Oddvintagechap
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Sony pays for reviews confirmed. What is Shawn Layden’s Job?
- Thread starter Oddvintagechap
- Start date
- Clickbait
Gamernyc78
Banned
Hobbygaming
has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
I wonder how many clicked on this thread ready to pounce lol
ManaByte
Gold Member
Mostly YouTubers who use a performance outrage agenda to push monetized views.
iamvin22
Industry Verified
Xbox fan boys on Twitter and youtube
FranXico
Member
ManaByte
Gold Member
No, that’s just Rockstar.
iamvin22
Industry Verified
JareBear: Remastered
Banned
Oddvintagechap
Member
I was about to not add the clickbait tag.. but then I wondered about all those Xbox’s trolls that appear in my twitterfeed.
DarthFeanor
Banned
Why pay when the fear of fanboys rage are enough to protect your big blockbuster games.
Specially when the game is either a beloved nostalgic IP or a narrative driven drama with ultrarealistic depiction of violence and human suffering...
Specially when the game is either a beloved nostalgic IP or a narrative driven drama with ultrarealistic depiction of violence and human suffering...
MadchesterManc
Member
Good job they aren't talking about cheques 
Elder Legend
Banned
I've worked in the industry long enough and reviewed many games long enough. The only real "pay" you get from the devs/publishers is simply a backlink to your review/website which boosts your SEO and ranks you higher in google and which in return gives you more traffic and more $$$ over the long term. Never ever have I witnessed or experienced any kind of bribery or was offered any kind of compensation directly.
The only real way you can make money directly from publishers is when you put up ad banners of their games on your website, but for that to even happen you need an absurd amount of high viewership and metric, because the publishers are willing only to pay big $$$ to those who have high viewership and recognized name. It's basically a sponsor. Now if you are advertising that game and then you give it a low score that's where things might get a bit weird, thankfully I haven't ran into that yet.
DarthFeanor
Banned
No one wants to be the odd one out.
We have a long history of reviewers that dare to give these kind of games low 9s and were mobbed by fan boys.
Rockstar and Nintendo games also have this kind of "protective shield" which means that if there are small details in those games that a review didn't like, the problem is with him, not the game.
Jubenhimer
Member
Shawn Layden left Sony last year. Herman Hulst is currently in charge of Worldwide Studios.
01011001
Banned
more like,
why pay when game reviewers give anything a 10/10 that looks good and pushes the political agenda they like?
Portugeezer
Member
Schreier is writing up a piece as we speak!
Gamernyc78
Banned
MiyazakiHatesKojima
Banned
Shawn Lauren was my former boss.
He's a good lad
He's a good lad
Aion002
Member
Not worth it....
If a PS game reviews badly: "Sony sucks. I knew it hahaah"
If a PS game reviews greatly: "This is bullshit! Sony studios staff are hacks! With that amount of money that Sony tossed at them, anyone could make it!"
If a PS game is a GOTY: "Fuck this! They paid the reviewers or they are afraid of the fanboy mobs! Fuck Sony!!!!11111111!! Next gen Sony is doomed!"
Rinse and repeat.... Everytime.
If a PS game reviews badly: "Sony sucks. I knew it hahaah"
If a PS game reviews greatly: "This is bullshit! Sony studios staff are hacks! With that amount of money that Sony tossed at them, anyone could make it!"
If a PS game is a GOTY: "Fuck this! They paid the reviewers or they are afraid of the fanboy mobs! Fuck Sony!!!!11111111!! Next gen Sony is doomed!"
Rinse and repeat.... Everytime.
Paracelsus
Member
It's not a Sony issue, it's a AAA issue. Sony happens to make the most premium AAA games.
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
He was the Director of Lining Pockets.
eastwood333
Banned
Anybody who's played TLOU1 should know that these TLOU2 reviews are definitely legit.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
They bring them in a back alley and shake ‘em down.
What about the Nintendo Review Curve?
30yearsofhurt
Member
Ummm ... cool story bro?
Paracelsus
Member
8.8 - TV Tropes
8.8 can refer to: Complaining About People Not Liking the Show: If you don't like what I like, you're wrong. Critical Dissonance: The audience and critics disagree with each other about the quality of a work. Four-Point Scale: When reviewers …
tvtropes.org
Recent case: IGN with FFVIIr
Fbh
Member
Has there even been any tangible proof of this?.
With all the leaks we get in the gaming industry you'd think that at this point we'd at least have some leaked emails or documents if bribes or other forms of pressure were commonplace.
It's not a Sony or PS thing, it's a "big hyped game" thing.
Remember when tons of people (here on Gaf too) had a mental breakdown when Jim Sterling gave Breath of the Wild a 7?. I don't particularly like the dude but the reviews seemed pretty fair IMO
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
8.8 - TV Tropes
8.8 can refer to: Complaining About People Not Liking the Show: If you don't like what I like, you're wrong. Critical Dissonance: The audience and critics disagree with each other about the quality of a work. Four-Point Scale: When reviewers …
Recent case: IGN with FFVIIr
I remember that shit. The meltdowns were glorious across the gaming internets.
CamHostage
Member
And in both cases, unless you own the company that hosts the site, you do not participate in the profit generated from that success. I've never heard of a writer getting a "bonus" or some sort of profit share or dividend for a successful review. You'll still get the same paychek you always got on your salaried job, or you'll still get the same flatrate for per-word or per-article you get for the content as negotiated in the Statement of Work contract, and that's what you're taking home whether the review goes gangbusters or gets buried under the news of the day.
(Even long-term, jouralists/editorial contributors don't even get paid in relation to their performance numbers really, which I still had in my head at first when I was started doing some writing for the industry long ago and had seen movies about superstar newspapermen and seen "celebrity" journalists like Roger Ebert on TV, but it starts to make sense how insanely competitive and vicious the atmosphere would be in the office if writers got like a backend percentage. Yes, a writer can renegotiate their contract for performance, and some staff in an office will make more money than others, but usually that's about retention or volume of output or even "star power", just generally your proven quality of work and value to the company as an employee. You can't go into like the GameSpot office and plop down your traffic portfolio saying, "You're going to want to hire me for the big bucks, because in my last job, it was ME who wrote the review for The Last of Us and Halo, so yeah, I'm a pretty big freaking deal...")
Oddvintagechap
Member
D
Deleted member 471617
Unconfirmed Member
Xbox??? What are they doing? Threatening to NOT give them all review codes for Battletoads? That's not pressure. lmao.
Kenpachii
Member
]
That's exactly it. They are paid off by the fact that they relay on there business model from these company's.
It's not a Sony issue, it's a AAA issue. Sony happens to make the most premium AAA games.
That's exactly it. They are paid off by the fact that they relay on there business model from these company's.
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
So why don't they give the "paid off curve" for all games from the big publishers?
Gamernyc78
Banned
MiyazakiHatesKojima
Banned
You do realize someone else could say the same thing about Nintendo and Microsoft, right?
Kenpachii
Member
Some are more important than the others.
What if 90% of your readers are sony fanboys that like to play movie games and those are your most watched / readed reviews. Good luck risking getting blacklisted by those publishers that provide you from copy's early.
Have fun when all other outlets have there reviews ready on day one and u don't. U will also upset a large crowd while u are at it. Look at the kids dumpstering on people that do not like a certain game even while they never played the game in there life.
Hell some outlets even give demands before u can even make a review out of it which they have to sign. It's laughable really.
U see this shit everywhere even in streamer land these days. All those devs give early access towards there games to get streamed by big streamers. The ones that take it will never say anything negative. U saw this with PC gamer show where all those paid shill where trying to sugar coat on how dog shit the games actually where. Not a single negative reaction why? it pays them. The people that where not on the "pay" list basically shat all over it like no tommorow.
Hell even with mmo's this happens. Hey u get early access towards our new content and new stuff and get even paid 5 grand to stream our game for 2 hours a day for the next 5 days with this and that demand. one streamer accepted that and shat all over the content because it was bad, he was directly blacklisted and fell behind the other streamres because they where all playing the new content and he was not. He even bitched about it that he should never have said what really was in his mind because he now lost loads of money because of it and viewers.
That's exactly what these guys do.
This is why u constantly see shit even from DF where they uptalk or say stuff like, well both are absolutely amazing both are incredible etc etc. all to pander towards their audience. Even if the xbox series X was complete dog shit they would still not shit all over it because xbox pays them for console reveals by early access reviewring there hardware full fletched. Guess who didn't got invited? mister i think the box is garbage.
This is why any reviewer that gets its review done on day on 1 = a paid shill.
Kenpachii
Member
Yes it happens EVERYWHERE.
The only way to get reviews going is when reviewers buy there own copy's do not relay on the income for reviewing it. but then even if its negative at this point the review u will see freaking game company's push youtube strikes on the video and try to take the channel down because "they did not allow them to show content of there game".
Get in line reviewer.
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MiyazakiHatesKojima
Banned
That's a pretty extreme interpretation, but it has happened before so it's not impossible.
I would say Metacritic and OpenCritic are a good measure as to whether a game is worth checking out at the very least.
CamHostage
Member
So, I don't think there's any debate that pressure doesn't exist in games journalism, but it works differently than most people think.
For one thing, you are protected by your Editorial Manager, and that person's role is purely to drive traffic and generate high-quality (or at least audience-oriented) content. They, like the writer, don't benefit directly from advertising, and there is in pretty much all cases a clear line separating Sales and Editorial anyway. (The only place the line doesn't exist is when an outlet is so small that a journalist also has to handle their site's ads, but if that's the case, you're usually not getting AAA games buying ads on your site in the first place...) If you're getting noted or hassled by PR for some reason, you tell your boss and they take on the problem.
Remember that the one major, public case where the line between Sales and Editorial broke down was the whole "Gerstmanngate", and conspiracy theorists look at that as an ah-ha moment that journalistic ethics was shown to be compromised, but in fact it was quite the opposite: the bosses (who had just taken over the site) failed to protect the journalist from the advertiser, and the fallout was several staffers leaving the company voicing outrage publicly, and the site getting a stain on its reputation that it never recovered from. None of that was worth whatever pittance was going on as an ad buy at the time for a crummy game most people don't even remember the name of...
But yes, PR sometimes has access to the critic reviewing the game. They might hit you up and ask how you like it or be like, "oh, you don't like that? But what about this part?", stuff like that. There are some PR agents that do try to juice you up. But, they're not in the building. You don't have to take their calls, or read their emails: you have your copy of the game, and you have a deadline. Also, you're a professional, and a good critic is used to PR buttering them up; they're not writing the review for PR, they're writing it for readers, and that's the job. (And to be fair to the PR profession, those folks are professionals too, and aren't hounding reviewers like some people think. In fact, they already have an idea what a game will get from critics, having handed the game throughout its product cycle and knowing what's good or bad about it; they even sometimes do "test reviews", usually by former critics, so that they know to prepare for "Game of the Year"-type marketing or else more flashy-edgy marketing that hides the fact the game stinks.)
And as far as worrying about being "blackballed" by a company (which sounds like a looming Death Star but in reality is exceedingly rare, and is bad business for both sides since journalists can take their battle to the public,) sites that review games are diversified. Especially now, the power of a grudge is hard to wield. What, Activision is threatening to withhold any copies of Call of Duty 12 because you didn't give Call of Duty 11 a good score? Well, the company only put out two other games besides that one all year, and I've got 11 months to iron out that relationship in the meantime, so I guess I'll just focus on my Battlefield review and all the other big games coming out until I can get copies of CoD from stores. If somehow you started a feud with Microsoft or Sony and couldn't get PS5/XSX alongside the competition (although that would be seemingly impossible, because it's different PR reps handling hadware from most software, so even if you tweet "fuck Halo", the Xbox guys still want you to have one to review the box and play through Forza,) that would be catastrophic, but it would be really insane and dangerous for business for PR to be that vindictive.
Where I felt pressure, when I reviewed games, was more personal. I got to liking certain game companies (which is particularly a problem if you're reviewing indie or smaller games, because you know your review matters to the small team or even individual who made it.) I casually met a few people on message boards who I found out were developers, and it would be a concern if I had to play through their games. I would get to understand more about how games are made by taking interest in it, which was good for my analysis but bad for my objectivity because I would find myself forgiving or understanding the hardships or challenges of game making. You really had to buckle down and focus on the game itself, to wipe out all the external stuff as much as possible. And that's the job you're paid for, so if you're not capable of doing that, you're in the wrong business... and your boss will probably be able to tell from your work that you can't, and so you will not be in the wrong business for long.
But writers do not "rely" on the income generated by the content for reviewing it. You get paid a flat fee for your work (or, if you're salaried, your paycheck is no different the month before versus the month after a big review games up. ) You don't care if the review generates a billion dollars in advertising clicks or gets shelved for some reason and is never seen by the public; you still get paid the same, no matter how the content performs.
Also, you seem to be directing a lot of your animosity towards the editorial ethics of Youtubers, and I do sometimes dislike or question the unprofessional practices in that market (although there are also some extraordinarily fine people doing work on YT,) but I do think you may be mixing up concerns? Most Youtubers don't do formal reviews, from what I've seen, and the ones that do scored reviews aren't usually the same folks doing all the glowing previews and letsplays. There are guys who preview games, and guys who review games, and there's not the same crossover in my experience where every outlet feels it needs covering all bases. (Anybody have a different experience?) Like, HipHopGamer has content marked "review" but he doesn't do game scores that I know of. PewDiePie doesn't score games. Even Greg Miller or Colin Moriarty, guys who came out of the old-school magazine style of editorial, I don't think either of Kinda Funny or Sacred Symbols have an archive of game reviews and scores and a scoring system and a Metacritic entry and all that. (There's an hour+ long review on Kinda Funny of Last of Us 2 that I scanned quickly and saw no number attached to...) They're all into the conversation and the play around games, but these folks are "commentators" rather than "critics", and that's mostly a different job.
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Elder Legend
Banned
I run my own show and have people working for me. Not once did I ever had any publishers or anyone offering deals/paid reviews. The fact that we review a game and get a free copy is the deal itself, we get free shit and free advertising and so do they, they pay via the copy really. Being invited to events and try stuff out is another way of "getting paid" because it's how we make our money, by covering content for consumers that are looking forward to it or want to know more info. Once that article goes up, everyone runs to it like they are a hungry dog who hasn't been fed for days. Bribing or even attempting to bribe someone in professional line of work is considered unethical, I am sure there are rare cases where it does happen from time to time just like in any other business. I've personally never came across it.
Now if you want to make big bucks as a website owner what you can do and what a lot of other website owners do is they seek out each other and offer sponsored/contributor articles with backlinks. Some people just want to trade backlinks without paying money, and that's what it is you just both get backlinks or one site sells a sponsored article to the other one for $$$. I've done deals that ranged from $50-100 per link and all the way to $500-$1000 per link. It depends on the client you get and how high your domain authority is and monthly viewership. If you're a website with 1 million unique monthly views, you can charge a really good grip of money, we're talking about a couple thousand here. Now if your 2 digit millions of views then it gets even more crazy. This is where a lot of the money is made besides the ad revenue. No website will ever be able to live on ad revenue alone. You have to have multiple sources of income, and most of it comes from social media channels like YouTube, Facebook, Website and even twitch as well if you stream consistently for the brand. There are many ways to make money here, sponsors is also one of the best and most lucrative as well.
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Lionel Richie
Member
Not only that, but there's a point Super Bunnyhop made about MGS V that never left my mind. The reviewers had 40 hours to complete the game in a publisher event, everyone who played MGS V knows that's bullshit because the game pretty much lasts twice as much. So even if you don't think reviewers get directly payed to give the games good scores (and they don't) or that they feel pressured to give it a good score (which is probably a thing, sadly, but not to any irreparable degree), there's still a question about the condition they play these games with deadlines and shit. AND there's also the question about how proficient they are at the games.
Even with those caveats, I think Metacritic scores are a great metric to know if something succeeds at what it sets out to do. Of course it doesn't work well with niche titles and we do live in a world where Fallout 4 has a higher metascore than Yakuza 0, but no system is ever going to be perfect. As it is, Metacritic offers a way to compile some consensus and is a quick and dirty way for people knowing if something is worth their time. It works.
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Psykodad
Banned
I think we can all name a few (former) gaffers.
CamHostage
Member
Even considering that a "pay" of any kind strikes me as wonky. "Hey, you know that game copy that you absolutely needed to do your job, that you had to crunch through in unrealistic play marathons in order to complete it and write about it by deadline, that you never got to enjoy wholeheartedly because you had to take notes in order to over-analyze it and play in weird ways so that you could find if it was broken anywhere and that you had to play through a half-dozen times in order to get the perfect video, and that you're just fucking sick of after spending too much time with it? Yeah, you get to KEEP it! Well, not you, but your office does, though maybe we can send you a personal copy in two weeks. Oh, also, the DLC that's coming out that you also are supposed to review, we may or may not be able to get you codes for that..."
People make a big thing about paying for copies of games, but to the reviewer, you'd never be spending that money anyways because if it's not sent to you by the company, you either expense it back to your office or, if you're independent, you write off on your taxes as a business expense. (Also, BTW, those who think the regular folks who put down their own hard-earned money for games are unbiased, try reading through some Reader Reviews and see how objective most of those people are!)
Also, the idea that game journalists don't know what it's like to plunk $60 down for a game... man, get to know a game journalist. The size of their game library is going to be significant, and much of it will have been paid for; and if not the games, then the trinkets and figures and posters and 'con tickets on the walls all came from shelling out money. (BTW, these people who are supposedly being paid off left and right? Again, get to know a game journalist, they ain't rich!)
These who do the job of reviewing products treat it professionally, and it's bad business for them to betray their own professional ethics because there are so, so, so many other places for your readers/watchers to turn to if they don't trust you.
So, I don't know how well I can elaborate on this because I was only loosely connected with old friends at the time, but I think GamesRadar's math was fuzzy on that. I know two people who did those Review Session things for MGS5, but I also know they had copies of the game before it hit streets.
Either way, the MGS5 "boot camp" approach to reviewing games is not only not the norm, it's barely as common as a total eclipse. Of the people I know, only Metal Gear 4, Metal Gear 5, GTA4. and... that might be it, as far as games that my friends had to leave town to go play. Sometimes an online game is only playable inside a publisher's office or firewalled location, but even that's not as uncommon as it seems it would be.
Like, it'd be all over Twitter with the pandemic affecting everything, so has anybody heard anything about there being "Review Boot Camps" for The Last of Us 2?
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