Obsidian got fucked by Bethesda

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Then, lets imagine they did buy a few lowball scores, and it does come out.

Now the offended party has a case to bring, Obsidian wins some compensation - say a few millions. What then?
Every single employee of Obsidian would never work for a game of that publisher again (let's not say all publishers, though i can well imagine a "gentleman's agreement" about this).
So they stay quiet like a good little bitch, until MCA lets the outrage slip.

I think it is good to remain skeptical of the idea of "paid for" reviews. However, looking at the factors that are involved, widespread intimidation is almost certainly present.

On the other hand, I think some reviews exist because the reviewers are just that retarded. It has nothing to do with intimidation, corruption, or the bottom line: it is just a review copy, a keyboard, one retard, and all the time in the world. These people are intentionally hired by companies--more than likely--and I don't think it is necessarily because of the promise of corporate patronage. There is another factor involved here. If a gaming site pisses off the majority of its fanbase, you can expect some repercussions. And what is the easiest way to piss off a huge percentage of the fanbase? Give a popular game an 8/10. Suddenly you will have a short burst of increased traffic followed by plenty of threats of moving to another, unbiased website. Meanwhile, if you give such a game 10/10, you will get a short burst of traffic for people who are still surprised by this number, but you will also get repeat viewers who want to validate their own opinions.

New Vegas may have gained quite a few low scores because reviewers actually thought it was worse.

Still, I have no doubt that if a few reviews were the difference between Bethesda saving or losing a lot of money, those reviews WOULD end up in favour of Bethesda.

i guess you missed that whole "kane and lynch gamespot scandal" a couple of years ago. it was anything but "devastating" for eidos. K&L sold relatively poorly, but a couple of weeks after that everything was forgotten and then business as usual for both gamespot and eidos. that's the modern gaming industry for you. "decline" is the understatement of the century

I did indeed miss that, do you have a link to it, so I can read about it? I must say though, that it is quite strange since kane & lynch got a review score of 6.0 and the sequel 6.5 on gamespot. That's a pretty badly bought game review in my book.

*edit* Ah, now it comes back to me. No, I did not miss that, I remember quite clearly the outrage of this. This is in any case not a case of bought reviews, but possibly a case of gamespot yielding to pressure of firing the reviewer who gave it a low score. Keep in mind that this was never proved though, and is simply a rumor, though the circumstances were certainly suspect.

Everything was "as usual" because they fired the reviewer!!

Google Jeff Gerstmann.

It was proved. They recently admitted it.

So, massive gaming sites with massive pressure to place solid reviews on AAA titles which are shit due to hype and attention or else the poor sod who honestly reviewed it didn't like it gets fired? Ha, never would have guessed.

Anyone who doesn't think this is the de-facto standard in the industry is

Can you even begin to imagine the fallout?

Do I get Kodex Kool Kreds for having a thread necro'd?

I would never buy a game based on a gaming sites review, I prefer to let the dust settle and listen to the game players, generally they know more than the dodgy "professional" game reviewers. It's amazing how many people pre-order games nowadays, I laugh when they get burnt with substandard releases. I can't believe how seriously people take gaming nowadays, they're just games...

Joined: Apr 27, 2012

You really are quite naive eh? It has happened, and they have talked about it, and no the consequences were not devastating. It does not take a genious to see the game being played with availability of pre-release copies, game presentations and such, versus online competition. The gaming sites will not cut their own fingers by suddenly becoming fair and objective. If anyone is gonna go out of business it will be the reviewer and not the publisher.

Dude, thread started in March.. look at Saint Proverbius, now that's a real necro.

HAHA OW WOW, Reviews not bought? There was an article/column in finnish gaming magazine how big publisher (EA or Activision) flew journalists to some very expensive spa to play game on the whole weekend - They even flew the journalists on military escort and military helicopters from airport to the spa.

Wow, can't you do better than calling me naive, and quoting, twice no less, the date I joined, as if that is even remotely relevant to the discussion? You can't really blame me for remaining skeptical to a theory about some sinister hidden business practice to which there is no proof to. Such a theory has a name, and it is called a conspiracy, there is really no two ways about it. I'm not saying it is not true, mind you, it might very well be, I'm just trying to argue that there are other likely causes of AAA-titles generally getting well received, than that the scores are bought.

Ok, so this shows directly (do you have a link to this?) that publishers try to sway journalists into giving them better scores, which on the whole is a pretty usual business practice an is not nearly as controversial as you might think, but that's a whole other bag than buying review scores directly.

in case gaudaost is not just a troll account:

yeah, well... the join date just shows how long you've been around... which explains in part your naivety, so see it as a way for the other people here to understand you as new, instead of retarded

publishers don't just hand out bribes to get good scores, they actively threaten reviewers with pulling ads. this in turn leads to reviewing sites firing people who post an honest review, instead of a marketing blurb. Jeff Gerstman's firing from gamespot in 2009 was the most written about case of this afaik. normally reviewing sites stop the editors before the article gets published, so you don't get to see it. in Gerstman's case, the review was online on a gamespot site plastered full of Kane&Lynch ads, so the connection to his firing was too obvious to be swept under the rug.

this is quite common and not just a conspiracy theory. you may have noticed a considerable disparity between metacritic scores from professional reviews and player reviews. it's not (just) codex & 4chan trolls fixing results there.

Examples from German speaking countries out of my head:
- Jörg Luibl from 4gamers raised his voice about some common business methods when it comes to buy reviews. Doesn't matter if you like this guy or his reviews but at least he said something.
- PC Games (Computec Media) offers whole marketing campaigns with scores for publishers.
- The ex-owner of the formerly well-known Amiga Joker / PC Joker admitted in a chat that some reviews were given a very generous score because of advertising deals with the publisher. And this was still in the early years of gaming mags. Btw. he had nothing to lose and nothing to gain by admitting this because he was already out of this business long ago. Btw. I can't thank him enough for admitting this.
- Several journalists who worked in the industry for some decades admitted indirectly that the industry changed to the worse and business got more shady

Unfortunately no since it was in published magazine and they don't have colums and articles on their website. It was also in finnish so unless you understand our language even link wouldn't help much. When I get home, I can look for the column itself and translate key stuff from it.

The editor-in-chief also wrote in another issue that major publisher (they didn't tell which publisher and what game) had limit on how low score their game should get or the publisher would blacklist the magazine and wouldn't give advanced copies, previews, interviews etc... but editor-in-chief wrote that "Fortunately the game was good enough for higher score"...funny coincidence, huh?

Dude, the amount of time I have been a member on this forum, has literally zero impact on whatever naivety I might have. One learns about not being naive from real life, not from internet forums.

Again, I'm looking for proofs, in form of verifiable documented articles on this. Forgive me, for not taking your word as is, without documentation. And also, threatening to pull ads on gaming sites for giving bad scores, is certainly on the border of shady business practice, but it is legit. As is inviting journalists on spa-weekends or whatever and within the the rights of the publishers to do it. It is different still from buying scores directly. The disparity in metascore player reviews and professional reviews, has much to do with that games having a particularly jarring DRM gets 1 from a shitload of players, while professional reviewers generally don't do this. In case of mass effect 3, it received an enormous amount of 1s just from the ending. Players reviews on metascore are generally non-serious and much like IMDB consists mostly of people either voting 10 or 1 for a game, with nearly no middleground. For example, look at the amount of mixed reviews, and compare that to the amount of positive and negative on mass effect 3: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect-3

Good! Some concrete information, which certainly strengthens the theory (would be even stronger if you had a link to all these allegations). If they are true, I can't argue against it, and I don't really have any interest in that either.

ffs... the name's right there... look it up

kids these days...

- Jörg Luibl correspondence should be easy to find again because it was written as a column / for the readership, at the moment I can't acces such sites (at work). You can search for yourself here.
- PC Games; no clue where it was mentioned again and find evidence on the internet might be difficult
- PC Joker chat is available on the net, but to be honest I don't want to make a buzz about it. There is a reason I didn't mentioned his name. Especially because he mentioned some business practices of his competitors, too. I wouldn't be surprised if some trouble would come ahead for him even when it's after a decade ago and I wish him no ill. People who know about the Joker mags should be able to find it though.
- too sprinkled and buried all over the internet

And if you can't understand German there would be no point in showing it to you.

Um. Threatening to pull your ads from a website is almost exactly like bribery. Instead of a positive incentive, a negative incentive is offered. And legal or not, if a game review site doesn't get advance copies/interviews and the like, they lose business, as readers will start frequenting a site that *does* have previews/interviews. Nothing illegal is even remotely neccessary to pressure reviewers into giving high scores.

I can actually understand german fairly well, and I will look it up. And Grief, yes, it is indeed almost exactly like bribery, still, it is legally legit, though certainly morally shady. I'm starting to get a little weary from this discussion however, so I think I'm ready to throw in the towel. I don't have any interest in defending neither publishers nor gaming sites, but I did feel the need to point out that widely held perceptions are not always true (such as EA being the ruin of bioware, but that's a whole other discussion). Thank you for some informative replies though.

What the publishers are doing are just as legitimate as lobbyists subtly purchasing congressmen via various incentives. Is it legal? Sure. They're not so stupid as to engage in overtly illegal activities in plain sight. It is, however, not a very pleasant thing to do.

Given the continued faith of the gaming demographic in the industry, though, all we can take away from it is that the system and its fanboys are shitty, fucked up, and deserve to die in a sea of flames.

All it ever amounts to is idiots believing reviews that they probably agree with anyway.