Reality Check: Paid Reviews arnt Conspiracies

seriously who is gamespot trying to fool? paid reviews are wide spread in the industry, is it a coincidence 9gn gets mentioned in every advert for a game and on every magazine cover. and no one is going to convince me polygon are not m$ in disguise and as for gamespot see below

stop paying attention to reviews people and judge the games yourself

@ghostwarrior786 said:

seriously who is gamespot trying to fool? paid reviews are wide spread in the industry, is it a coincidence 9gn gets mentioned in every advert for a game and on every magazine cover. and no one is going to convince me polygon are not m$ in disguise and as for gamespot see below

stop paying attention to reviews people and judge the games yourself

Well said!

Shame on GS, they should know this very very well lol.

Getting copies of the game=/= free high scores. If anything, the company won't give you the product again if they don't get constructive feedback.

Buying ads, on the other hand, is a whole different story.

yeah the kane and lynch example. touche.

@ghostwarrior786: Because not every one of us has disposable income and time to waste playing games to decide for ourselves.

If anything, the fact that we invested so much money into a system means we can't be anything but biased. I would admit it myself buying the Wii U at launch. Am I going to admit online that I made a dumb decision to spend over 500 bucks on a system at launch because of Rayman Legends?

@ghostwarrior786 said:

seriously who is gamespot trying to fool? paid reviews are wide spread in the industry, is it a coincidence 9gn gets mentioned in every advert for a game and on every magazine cover. and no one is going to convince me polygon are not m$ in disguise and as for gamespot see below

stop paying attention to reviews people and judge the games yourself

Yeah that IGN app pre-installed on the PS4 is pretty suspicio... oh wait no, no it isn't.

Some reviews being paid off for good scores doesn't discredit the entire review industry. There are legitimate reviewers out there who get paid to give their opinion, regardless of what it might be. Gamespot reviewers seem to be one group of them.

Funny how one of the developers of Kane and Lynch told Jeff that his review was spot on.

That's why I've been saying, Developers need the feedback from critics so that they can go on and improve from what they have learned.

so true. a sony insider recently admitted to bribing journalists too. for shame, sony.

So your only example is a game that did try to buy a review and failed?

im assuming you are american, i dont know how things work over there but here in uk we can return a game within 7 days of purchase if we dont like it. why not admit to making a mistake? just so some fanboys over the internet might laugh at you? haha come on

the editor getting fired is failed?

Making Video Games is tough business. especially the community 90% retated. I say let'em pay for reviws.

Score is still a 6.

well if they changed it wouldnt it make it too obvious? damage was done, jeff paid for it

There's other ways to manipulate reviews, Konami went to great lengths on MGS4 not giving advanced copies to reviewers who refused not to judge the game on a grocery list of things, and made mandatory review coaching sessions be attended. That's the only way a game that's 75% cutscene gets a perfect score, even though the cutscenes and story are horribly written and boring.

Yea, Jeff paid for it by launching one of the best video game sites in the industry. Poor guy.....

So do you have any proof that most reviews are bought off other than your one failed example? Sure, publishers do shady things all the time but thats hardly the reviewers fault.

@ghostwarrior786:

Reviewers have shitty taste. Dunno if they get paid or not. Forum dwelling gamers have way worse taste though. So you are in a no position to pass judgement.

@ghostwarrior786:

I was going to put a list but stupid GS doesn't recognize lists

**** you GS, your format is a bloody mess.

i swear u are one of the most ret@rted people on here, didnt he lose is job because of the review? how the fu^k is that a failed example?

Score never changed. How was the review bought if it got a mediocre score? duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

holy fu%kin sh%t do i have to spell everything out for u. publishers put pressure on reviewers therefore it cant be a 100% honest review. wtf is wrong with you?

'Eidos threatened to pull ad revenue from Gamespot as a result of his review'

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116360-Jeff-Gerstmann-Explains-His-Departure-From-Gamespot#XGKZmYVY9up5jKyc.99

Like I said, publishers do shady things. Still waiting for examples of reviewers taking money for scores.

Also, every review is biased anyways. They're opinions, not facts. If all you care about are scores then you completely miss the point of reviews.

@ghostwarrior786: All companies bribe reviewers. In other news, the sky is blue

@mems_1224: publishers provide incentives to receive favourable reviews, editors put pressure on reviewers to make sure the publishers stay happy. seriously how are u not getting this?

Proof that editors put pressure on reviewers other than the gerstmann thing?

why wouldnt they still do it? have gamespot found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and have become so wealthy they dont give a sh%t about what the publisher thinks? haha u are so naive

Still waiting for some sort of proof.

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/05/30/possible-mgs4-review-limits/

just look around

I remember the Kane and Lynch thing. That was convincing enough to believe reviewers would get paid. If you can get fired for a lower score then it's all possible.

Thats proof of publishers doing something shady which I never denied. Where is the proof that most reviews are paid for?

@mems_1224: seriously wtf? Wat do u mean how are they paid for? Publishers are deciding wat they can and cant talk about, they are fired if they dont follow orders. Im not gona respond anymore, either u are trolling or grade a moron who cant connect the dots

They get bribed in some form.

@ghostwarrior786: the guy just don't want to see

So, you have no proof then? Thought so.

All reviews are paid for. In one way or another they are all paid for.

Whether you have a magazine or a website you get the vast majority of your income from advertisements. What kind of advertisements do you see on game websites and game magazines 90% of the time? Video game ads. If grand theft auto 5 is shelling out millions in advertising dollars what magazine or website is going to piss them off and risk not getting that money? None. The only time you see a reviewer actually slam a product is when it has no real advertising with them, or if everyone else in the gaming community is outright bashing the game as well. Websites and magazines can only stay in business with advertising dollars. PC accelerator was a great magazine and told it how it was, they went bankrupt because if they didn't like a game they said why they didn't with no apologies and they had their advertising pulled.

How many times have you read a review where the person talks about how valve or gearbox invited them to their studio with a tour, lunch and to play ping pong with the staff before they reviewed the game? How many times have you seen where someone talked about the nice beach house they showed up for a demo play through of a new game? Reviewers are buttered up and treated nice by having money spent on them during a review to make them be more biased, or feel guilty about saying something negative.

Then you have things that are money related like you occasionally hear about reviewers getting fired for scathing reviews. Or you get stuff that comes out to public like gearbox when duke nukem got ripped apart and then randy was saying how he would blacklist reviewers from getting early copies of his games. Or other such financially related things.

uhmmm while i can't say that GS is on anyone's Payroll... i can say they're all over the place in a bad way. I feel they just randomly draw out their reviews from a lottery ticket and just post it then do the same thing again for the score. There has been some pretty good reviews here at gamespot.. but there's been even more bad ones and uninformative ones.. if anything they should at least set up some type of guidelines, I feel as if we can just know how they're gonna react to the reviews before the game is out just because is how they are rather than be welcome by carefully written material and judgement. So i myself can't really credit them as being "legitimate" in a way.

I need to see evidence to make harsh judgments.

That's the part of most conspiracy theories that just doesn't fly. If you don't need direct evidence to believe something then you might as well believe that the world is governed by reptilians, 911 was a false flag operation, the earth is growing in mass and size, there's already a cure for cancer, blah blah blah blah...

If you live your life believing this trash I feel sorry for you. I follow many of these things just for the entertainment value (and there's some really great vids for the 'earth is growing' conspiracy' btw)

I don't deny paid reviews exist, I just don't think every review site or media outlet does it all the time.

Stuff like the MGS4 reviews not allowed to mention long install times at each chapter or Activision treating reviewers for CoD review events are all the proof I need that they at least exist

latest example is Forza 5 for X1, rofl.

'earth is growing' conspiracy' huh kinda make sense scary

The only real question here is just how overt and bad is it. I doubt it is 'here's $5000, we want X score on Y'. It is probably though the much more subtle 'Hey, come get all these freebies and interviews... oh and how is your view of X coming along?'

@ZoomZoom2490: What makes you think it's a bad game?

RETATED like you ?? lol

he is a complete imbecile

We might as well throw biased sites in there too. If you can take money you can also be biased when you don't take money either.

4/10 for Ryse? The game is nowhere near that bad.

Lol half of this thread is a couple people trying to talk sense into someone who doesn't have it.

People think reviewers can be bought because they hated a game that got a good review or liked a game that got a bad review. Also, Gertsmanngate.

I think the situation most often is a little more obvious but less of a conspiracy: Reviewers have no real qualifications and are not necessarily good at what they are paid to do.