To clarify the situation with Atari's legal threats in response to 4Players' review of Alone in the Dark, I spoke with 4Players editor-in-chief, Jörg Luibl. I also attempted to contact Atari but have yet to hear back from them.

It seems as if there isn't, in fact, a lawsuit so much as a toothless legal threat. It also seems as if 4Players was able to purchase a copy of the game on June 16th, four days in advance of the official June 20th release date. They were apparently in no way exceptional, and the street date was routinely broken throughout Germany. In which case, Atari's beef should be with retailers. As for Atari pulling advertising in response to 4Players' lukewarm preview, Luibl said he's accustomed to publishers doing that sort of thing.

I still disagree with Luibl's assertion that Atari is "against freedom of the press". It's pretty silly to extrapolate from a company's legal machinations some sort of higher political motive. But it does sound like 4Players is pretty much beyond reproach, and someone in Atari's legal department is awfully embarrassed right about now.

For more details, you can read my Q&A with Luibl after the jump.

Tom Chick: Is there an actual lawsuit filed against 4Players, or did you simply receive a threat of a lawsuit (for example, a cease-and-desist letter)?

Jörg Luibl: We received a fax with a threat of a lawsuit, more precisely: an action for an injunction about an amount in dispute of 50.000 Euro. [It said] we should remove our review at 2 pm.

TC: Have you been in contact with Atari since they asked you to pull the AITD review? If so, why not? And if so, what has happened since?

JL: After our review, we received no mail, no call, just the fax. One week before the official release we asked Atari via E-Mail, when we can anticipate the review copy. They did not answer, so we bought all versions.

TC: You claim to have purchased the game from a retailer who broke the street date. It seems like this would be easy enough to prove (for example, scan the receipt or post a picture of the retail box). Is this something 4Players has done to refute accusation that you reviewed a preview build or a pirated copy?

JL: We have the receipt. And we never use preview copies for a review. It's amazingly naive that a publisher apparently can not imagine, that a retail copy is available a few days before the official release: Even private persons could get hands on a copy in Germany on Monday!

TC: Since you purchased the game from a retailer who had essentially "broken the rules", did you or your staff have any misgivings about using that to review the game early? In other words, was there any potential ethical dilemma at 4Players about reviewing a game obtained by illegitimate means, even if the illegitimate means were no fault of your own?

JL: We have no ethical dilemma: We bought the game, we reviewed the game. Nobody broke any rules, there was no NDA for us. The retailer is a distributor who has nearly every game in stock a few days before the official release – so we got the official copy on Monday, 16th of June. Some of our German press colleagues received the official versions even on Friday, 13th of June! Atari did not send us the review copy because of our unsatisfying preview, so we had to prepare ourselves.

TC: You claim that Atari pulled advertising in response to a preview that was written of AITD. Did Atari officially connect pulling the advertising with the content of the preview? Or is this connection inferred from the timing?

JL: I can just refer to the information of our marketing: There was a booked advertising campaign for Alone in the Dark in April, which should start in the end of May. But when our preview went online on 20th of May, it was canceled. But we are used to these sanctions and this is not the reason for us to get excited. We are pissed off, because they want to suppress our freedom of speech as games magazine. We will not back down, just because Atari lose their nerves in the face of the missing quality of Alone in the Dark.