We've all heard our share of ridiculous and baffling lawsuits before, but this one was exceptionally interesting considering the circumstances. It seems that Atari has decided the best course of action for them was to sue a German gaming website following a negative review of Alone in the Dark. According to Atari, they are not suing Gamer.nl over the negative review itself, but because the person who reviewed it supposedly used a pirated copy of the game to do such. They claim that Gamer.nl should provide them restitution for this offense, though I'm sure there asking a lot more than street price for the game.
Gamer.nl contradicted the statements, claiming the game was provided to them directly by Atari. What's more, they claim that Atari says they only let "high scoring" reviews release before embargo. If that is true, it's pretty shoddy business - only allowing positive reviews to surface and threatening with lawsuits over negative ones. Interestingly, Gamer.nl isn't the only reviewer that Atari has demanded to have reviews pulled from - Gamer.no and GameReactor were also served with takedown notices for their reviews, claiming they must have been using pirated copies as well. One of the sites in question claims their copy was actually purchased at retail.
Whether or not the reviewed copies of the people being sued were pirated, it seems as if Atari is only interested in suing those who portray their games in a bad light. I hope this does not become a trend.