Now and again, you read an article or see something on the internet or social media, talking about game review websites operators making money from writing some kind of review on some specific games.
Sometimes you hear about it through word-of-mouth.
But is that the thing that is happening behind the scene? Are game review outlets making some cool bucks from writing reviews for particular games? Are the gaming companies paying them for this?
There is a handful of evidence supporting this. But there are some caveats. First, banish any idea from your mind that everyone in the game review writing business is getting some kind of payment from these game companies to write a review for their product. There are indeed some game review outlets out there who get paid by dishonest game manufacturers to write favorable reviews for them. But what is more accurate is that there are tons of other genuine and more established game review sites whose business is to provide you with every bit of information that you need about a game.
Secondly, you need to separate the real and honest game reviews from the many scams out there in the name of reviews.
How Do You Know the Honest Game Reviewers?
Reviews from Actual Persons
While it is true that there are credible review outlets that do not use this method, it is effortless to see that reviews from this type of review sites are most likely to be true. It is not far from the fact that the reviews are actually based on the experiences of the people writing them, and hence, the possibility for ‘fakeness’ is very low.
Are they Established Game Reviewers?
The chances are that those sites that are just springing up recently on the internet are more likely to be biased in their process of reviewing certain games. More established game review outlets are more likely to be honest because they have gained people’s confidence by their repeated show of trustworthiness.
Some game reviews are at a point where they are relatively useless, as every game is 7+/10. Sometimes, it may not be healthy to even pay attention to these game reviews because they are frequently manipulated by the writers of these game reviews to help some game manufacturers. You may even get more information just watching unedited gameplay of a game and judging for yourself.
As stated earlier, some reviews are paid. The fact that publishers’ ad revenue keeps sites going and how much publishers care about Meta critic scores has to be some conflict of interest with game reviewers. How much? Well, it is not apparent. After all, the whole Jeff Gerstmann Kane and Lynch thing proved there was shady stuff going on years ago.
But again, this is nothing surprising! Movie studios pay for fake reviews for some reason, even when the audience doesn’t have how well a movie score anyways. Saying nothing is going on or most assessments are paid are two extremes that almost certainly aren’t true; the truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle.
