There are rumors circulating that Google may be in the process of trying to buy Valve. Yes, the same Valve that made that Portal game we all loved so much. Also the same Valve that is about to drop Left 4 dead that we are looking forward to playing. The PC game download store Steam which is currently owned by valve may be the biggest reason that Google may be eying Valve.
The former Editor In Chief of EGM Dan "Shoe" Hsu has this very interesting article about game reviews on his blog. The piece is written by "an anonymous guy from a big publisher" who speaks on why publishers pressure publications, pull ad buys and blacklist reviewers and publications when their games get unfavorable reviews. Below is a quote but I do recommend you read the full piece.
What many gamers don’t understand is how busy journalists can be – and also how lazy. Lets say you have a game that takes 30 hours to complete, and reviewer plays 2 hours of it and gives it mediocre review based on the first few levels, just because he has 10 other games to review and can’t put in 20 hours. Or when seeing a game pre-release, the journalist complains about things in the game that are obviously work in progress. Or when an editor of a big games website gives his FPS guy a sim racing game to review. Or when someone looks at all the other reviews online for a game, and just follows the crowd by posting a similar review (look at what’s happening to Too Human right now… does that game deserve scores that bad?). These things happen all the time.
Amazon just stepped their shipping game up. Now for $5.98 you can get video games on the release date. Consider me interested but not sold. I think its still cheaper to just drive to the store to buy a game.
So for the last month i was wondering if my EGM subscription ran out. I found it odd that I never got any "please renew" notices. Anyway last Friday I received last months issue. I was like "what the fuck?" this is late as hell. Then yesterday I received the new EGM, less that a week after last months late issue. They need to get that shit ironed out. Getting magazines late really blows and is not a good look. Especially in this internet age.
