Bethesda is under some fire because of their approach to review copies of new games.

Eurogamer mentions how popular, not-so-critical websites, such as YouTube and Twitch, see well-known players receive copies of upcoming games earlier than the journalists.

However, Bethesda states that the journalists receive the games one day officially before the release. (That practice isn’t always kept: there was an example on YouTube that someone got Fallout 4 on Xbox One several days before its launch, although due to the embargo, he wasn’t allowed to upload videos of it until one day before the game hit the stores.)

As Eurogamer’s review editor Martin Robinson says, „why should a publisher hand over its most prized asset to us well ahead of the rest of the world and risk us kicking its face off?” His other thought, saying that the developers should have enough faith in journalists to allow the readers, and thus, the world, with honest, critical analysis of their new games, isn’t something that should even be debated.

Robinson also has a problem with Bethesda‘s „let the gamers and journalists experience the new games at the same time” thought, as there were pre-ordering bonuses to begin playing games a day early. He also says that „influencing people (with a huge following on YT, Twitch, and social media) got Skyrim’s remastered version several days before the release,” which paints Bethesda in a different light all of a sudden.

This year, we have seen several occasions (outside of Bethesda, too!) where journalists did not get review copies until the game was released – one of these examples would be Homefront: The Revolution, as well as Mafia III.