By Greg Hazley
Video game publisher 2K Games fired PR agency The Redner Group after the boutique firm’s president warned in a tweet that the firm would blacklist writers who pen negative reviews of 2K’s latest release "Duke Nukem Forever."
The company said Wednesday that it "does not endorse" comments by Jim Redner and that "The Redner Group no longer represents our products."
Redner, a former director at BNC PR who also worked at Edelman, had already backtracked from Twitter comments earlier this week when he said some reviewers had gone "too far" with reviews and that firm was "reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom."
Redner apologized via Twitter after the comments were widely covered online and said he would contact reviewers individually to apologize as well.
"Again, I want everyone to know that I was acting on my own," he said Wednesday. "2K had nothing to do with this. I am so very sorry for what I said."
Reviews of the new game have tended negative.
Ben Kuchera, gaming editor for tech news site Ars Technica, wrote that while retaliation from companies and PR reps happens, it has rarely if ever been done publicly.
"Anyone who has done this job for any amount of time has suffered through a dry spell after giving a publisher a bad review, but this is the first time the threat of a blacklist has been made public," he wrote of the Redner incident.
Meanwhile, gamers reacted to 2K’s firing the agency in various forums.
"Jim Redner is one of the more dedicated and professional PR people I've had the opportunity to work with," wrote one commenter, aegies, on the neogaf.net forum. "It sucks that a single mistake is going to put such a crunch on his career. We've all said something stupid we wish we could take back at some point."
Others were less sympathetic.
"One bad mistake is all it takes. You're a PR man," wrote another commenter, rez, on the same forum. "If you're the reason for bad PR, that's it, you're done. You spend your whole career getting **** like this drilled into your head. It isn't a ‘a little slip,’ it had to have been a very conscious decision."
2K is one of four clients listed on Redner's website as of June 16.
|