Reviews for a major game usually appear within the same hour. That synchronisation is arranged in advance through an embargo, and both sides gain something different from it.
The publisher is buying a fixed release day
Code sent to reviewers weeks early would otherwise produce a trickle of coverage across the whole period. Early reviews would be based on unfinished builds and later ones would be lost in noise.
An embargo collapses that spread into a single moment, timed to sit near the release date. The publisher gets a concentrated wave of coverage when players can act on it.
It also protects against a partial picture. A reviewer who has played four hours cannot publish a verdict on a forty-hour game before anyone has finished it.
Outlets accept the terms for access
A review published a week after everyone else's earns a fraction of the readership. Being late is expensive in a way that is difficult to recover from.
Accepting an embargo secures early code, which is the only way to publish on time. The alternative is buying the game at launch and publishing days behind.
Larger outlets sometimes decline anyway, judging that their audience will wait. Smaller ones rarely have that option, which is why embargo terms fall unevenly.
The timing of the embargo carries information
An embargo lifting several days before release usually signals confidence. The publisher expects reviews to help sales and wants them working during the pre-order window.
An embargo lifting on release day, or after it, removes reviews from the purchase decision for anyone buying early. That pattern is widely read as a defensive choice.
Neither is proof of anything about the game. But the correlation is strong enough that experienced readers treat late embargoes as a reason to wait.
Conditions attached to the code shape coverage
Embargo agreements often specify more than a date. They may restrict which content can be shown, prohibit discussion of story elements, or forbid capturing footage from certain sections.
Some of these restrictions protect players from spoilers, and reviewers would apply them anyway. Others narrow what can be criticised, which is a different thing.
Outlets that disclose the terms let readers judge the constraint. Where terms are undisclosed, a reader cannot tell whether an omission was editorial.
Online games break the model
A multiplayer game cannot be meaningfully assessed before launch, because empty servers do not test matchmaking, stability or population behaviour.
Reviewers respond by publishing impressions first and a scored verdict later, once live conditions exist. The embargo governs the impressions, not the conclusion.
This has gradually decoupled review timing from release timing for a whole category of games. The embargo still exists, but it no longer marks the point at which the game has been judged.