About 15 years ago several big-name video game reviewers opened the gates of Hell by making exposees about how they had been offered gifts and other services by game publishers for favorable reviews, which ultimately turned into a consumer revolt that reshaped the industry (that the far left is still milking to this day).
What most people don't know, however, is that this kind of corruption in video game journalism goes way back, much farther than they would even think. Perhaps the only thing that has changed is the direction in which the requests are being originated from.
In fact, it goes all the way to the 1980's, to the heyday of popularity of video game magazines.
This is, quite curiously, a relatively "open secret" that for some reason isn't paid much attention to. Many developers who worked for game companies in the 1980's have over the years revealed that back in those days game journalists would directly call these game companies and offer prominent reviews for cash. Just openly and brazenly, without any qualms. For example, a developer who worked for MicroProse in the 80's and early 90's has written that the company was asked by a particular magazine a $1000 fee for a prominent review of their latest game.
At some point this became illegal (or, at least, the law was starting to be more enforced), so by the 90's and early 2000's they stopped being that blatant about it, and instead found ways to circumvent the law. For example, they would call the headquarters of the game developer company and say things like "we are writing a big review of your upcoming game and we would like to ask some questions" and then insert somewhere in there a conspicuous "and by the way, we are also selling ad space in our magazine if you are interested" *wink* *wink* *hint* *hint*. The quite clear implication being that if the game company invested in ad space, they might get some better reviews of their games (or any review in the first place).
At some point this dynamic mostly reversed. In other words, rather than the game magazines contacting game development and publishing companies asking money for reviews, it started happening in the other direction, ie. the publishing companies started contacting reviewers and offering them bribes for reviews. Perhaps the industry learned the lesson that "money buys good reviews" so they embraced it and started pushing it themselves, so the reviewers didn't even have to approach them.
And if you think this kind of corruption is restricted to video games, you would be utterly naive. In fact, the exact same thing is happening in pretty much all of the tech industry. And nowadays to an ever increasing extent not even limited to magazines and publications (offline or online), but to individual reviewers on YouTube and elsewhere. Take any YouTube video game or tech reviewer with millions of subscribers, and he or she will have been contacted by dozens and dozens of game or tech companies offering review samples and sponsorships for good reviews. (They might masquerade the offers in order to try to avoid them looking like bribes, but they are still just that: Bribes for good reviews.)
It is illegal to offer bribes for good reviews, but they always find ways around the law to make it "technically legal" by the slimmest of margins.
(How to distinguish between tech youtubers who are possibly compromised from those that aren't? There's no sureway, but if the review has a "sponsored by (the company in question)" then there's a good likelihood that the review may be at a minimum somewhat biased. If the video explicitly says "this video has not been sponsored" then it gives at least some assurance that it's more neutral. If neither thing can be found anywhere, in the video or its description, then it's hard to know.)
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