Requesting restitution
German gaming site 4Players was filed suit against by Alone in the Dark publisher Atari over a "negative pre-release review [of the game]" (68%), allegedy because it was an illegally pirated copy, though this was an assumption based on the date of publication of the review in question.
According to a 4Players editorial, they purchased a copy of the game from "an insider connection with a retailer who provided the title to the site prior to its retail release."
Atari has backed out of an advertisement deal with the site and is seeking restitution. The company is making similar moves with Scandinavian website GameReactor (who gave the game a 3/10, accusing the site of piracy measures, stating press copies has only been sent out one day before), Norwegian site Gamer.no (3/10, the site claims it bought the title at a retailer and have refused to remove their review), and Dutch site Gamer.nl (5/10):
"Within an hour [after posting], Atari called to have the review pulled off, claiming there was an embargo till Friday," [Gamer.nl staffer] Erwin Bergervoet said in a comment to Shacknews. "Our review copy was sent directly to us by Atari and [was] not a pirated copy. They explicitly told [Gamer.nl] that they only let high scoring reviews break the post-release embargo date."
Atari's response to the matter is such:
"We're happy with the review scores in the UK," a spokesperson explained. "We believe the game speaks for itself."
I was hoping this was going to be good...