I think it's gross that companies give out gifts like this (not necessarily that writers, who make very little money, accept them; I'd totally allow Ubisoft to give me a tablet which I then tossed onto eBay). However, I'm curious as to what people think the broad implications of these gifts are? Do you think a gift of a tablet will affect the coverage going forward from reputable Euro outlets like EDGE, Eurogamer and The Guardian? Are you concerned that it'll have an impact on what the fan sites do? Do you read these fan sites? If not, are you concerned about an inflated Metacritic score? Not dismissing any of these concerns, I'm just genuinely curious.
I think these things are heightened by score culture and the fact that a lot of people don't read, an thus don't give a shit about bylines. I've been to film events where very intelligent, articulate and reputable writers made off with gift baggies that had very expensive items in them. Do I think it impacted the tone of their coverage? Absolutely not, and in fact I've seen tens of thousands of written word(s) that prove otherwise. Do I think these gifts impacted the tone of coverage coming from rags like Ain't It Cool News? Oh yeah, absolutely.
The thing is, cinephiles know the difference, and reward good writing. I don't think that really happens yet in games outside of academia. Especially on forums like this, people lump most if not all of games writing together under the banner "games journalism." Very little of it is even journalism. So I think so much of the problem is reader-facing. Gifts will persist. Forever. And it's cool to be uncomfortable with them, but not necessarily outraged. Because you should search out writers you respect and trust instead of piling them all into the furnace. Give them clicks and share those pieces and it'll marginalize the shitheads and in turn marginalize the imagined importance of freebies.