The Federal Trade Commission has voted 4-0 that bloggers must now disclose any payments or freebies they receive in exchange for reviewing a product. Fines for failing to disclose this information are currently set at $11,000 per offense. As someone who has written thousands of game reviews, features, interviews and previews for a wide-variety of offline and online media (Jack DeVore isn’t my real name, so you can stop searching), I welcome this ruling with open arms.
The state of videogame journalism has never been as low as it is right now. Countless bloggers are on the take, eager to take those freebie trips to one event after another, put up in nice hotels with comped dinners, supplied with endless swag and secret advertising deals in exchange for a positive spin on a new product. When radio was a dominant force, this kind of activity was called Payola and it happens to be illegal. For far too long, the videogame industry has been getting away with murder in how it behaves with magazines and websites.
If I were to ever divulge the offers made to me over my 20 years in the industry, your hair would turn white. Much to my credit, I never buckled and kept my integrity intact, though the same can’t be said for the vast majority of sites out there who are actively involved in incestuous relationships with the very companies they are expected to be critical of. Perhaps I’ll write a book about my experiences some day, when I have plenty of money to fend off the inevitable lawsuits.
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