Konami blacklisted IGN over Castlevania

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When Konami Blacklisted IGN Over Castlevania -- CLS Side Quest - YouTube

Former IGN editor Colin Moriarty has revealed a series of events that occurred between 2010 and 2013 in which Konami blacklisted IGN US over what Castlevania: Lords of Shadow developer MercurySteam called "unfair treatment."

In 2010, IGN reviewer Daemon Hatfield gave the original Lords of Shadow a 7.5, which then-Konami producer Dave Cox and MercurySteam considered, in Moriarty's words, "a sign of systemic bias." In a series of since-deleted tweets, Cox alleged that Hatfield didn't even play the game, and that people should disregard it as a result.

Konami also cancelled a scheduled appointment with IGN US at E3 2012, in which IGN would have covered Lords of Shadow 2. However, in early 2013, IGN was given access to MercurySteam's 3DS spin-off of the Lords of Shadow games, Mirror of Fate. Moriarty later gave the game a 4.7, which reheated the tensions between IGN and Konami, and ultimately led to Konami blocking IGN US from interviewing developers at E3 2013 and blocking Moriarty from covering Lords of Shadow at Gamescom 2013.

Ultimately, once IGN threatened to tell its readers about what Konami was doing, they relented and allowed Moriarty to view a demo of Lords of Shadow 2. He ended up reviewing it when it launched in 2014, and gave it a 6.5. Konami also granted IGN the usual access to their other big games of the past few years, indicating that the problem lied with Dave Cox and not Konami itself.