Looking at the future section, they truly were the Nostradamus of their time.
Trip Hawkins threatened to pull advertising from GamePro after Portal Runner received an unfavorable review.
EDGE writes that the days of the hardcore gamer are over.
Threads discussing it on the GamesRadar Forum are eventually deleted, though too late to hide the news that 9/10 reviews were given to an unfinished game.
Many other outlets attack the editorial. It is later reposted in January 2008 and some specific companies are called out.
Kotaku does actual journalism and investigates a rumor. Sony doesn't want Kotaku to release the story and later blacklists them. Archived is the last live version found before the article's deletion.
Each ride was worth at least $5000 per person.
Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot for giving a less than glowing review for Kane and Lynch: Dead Men after its publisher Eidos threatened to pull advertising from the site.
Yes, and then came the justified backlash.
Want an expedited review service? That'll be $50.
Eurogamer's journalists didn't even spend a meaningful amount time on a game before reviewing it. This is a common phenomena in games journalism that you can confirm yourself by looking at games' achievements pre-release. Allegedly 31.9% of people with a pre-release copy completed one hour of gameplay in Total War: Rome II by the time most reviews were out.
Fake christian nutsos hired for a marketing stunt.
EA sent $200 checks to journalists to promote Dante's Inferno.
For a $10 game.
This isn't the first time one of the sites, AppCraver, is called out. Another site is even asking for money to do the reviews in the first place.
Not only did Famitsu get promoted in-game, an executive also starred in advertising for it.
Instead of actually reviewing the game (Nier) and writing about it, he drops a few short paragraphs about how it was hazardous to his sanity.
And many of the games journalists just loved it. Some other journalists? They called it bribing.
Robert Florence raised questions in a Eurogamer article about a conflict of interest at a PS3 giveaway to journalists. Eurogamer was threatened with a libel suit and he left.
Examples are posted. It is debatable whether the article contains proof of actual corruption, but the examples are still poor journalism at best.
A Bioware employee tried to sneak a perfect Metacritic user score onto the Dragon Age 2 page. Didn't go over so well.
The Redner Group states on twitter that sites that give low reviews will not receive review copies of future games.
Even if no one might be breaking the law doing so, it still stinks.
EA sends out surveys to outlets asking about the reviewers before providing a copy of the game.
IGN burns through PixelJunk Sidescroller on the lowest difficulty, say they did it on normal difficuly, and complain about lack of content. Their lie is revealed when it's pointed out that the additional content is available higher difficulties.
Because it's our fault that they have to write clickbaits.
Like nobody would notice?
Former games writer Hasan Ali Almaci reveals just how corrupted the games reviewing industry got. Among the tidbits is a note that Famitsu is contractually obligated to give Square Enix games 7 or higher.
The article is a translation of the original Dutch one from 2007.
The same Mass Effect 3 that was widely derided by actual gamers. During this time the website was also plastered with Mass Effect 3 advertisements.
Among other things, he describes an example where a PR agent manages to bump a C-type game to a B-type game (79 to 81)
Obsidian is revealed to have missed their bonus on Fallout: New Vegas by one point on Metacritic. Such contracts are not rare in the industry and pressure developers into further pouching good reviews, despite Metacritic averages being described as "unbalanced".
Really not much else to say.
After the backlash against Mass Effect 3 EA spammed an anti-homophobia petition with bots.
Says it makes it "a better game"
A single photoshopped image causes Eurogamer, IGN, Gamespot and others to declare that upcoming titles for the PS Vita had been linked
Also touches on the danger of publishers pulling ad funding in case of a poor review.
Not only was the suit dismissed with prejudice but the accuser later wrote a public letter of apology.
And they're not the only one.
Geoff Keighly of G4 and Kotaku fame talks about Halo 4 in front of a massive poster, while promoting both Doritos and Mountain Dew. The result is an outcry that makes consumers question of legitimity of games journalism. Another point of view on Doritogate is that it is an example of how to do advertising correctly. Mountain Dew and Doritos are not involved in the gaming industry and can thus be considered more preferrable to having, for example, games publishers as advertisers.
While related to Doritogate, this article an important enough collection of events to deserve a mention of its own.
Stanton details more corruption examples in the industry, including GTA4 review tinkering.
Simon Parkin, a former writer for EDGE, writes that "the idea of the gaming community needs to die"
Displeasure of DMC fans at the sequel is spun as entitlement by the gaming media during February of 2013. The following article is just one of several.
Because business comes before proper journalism and reviews.
Even though that is patently false considering journalists had pre-launch access. Many journalists jump in to defend EA. Employees later admit that always-online wasn't necessary.
Gamers need to get with the times and accept ridiculous DRM methods.
Talks about how sites like TechRadar collude to inflate their google search ranking.
Whatever your opinion is of David Prassel, the one-sided reporting of the event was only the tip of an iceberg. On the source see the part "Let's talk about blacklisting" to find a sum up of the events.
Allistair Pinsof outs a trans woman who claimed to be fundraising for a life-saving operation but was actually using it for a sex reassignment operation. He is then suspended. Further evidence later comes up that people from various outlets colluded on the issue, something that is potentially very illegal.
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