[quote name='Trakan']Can everyone please read the OP more carefully? I'm reading through this thread and more than half the responses have the wrong idea or don't understand it.
Cheapy is asking if it is okay for people to post impressions of games if they get them early. It's not condoning or rewarding piracy in any way.[/QUOTE]
No...but given the site already has a strong anti-piracy stance, it isn't too hard to make the inference.
I'd say no, in the interest of the site being consistent with its policies across the board. Regardless of how the game is obtained, if there's a chance that it could result in action against CAG I'd say we shouldn't allow posting of the early impressions. Sure, it may not be likely, but nobody here was expecting Circuit City to go after speedy and Cheapy either.
Look at big games like GTA IV or Metal Gear Solid IV - they've got NDAs that, usually with one or two exceptions, require everybody to wait to publish the reviews until the game is released. If a review of a title like that were to pop up here and get noticed, it'd mean that street date was broken, that the copy of the game was pirated, or that an NDA was broken. I don't think the first scenario would affect CAG, but the other two wouldn't exactly invite a warm response from the publisher.
Hell, if it comes down to it, just do what Ain't It Cool News did with the Star Wars reviews - it yanked all of them (even the legit, non-NDA ones) until the day Clone Wars was released, and then reposted them then.