I love how everyone suddenly becomes an expert when "revelations" like this occur. I wonder how many of you saying "oh, but of course games journalism is corrupt" have any proof of this or how many of you are basing it on a few review scores you didn't agree with and the Kane & Lynch saga.
As someone who's been in the industry for many years and hasn't seen any of this widespread corruption everyone's so confident about here, it angers me that the reputations of good writers can be dismissed so easily. Maybe I've just been extremely lucky by not getting involved in any dodgy deals in the years I've been doing this, but even so it's unfair to tar everyone with the same brush as if to suggest "if you're a writer you're corrupt, plain and simple".
At the end of the day, in my experience, 99.99% of the time when you see a score that doesn't match up with the review it's down to bad reviewing, not any pressure from publishers. This Stanton chap is a perfect example.
From what I can gather this bad blood started when his Resident Evil 6 review was posted on CVG and people complained that the score was too high for the text, forcing the CVG ed to come out and defend it (not very well, I should add). Stanton can moan and moan all he likes about corruption and "bent" companies but the simple issue here (in my view) is that his review was shit in the first place.
The review ends with the words "Let's put it this way: we wouldn't buy it full price." Then he gives it 8/10. That's the real problem - the writer has received a free game and then forgotten to put himself in the reader's shoes and decide whether the game's value for money. You simply can't say "well, I wouldn't buy it" then give it such a high score. Stanton can moan all he likes about his former company but as far as I can tell at no point has he moaned about his Resi 6 review or its score being tampered with, which suggests it was unchanged and that, as a result, this "I wouldn't buy it, 8/10" nonsense is his own doing.
All I'm saying is it's unfair to read a review and instantly assume "that score's been paid for" when it seems a little too high. In my experience this rarely (if ever) happens and it's unfair to the hundreds or thousands of decent writers out there who are trying their best. Sometimes they'll get it wrong (I've given a few scores in my time that I look back on now and wonder what I was thinking), but 99.99% of the time they're at least being honest.
You don't have to be outright corrupt to be influenced, or to have the appearance of influence. When big publisher flies a dozen journalists to a resort to play the game for a week, most people will wonder how that may have influenced the review. When publishers send expensive swag along with the review copy, people will wonder. When so many writers use their job as a stepping stone to a job with a publisher, people will wonder..
I don't think many game writers are literally accepting cash from a publisher to give a certain score, but there's lots of other ways to exert influence.