Our good friends over at COGconnected have published a story and we feel the need to address it in support of their ethics.
The website was approached by the Indie studio BadFly Interactive and approached them to review their upcoming console game Dead Effect 2. COG expressed their interest in a code and that is where things got a little slimy on the developers part.
BadFly creative director Lubomír Dykast send them a code with a note to remind the site they are not a AAA studio, but an independent studio which is very normal. However, things started to get interesting. The first part of the e-mail said..
“Let me just mention one thing, though: this is an indie game which, unfortunately, is very often compared with big-budget games, and that’s quite a problem and very much damages its reputation in final ratings. Please take into consideration the fact that this game was created by a small team of developers (11) who just try to develop a good shooter game, and that’s about it. Unfortunately, a number of journalists have other, much bigger expectations from it, and that’s very damaging for us eventually.”
The issue with all of these is what was stated at the very bottom of that same e-mail…
“Also, we’re working on several other games that are definitely interesting, and if your review or preview of Dead Effect 2 is very negative, you won’t receive any keys from us in the future.”