But many reviewers are unreliable if only because their employers are getting their money from the people whose games they review. As I said before, there have been a number of examples of journalists either giving good reviews to avoid pissing off advertisers, or getting fired when they refuse. There's no shortage of video game companies that will and have pulled advertising from sites because they didn't like the review scores they got. Companies frequently threaten to not send review copies prior to release if they get bad reviews from a company. In the case of some of the people free to be more honest about games like Jim Sterling and Total Biscuit, they are outright blacklisted by some companies because they'll speak their mind about games and the actions of companies whether what they have to say is good or bad. Now they can afford to be honest regardless of the consequences from publishers because their fans are the ones supporting them and making sure they earn money. They don't rely on advertising from game companies to pay the bills. But everyone else working at big sites or for magazines that make most of their money from advertising? If they speak their mind they risk hurting the company they work for and losing their jobs as a result. And unless they have the fan support to strike out on their own, which most certainly do not, it'll be the same story anywhere else they work. And since I assume they're all human beings who need a home to live in and food to eat that doesn't leave them with many options.

So he's right, pretty much every professional game journalist and critic is unreliable because they have a huge financial incentive to not tell the truth about bad games. Does that mean they all lie all the time? Probably not. Does it mean their review scores are largely meaningless and they may have to be very careful about tearing apart bad games from major publishers? Absolutely. The present way that game journalism works is an incestuous relationship between the people reporting on games and the companies they're reporting on. The former can't really afford to exist without the latter. I see no way that a person can know that without taking everything they report and every review they write with a pretty hefty bit of salt. And again, I'm not saying they're bad people, but they're in a pretty smurfed up situation that does not lend itself well to keeping up ones professional ethics.

At least with user reviews, especially for big titles and despite the possibility of there being some fake reviews or trolls eviscerating a game for no reason and fanboys giving it a 10 because they love the series so much, I'll get thousands of people who's only financial connection to the company is that they bought the game saying what they think of it rather than the views of a few dozen people who have plenty of reason to appear biased whether they are or not. Personally, I'm going to give more weight to the 20,000+ that review a game on the steam store than to journalists.

But then, I've worked as an auditor before and one of the things you learn is the appearance of bias or unethical behaviour (taking money from the people you're supposed to report honestly on) is just as bad as actual bias because everyone outside of your head will never e able to truly tell the difference between the two. If you want to be credible as a game journalist, you've got to be independent from the game advertising. It doesn't work otherwise.