while this might offer consolation to some of the more skeptical players, others have actually raised their eyebrows even more in light of that. After all, if the game is as good as all the trailers make it out to be, why aren’t reviewers getting it ahead of time?
Some publications have been very open and direct with their fans with regards to the situation, such as Polygon, who explained that they will not be able to prepare a review for the game ahead of time, and their readers will have to wait.
Other critics have outright labeled the situation as a red flag, warning gamers to stay away from the game until it’s absolutely certain that it’s a good purchase. And then there are the more extreme voices in the crowd, such as those claiming that they won’t even buy the game at all due to the developers’ attitude.
This seems like a huge fiasco for “Mafia 3” before it’s even out, and we hope that this situation won’t tarnish the reputation of an otherwise properly made game. If the mess ends up too big, most players will probably wait for the game to get a big discount before they spend any money on it, which will practically doom the franchise to end there and then.
We’ve also seen that players can be quite vindictive and unreasonably aggressive when they feel like they’re being treated unfairly. Steam’s “user reviews” feature has made this particularly problematic recently.
Sometimes players would swarm to a game’s page to give it bad ratings just because of something the developer has said or done, entirely unrelated to the quality of the game itself. It’s not far-fetched to imagine many players posting a negative review of “Mafia 3” just because of the situation with the pre-release review copies. Although it’s questionable how much that would harm 2K Games, considering each of those players would have to buy the game in order to leave a review in the first place.