Video Game Payola?
Take a look at this CNet Networks press release. Let me direct your attention to the following paragraph, the 10th bullet under “business review”:
In addition, GameSpot continued to extend content relationships during the quarter, adding Walmart, MTV and Target as licensing partners. These build on GameSpot’s existing partnerships with Yahoo! Games, AOL Games, and EBGames.com, and Sony Playstation, among others
So just to recap, Sony PlayStation and GameSpot have a ‘content relationship’? So when GameSpot posts PlayStation news and puts it up front, is there payment for this? That would be a complete conflict of interest and pretty much make it wide open that there could be pay-for-reviews as well.
Just to recap: advertising in a magazine is not a ‘content relationship’. I’m very curious as to what this means, and VERY concerned for the videogame ‘journalism’ industry. And earlier this week, Sony paid a mega fine in New York for radio payola…..