So because the new DOOM game (which I'm liking so far) ended up a success, they decided to keep their "review copies sent only one day before release" policy? I mean...that's their prerogative, but it honestly raises a bunch of red flags when a few other games did the whole "no review copies" thing and ended up being panned (No Man's Sky, Sonic Boom, etc.).

FTFY

not good... just not good.... at least if they still try to force preorders on their customers with some "must have" bonuses

Fine by me, i won't buy until they are drm free anyway....most of the time they are old hat by then.
Not that i read reviews for anything other than technical probs that haven't been ironed out.

They’re fibbers. Bethesda claim they want everyone to play at the same time (streamers, Youtubers, and the media), but they’ve sent out copies to Youtubers a week before release. I think they’re trying to empower their superfans who’re focused on entertainment rather than critique, and can arguably draw more eyeballs to the product than traditional games websites because video is more tangible than the written word. The message from Bethesda to the gaming press here is loud and clear – ‘we don’t need you anymore.’

i hope that its not a sign of bethesda trying to lower the quality of their games, but it kinda looks like that

They are either very confident of their product. Or they are really shit and want to suck people in to buy the waste of money and time

It is very well explained by TB here: I will now talk about Bethesda's review policy for just over 21 minutes.

It doesn't matter if it affects any of you personally or not, it is an anticonsumer an shitty practice anyway. Obviously you should never preorder, but as much information about a game you can have, the better. So I just can't undertand some of the sycophant postsI read above, saying it's for the best. Well, it is for the best. For Bethesda. And nobody else.

If the big game reviewers had any balls whatsoever, they would respond to this by doing all their reviews of Bethesda games a week after they launch.

I dont have problem with this as long as they are not offering bonus content or discounts to people who pre-order their games.
If there is nothing to force you to not wait until the reviews I have no problem with it.

I have problem only if they try to force you (by offering extra content) to buy their games before the reviews out.

first:
As (correct me if I am wrong) no big player is doing demos anymore, you would have to rely on trailers and similar and we all know how good they compare to reality, hence:
If they would have balls, they would make a review saying 0 points! That would be balls of steel!
(sorry couldn't resists ;) )

They say they're doing this so that everyone gets to play at the same time, like the system of sending out review codes was some kind of injustice to the players who couldn't play that early. Think of that; I've never read something more filled with corporate-driven lies than that.

They're shifting goal-posts from the question of whether reviews may help people decide whether to buy something to talking about how much of an injustice it apparently is that reviewers may get an copy early for review purposes.

Either way, I'm not a day-one purchaser for almost anything (bought a game on week one once, never doing it again unless its physical / limited supply), especially for games I can wait for discounts to buy.

On the other hand, it seems day one and first week purchases make up a huge bulk of a game's sales, so I'd be interested in hearing such a guy's view on this.

I learned my lesson long time ago: no pre-order, 100% price only for a very good game, check the reviews before doing anything stupid, reviewers are people, people may be wrong.

So Bethesda forbids early access review. That's a good thing. Why? Because now gamers will be even more careful, Bethesda will lose some money because of smaller pre-orders and will try to get better. Yeah, I'm an optimist!

I'll be brutally honest here: if that IS the case, then the gaming press itself is the culprit for making themselves irrelevant to the process in the first place. If the games press hadn't trodden all over the very same people that tend to enable their career choices, it's likely that the current state of distrust that exists between core gamers and things like IGN/Polygon/Kotaku/insertgamingsitehere might have fostered a healthier environment.

Instead, games writers chose to chase clicks for ad revenue, as opposed to genuinely interesting content, or by actually writing interesting content about releases/upcoming releases, etc.

Simply anecdotal evidence, but I don't bother with reviews sites or even Metacritic for my games buying decisions anymore, either. I just hop on Youtube and eyeball the game myself. It's certainly a much easier process than listening to some longwinded tryharding pseudointellectual who'd rather be writing about "problematic" design decisions anyway.

Popular reviewers tend to say the same things anyway, it's just phrased or presented differently.
Do we really need 10-15 people, with a shared taste in games, telling us what they like or don't like ?!

Putting YouTubers ahead of a mono-cultured professional media is not necessarily a bad thing, it might be the only the way for a publisher to encourage more than one single perspective on their game, something that benefits the consumers.

Until somewhat recently, i.e. YouTube gaming, we only had a single media view on what constitutes a good or fun game: the one offered by our professional gaming media.

So taking influential power away from this media is a good thing in my book. It might be a chance for gamers to get exposed to other viewpoints on a game, something that is severely lacking in regular media.