PR Shouldn't Be Your Fall Guy

Stumbled upon an article this morning about a recent video game launch, where a Sony executive chose to blame PR for the backlash from gamers.

“It wasn’t a great PR strategy, because he didn’t have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer."

Now, we weren't involved in this launch and aren't video game PR experts but this pointing of fingers and blaming PR (or the lack thereof) for the issues the company and its developer partner are having with their audience just doesn't add up.

• Gamers are having issues with the actual game. That sounds more like a product problem than a communications problem. Sure, PR should have flagged their concerns (if they knew about the bugs) and recommended delaying the launch until the product was actually ready. If PR wasn't aware of the issues, that just reiterates the original statement: this is a product issue, not a communications issue.
• As the larger company, Sony should have realized that their developer partner didn't have a PR strategy or person in place and taken the lead. Sony has the budget and team in place to be able to assist a smaller developer on a product launch. If this was a high enough priority launch, we're shocked that Sony didn't own the communications plan from the start.
• Internal and partner communications are critical for these types of launches. All stakeholders from all departments and companies involved should be aware of what is happening and when. The lack of communications between product and PR as well as Sony and Hello Games is very apparent and rather than be transparent about what happened, Sony chose to point the finger at their partner and PR. 

We should all learn from this example of how NOT to communicate and work with our partners, launch products (until they are actually ready for primetime), and be held accountable. The blame game isn't smart.