Kinda obvious but still interesting.

http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/comments/former-ign-employee-admits-review-scores-are-skewed-due-to-public-relations

Let me start off this breaking news report by mentioning that IGN is not the only review site or publication that does this, and it’s actually a rather sad, but common, occurrence across the industry. IGN is mentioned specifically so as to make clear how deep this runs, and how serious of an issue this really is. This is not an indictment against IGN, nor are we any less trust worthy of them for doing this. However, this is a harsh reality of the industry and something we have been fortunate enough to have not run into for ourselves yet.

The story goes as this: IGN, among several other publications, alter review scores, alter editorial pieces, based on who is paying the bills. Essentially in order to continue to get review copies of games, to get certain publishers to advertise on your site, things get altered to appear more favorable for certain games. This is not true of every game reviewed or talked about, and it’s hard to point to any specific examples, but ZI just received exclusive confirmation that this happens all the time.

According to a former IGN employee, who will remain anonymous for obvious reasons:

 The truth is that marketing and PR and readers have a major influence on reviews. I can tell you that just about every preview and review you read spouts out a lot of marketing’s message. Journalists don’t get it, see it, realize it, or accept it. But that is the truth

Fact remains that this is something we have all suspected for some time. In fact, we know some sites have literally taken money directly for writing a positive review. In IGN, and other similar site’s defense, they are rarely paid directly for the review itself. Rather, the money, one can assume, is all related to marketing and public relations. The big money makers for any website that posts news. All of our income is produced off of similar methods, where companies come to our ad agency and offer certain amounts of money to display advertising. Naturally, if we talk negatively over and over again about a product it will make them less likely to advertise it to our fan base thus hurting income.

Setting aside our inside source, which even if you have a hard time believing us let me just say that if this was false I would sell this site to any fan for 1$ (that’s how confident I am), this entire story starting initially making rounds today off the words of Rich Stanton on twitter. Rich Stanton is a freelance writer who is known for his work with Future Publishing/PC Gamer. While he is hardly the elite of the elite, it simply adds a lot of weight to the ongoing problem in the industry that many Journalists, and fans, are just afraid to admit to.

IGN responds: http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/comments/ign-strikes-back-editorial-and-marketing-teams-separated-reviews-and-articl

Don't ever trust game journalists.

This is so deeply disappointing. How are video games ever going to be taken seriously when the people responsible for rating and reviewing the games aren't real journalists?

I can barely even go to sites like IGN and GameSpot any more. I much prefer talking to everyone here about upcoming games. The users here are honest with themselves and each other.

As someone who's worked for a magazine and several newspapers, this lack of journalistic integrity really rubs me the wrong way.

This is why I keep saying that critics are useless. They have zero ability to actually say 'good or bad' because they are too busy ensuring that they don't piss anyone off, thus making sure their advertising doesn't go elsewhere. It's a flawed and biased system that doesn't give accurate information except for really glaring problems that can't be ignored.

I'd trust the reviews here on gamrReview more than I'd trust the 'professionals'.

EDIT: There, found it again, an old link I used in a post long past, about the Duke Nukem PR agency review threat.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/06/duke-nukems-pr-threatens-to-punish-sites-that-run-negative-reviews/

Pretty obvious is this, to anyone whos been visiting IGN for Years.

Game journalists aren't journalists: they are gamers! I've been saying this quite some time now. AND they are biased!

Yup.

I don't think this should surprise anyone who has followed the industry for any period of time. Still, it's massively disappointing for those few legitimate publications and developers that don't engage in such practices but have their reputations marred by these others.

I don't really understand this.

We get a fair few review copies, and I swear on my life that not once have I EVER been asked to inflate my review score by anyone. Hell, Naughty Bear was a review copy and I gave that a 3.3. Nobody cared.

Maybe with the big sites, but I don't understand why some people would get unconditional review copies (like us) and others would get them with strings attached. I can perhaps buy that the "world exclusive" reviews are vetted to ensure that they are nice to the game, but think about it: if just one site doesn't want to play ball, it just releases a story saying that the company tried to moneyhat a review, and bam, PR disaster.

Look at what happened with Duke Nukem Forever. The PR guy said they would be reconsidering review copies in future based on some of the reviews, and he was promptly fired.

There is a certain amount of goodwill that you feel towards a company who has given you a free game, but that's all there is to it.

there you go.

all of journalism needs some lies to make the headlines, otherwise the word would be boring.

As opposed to, say, movie reviewers, who appear to have an average age of 65 and tastes stuck in the 1970s?

Reviews will always be subjective, but they are more objective with games than anything else because there are certain standards - good controls, good graphics, good music and sound in general, good length to which all games can be held, and because they are primarily about gameplay, which tends to be the same within a genre, rather than telling a story, which can be wildly different.