Do you like Modern Warfare? Oh, then you can’t review Battlefield 3
It seems that they are distancing themselves now which is good as it looks really, really bad for them.
Don’t worry, we’ll pay for a copy out of our own pockets and post an honest review.
Incidentally, Penny Arcade are completely wrong on this one. The expenditure of a reviewer buying a game is negligable (unless you are poor like us). The power the publisher levies on the press is access and advance copies. Publications compete based on the access they get to a game via previews, interviews and features, and on how early they get review code. If one publication had to buy its review copies from stores on release day, that publication would be dead in a few months as all of their news, reviews, previews and features would be irrelevant to gamers who would have read all such content somewhere else.