VGChartz is pretty good.

His car payment is only $200?

Act Independently
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.

Journalists should:

—Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
— Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
— Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
— Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
— Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
— Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
— Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

Source: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

Easy answer? They aren't journalists. Reviewers? Sure. Blogger? Yeah. Journalists? No way. Case closed.

It's a lot different from advertisements on their website, because the check may be going directly to the reviewer, where as an advertisement would go to whoever was in charge of the website.

FFS people, this is not a gift, it is not a favor. It is a promotional stunt. It is not a bribe. OP should change this topic, its very misleading and a very poor topic.

I see this as an excellent way to promote the game. Well done EA!

exactly. Lots of publicity.

Only 200?

It's not like reveiwers have any credibility or internal sense of criticism anyway.

They're just people who say whether they like games or not.

They already review based on biases so who cares?

I actually do believe this was a very dumb stunt... and they don't expect many to cash it.

When studios bribe reveiwers they do it much more covertly.  For example they'll fly you out to their development studio and show you around and put you up in a nice hotel... etc.

This is just anoter level of stupidness in their whole campaign.  I mean back with the "Acts of Lust" thing it should of been obvious that the PR guy working on this was a moron.

I'm waiting for the game to be intentionally delayed and reach stores a couple days late because of an "Act of Sloth."

While 200 dollars may not sway a reviewers opinion on one review, I venture to offer the opinion that its 'small' tokens like this that eventually compound to reviewers turning to upscoring games from major companies. Which in turn causes smaller independant companies (and games) to get much harsher scores or not even get reviewed at all.

Its no secret that games that are deemed 'low profile' often times don't get much scrutiny. Even scores much lower than games comparable to them. Yet games made by 'respected' companies or with high budgets (or which are popular) get much more attention and better scores.

Does this mean that reviewers nit pick their reviews based on what they think their readers will play...or maybe they just don't even play 'low profile' games very far and have a set standard for scoring? I think its a little of both. Either way, it shows yet another flaw in the 'review' system of these sites.