nuckles87 on 23 October 2012
| Kantor said: 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. |
That's assuming a company doesn't want to play ball. A lot of the biggest gaming websites are owned by large media conglomerates. IGN is owned by Newscorp, for instance, which isn't a company known for ethical journalism. When news is about the bottom line, most companies won't have any issue with taking some extra advertising dollars for a higher score. A website like this one is independently owned and doesn't have anywhere near the amount of pull that a website like IGN or GameStop has.
