It’s almost time for Starfield’s review embargo to lift — that’s on August 31, 2023, at 9:00 AM Pacific Time, or if you’re reading this from Southeast Asia, that’s September 1, 2023, at 12:00AM Singapore Time. We still have not received a review code of Starfield from our contacts at Bethesda in our region.
If you are eagerly waiting for what we think of Starfield, it’s quite unfortunate that our review of Bethesda’s biggest role-playing game will be a bit late. Due to the game’s massive structure and the almost endless potential of random encounters, it is difficult for our team to get our thoughts in just a few days.
Publishers are not under obligation to provide us with an early copy nor include us in the list of media outlets for consideration. However, it appears that it’s not only Sirus Gaming that didn’t receive early access but also some other outlets in the Southeast Asia region. Not only that, Eurogamer also published an article stating that they haven’t received a code yet. However, an hour after the article was published, Bethesda provided them access to the game. Other UK publishers such as Metro UK, Edge, and The Guardian haven’t received their copies yet.
Usually, when review copies of games are given access to minimal media outlets, leaving some more significant sites in the dark can mean one thing: the publisher isn’t confident that the game will have a good reception from the media.
I have already reached out to their third-party PR agency, and even directly to Bethesda’s PR manager who oversees our region in Asia-Pacific, on August 22, 2023, and I was told that Sirus Gaming was “identified” as one of the media outlets that will receive a copy “as early as possible ahead of launch”. However, that seems not to be the case as I haven’t heard back from any of their team with the code, and they’re waiting for Bethesda’s “green light” before they can provide us with the code. All I can say is that they are all inconsistent and could have communicated with me properly that we’re considered access when the game goes live on September 1, along with those who pre-ordered Starfield. I would have been still okay with that.
Microsoft and Bethesda have their policies to follow, but limiting access to huge media outlets in the UK and Asia seems to give a lot of red flags, not giving the public a chance to wait for reviews to come in to make an informed purchase decision.
For our dear followers and readers, if you’re waiting for our Starfied review to come out this week, we apologize that it won’t be published when the embargo lifts. Expect what we think of Bethesda’s latest RPG sometime around next week. See you in the stars!