The PR firm responsible for Duke Nukem got itself in hot water today as it made veiled threats to Web sites who delivered poor reviews of the game. (From what I’ve seen, that would be all of them). It got so bad that 2K Games fired the PR firm this afternoon.
That is, until the Redner Group’s official Twitter account posted something you almost never see: an open threat stating that outlets who reviewed Duke Nukem Forever poorly may not receive review copies of games in the future. Anyone who has done this job for any amount of time has suffered through a dry spell after giving a publisher a bad review, but this is the first time the threat of a blacklist has been made public.
Duke Nukem’s PR threatens to punish sites that run negative reviews [Ars Technica]
This PR firm has some obvious substance abuse problems to be so stupid and so deluded.
The fact is that blacklists are nothing new – almost every tech journo I know has been stonewalled by some PR firm or department or another because they said something bad that someone disliked. But for a firm or the CEO of a firm to be so brazen about it is what makes this one unique.
In fairness, Jim Redner apologized right away and promised to reach out to individual reviewers, but by then the damage had been done and 2K Games sent him and his firm packing.
OR posting that in fact that tweet was NOT from someone of authority but some peeved underling who has been found and fired as such practices are against everything they stand for. They do not believe in hindering free of speech etc.
In fact I won’t be shocked if something like that does come out if only to protect potential future jobs. It will likely be a blanket statement and could be a lie (the fired guy was actually the janitor who does a bad job anyway but shhhh don’t tell the massives that)