As someone who has been in and out of the game review industry a few times, this fiasco doesn't surprise me at all.

There's more about it at Shacknews. It was just a matter of time that this sort of thing came out in the open, because it's the way things have been done for a very long time. Videogame reviews are about as directly linked to their advertising revenue as can be and there's a great deal of pressure on the reviewers to cater to their advertisers. In most cases, it just means that a review never gets published and they'll go with a writer who will be more favourable to the game in question, but even that sort of filtering is-- well-- wrong.

At the very least, it's a bias that many consumers assume doesn't happen. In our culture we're taught that journalists are independent and maintain lofty ideals of objectivity.

Is there any solution to it though? Sure, don't tie your primary source of revenue to game reviews. Penny-Arcade is the perfect example: their main goal is to entertain people, something they're very successful with. And that gives them the enviable position of being able to say what they think. Even with many of the same advertisers, they keep their self-respect and not bend over a barrel for assho... I mean marketing suits.

Game reviews ARE advertisements. Don't kid yourselves.