Gaming History You Should Know: Driv3rGate July 10, 2016

There is no doubt that the Grand Theft Auto 3 games were some of the highest rated and best selling titles of the mid-2000s. A decade ago, the Driver series was the closest competitor to Grand Theft Auto and its publisher, Atari, wanted to take advantage of that fact. They pumped millions of dollars into developing Driver 3 (Driv3r) with the intention to release it on the PS2, PC and original Xbox before the release of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. The problem was Driv3r was just not ready.

Atari had a plan. Knowing the popularity of the Driver franchise and the heavy anticipation for Driv3r in particular, Atari shopped around early review access to magazines in exchange for guaranteed 9.0 scores. Then the game was released and the rest was history.

Game journalist Larry Bundy Jr, better known to the Internet as Guru Larry, was able to go back and find the story behind Driv3rgate.  So take a look and watch the story of gaming’s first true media scandal.

Sadly, Atari and Future saw fit to delete most of the complaints on their forums and references to the scandal aren’t even included on the game’s Wikipedia page.  Thankfully gamers have a long memory.  Good job Larry!