14 DAY TRIAL // Alone in the Dark is probably the biggest title we will see from Atari this year and many think that it also represents a lifeline for a sinking company. This game is a chance for them to turn the tables, but it is slowly turning into a real nightmare. We reported back in the winter of 2007 that Atari was having some financial difficulties and that they were forced to sell the Diver license to Ubisoft and the Timeshift license to Vivendi. Those weren't good signs.
Everybody was eagerly expecting the launch of the new title in the series and from what we could gather so far, it seems to be a sure success. Horror shooter combined with a lot of action and physics driven gameplay looked perfectly salable. Unfortunately, a few days ago, reviews that were less than favorable started to crop in Europe and further more, they categorized the game as mediocre at best. Atari started to convulse like a wounded animal and began to lash out at a few websites for posting reviews before the launch, claiming they were written based on a pirated copy (that surfaced sometime ago on file sharing networks).
According to Shacknews.com, there are quite a few sites that were intimidated to retract their reviews. Gamer.no claims they were contacted by Atari shortly after publishing a 3/10 review and asked to remove the damaging material saying they had never sent them a copy of the review. Gamer.nl, a Dutch website, had the same problem and in their case, the situation is even weirder because they claim to have a copy from Atari (apparently, they were supposed to respect an embargo until the release date).
The most famous case comes from Germany, where a well-known gaming portal, 4players.de has actually been sued for publishing a review based on an allegedly illegal copy and not one from Atari (apparently, the 68% grade for the Xbox 360 version had nothing to do with it). According to 4Players.de (the article is a rough translation from German), Atari even cancelled a promotional campaign on the website. It's a double edged sword: maybe they were upset because they thought the Germans were running an illicit copy or it was an attempt to force their hand into raising the grade.
Either way, the future looks grim for the Alone in the Dark franchise and even for Atari, because if they fail, no amount if Dragon Ball Z games will save them from bankruptcy. If the publishers haven't learned from the Kane and Lynch fiasco between Gamespot and Eidos, maybe they will learn it now. A bad grade is way better than the press that could turn its back any moment.