LogFAQs > #941022279

Gaming reviews fall into the same problem that Antivirus reviews do; the people who make a living off of that journalism don't make their money off the consumers of the review, they make it off the sponsorship of the people they're reviewing. For AVs, rather than outright pay for a good review they "help out" the reviewing body and then get to help craft the testing criteria around what they're good at. For gaming reviews it's just more outright in that money goes in, good scores come out - less of the "framing the review around what we want you to"

For example, I just went to the IGN homepage, and there's like a quarter of the homepage taken up by a TLoU2 advert, with a five star review on it and a "Buy it Now!" link. Those ads don't come cheap, and with the money riding on the game there's not a chance in hell that money went to IGN without some terms and conditions.

Compare to Which? in the UK, reviewing things like cars and white goods.A registered charity which outright bans advertising, and makes their money out of subscription fees and advising/lobbying on consumer rights. You can't really get that out of video game reviews, because who's going to pay a subscription for a review site when the games industry can just choke them out of business by refusing them access to review copies or early access. AAA game reviews are a business that feeds itself, and provides no real value to anyone

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Girls = Time x Money. Time = Money. Girls = Money x Money = Money sq.
Money = sqrt Evil: Girls = sqrt Evil sq. Girls = Evil