Starfield review controversy traces game journalism’s orbital decay | This Week in Business

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check back every Friday for a new entry.


Starfield launches today for those who paid extra for the Premium edition, so in the grand tradition of Bethesda games, we’re going to talk about how broken stuff is.


No, not Starfield stuff. For all I know, the game has been polished to a shine with nary a glitch in sight.


Instead, we’re going to talk about how broken games journalism is, prompted in part by a mini-scandal around who got review codes in advance, and who didn’t.

QUOTE | “Access to the game appears to have been heavily restricted in the UK, where Bethesda has also not provided copies of Starfield to other websites and YouTube channels owned by Eurogamer parent company Reedpop.” – On Tuesday, Eurogamer editor-in-chief Tom Phillips explained to readers that Eurogamer would not have a review of Starfield in time for Thursday’s embargo.


Writers from UK-based outlets The Guardian, Edge, and Metro also

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Dark week for journalism as four reporters killed around the world | Journalist safety

Ten days before she was assassinated outside a Mexican convenience store, Yesenia Mollinedo noticed two mysterious stalkers following her on a motorbike.

“We know where you live, bitch,” one of them warned the journalist, the director of an online news outlet called El Veraz (The Truthful One) whose motto is “Journalism with Humanity”.

For more than a year, Mollinedo, 45, had been trying to shrug off what she hoped were empty threats designed to silence the stories she published about crime in the coastal town of Cosoleacaque. She repeatedly changed her phone number in an attempt to escape the intimidation. “I don’t think anything will happen to me,” Mollinedo insisted when relatives asked about her safety.

But at about 1.15pm last Monday it did. As the journalist stepped out of the shop with a rookie colleague, the assassins pounced, firing 16 shots that would end the lives of both women.

“Yesenia didn’t owe anything to anyone,” her brother, a fellow journalist called Ramiro Mollinedo, said this week as overwhelmed family members laid her to rest and fretted over their own safety now his sister was gone. “We don’t know who we are up against,” he admitted.

Mollinedo and Sheila Johana

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