Pushing Buttons: Bethesda chose not to give us early access to Starfield – and it's readers who lose out

The Guardian's review of space exploration epic Starfield, Xbox's big game of the year, went live this morning – almost a week after other outlets published theirs. This is because Bethesda did not give our reviewer an advance copy, as publishers usually do. Along with several others, including the greatly respected games publications Eurogamer and Edge, we were left waiting until the game's early access release last Friday to play it. Bethesda's reasons for cherry-picking reviewers are known only to itself, but it's far from the only publisher to do this. Sometimes, controlling early reviews is a way to manipulate a game's Metacritic average in the crucial first week of release.