With the embargo on Resident Evil 6 finally over, media outlets were finally able to reveal what they truly thought of the horrible, horrible, poorly-made title. However the entire situation very much brought to the fore the issue of embargoes placed upon media outlets by developers and publishers, in the hope that negative publicity would adversely affect sales, to the detriment of the quality journalism we expect from outlets.
From today, however, a union of video game publishers have come together to announce that, henceforth, they are placing an embargo on embargoes. Roy Bahat, President of IGN and leader of the new organisation, stated that “we’re just a bit tired of being forced into arbitrary contracts in order to review these games. I mean, sure, if they want to slip us a few hundred thousand dollars of COURSE we’ll give them a good review, but then they make us wait to publish it? It’s just ludicrous. People expect quality journalism now, not in a few weeks.”
The embargo embargo is expected to continue by all members into the foreseeable future, and will see them all refuse to accept an embargo, even though that isn’t even what an embargo is. The games industry hasn’t ruled out a counter-embargo embargo embargo, which will see an embargo placed on the embargo embargo, with EA president and wannabe Sith Lord John Riccitiello claiming that “we are willing to continue in this game until they either give up or the word embargo seems to lose all meaning through repetition. Embargo. Embaaaargo. Embargo. Yep, that did it, lost all meaning. What were we talking about again? Something about video games?”
What were we talking about again? Was it censorship? I forget, there were too many silly words.
Embargo’s seem to be up 25% this week. I think it’s a good time to invest.