Did Atari Call Shenanigans?

It is being reported this week that Atari are taking two German gaming web sites to court for posting early reviews of their upcoming product, Alone in the Dark.

This, in itself, would be controversial considering some alleged shenanigans going on within the gaming press about reviews being tainted by advertising dollars (aka Gamespot editor sacking). While these two websites (Gamereactor and 4players) have given the game Alone in the Dark low review scores. Gamereactor giving Alone in the Dark 3 out of 10 and 4players giving the game 68%. The Atari lawsuits are levelled at these websites because Atari did not issue them with prerelease review code of the game. It is alleged that these websites may or may not have acquired their review code of the game through other means.

Coincidentally, this occurred within days of the pirated copy of the game being made available early through some torrent sites.

Is it fair to assume that maybe the "independant" journalism provided through gaming publications is somewhat tainted now? To me, the simplest solution to this issue is for game developers not to release crap games. If their game is crap then their game is crap. This is not the fault of the reviewer. They are only the messenger. This is squarely the fault of the game developer.

If I make myself dinner and it tastes like shit then do I go and blame the supermarket for my dinner? Do I blame the farmers for poor quality vegetables or the cows for the poor meat? No, I blame myself for being a shit cook.

The gaming industry is becoming an industry which promotes the notion that game developers' shit does not stink.