DISCLAIMER: The following tweets are either fake or were written while intoxicated. Either way, take them with a grain of salt.
Rich Stanton is a freelance writer for Edge/PC Gamer/Nintendo Power publisher Future Publishing. He’s been around the industry, and it looks like he may have spilled a few secrets in some late night ranting over Twitter. Unfortunately the tweets in question have since been deleted, but not before NeoGaf users had time to save some of them. They have some interesting things to say about a number of popular publications, if true.
The most interesting of the tweets are probably these three:
Edge gave GTA IV [10] but the review didn’t “@CiaranMac90: @RichStanton Just give us the worst story on Future you have and get some rest!”
I’m genuinely amazed that nobody has picked up on the fact that GTA4 got a 9 which became Rockstar’s much sought-after [10] in Edge.
They control everything “@theubermod: @RichStanton Do publishers/platform holders ‘pay’ for covers? In either ad spend or access.”
Yes. Future will do anything to accommodate advertisers. “@LewieP: @RichStanton have you witnessed any dodgy deals?”
These claims of “accommodating advertisers” and allowing publishers to purchase positive reviews aren’t anything many haven’t already suspected to be going on for years, but to see someone involved in that side of things lend credit to the accusations is something worth paying attention to.
Money makes the world go round.
Mass Effect 3 Game of the Year every year best story luv u kid 4lyfe
We all knew this. It’s going to take mountains of proof to squash the self deception people put themselves through.
all this scratch is making me rich!
I think most of us have been suspecting this for years. Just look at the difference between the User Review scores and the “Pro’s” scores.
While I agree that “professional” game critics are not to be trusted, but user reviews aren’t much better when you think about it.
One review might not be better, but when you average them all you kinda get a valid rating.
this is not a rumor, this is fact…
This always happens. It’s not even a surprising rumour. The main priority of any commercial reviewing website is the same as any business – to turn a profit to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. And to do that they publish positive press to those they advertise with – or else they’d lose their advertising custom.