First of all, is this really a surprise ? I can't help but to laugh at the shocked comments. We all know this stuff takes place and it probably takes place on a much bigger scale than this. Gaming review sites, the ones who shape everyone's opinions days before a game comes out. Probably the biggest offenders.
The biggest revelation with all of the "we pay you to be positive", is that company's know they can shape the way people think about a certain game before it's even released, or change the way people think about a certain product by infiltrating their very source of information. Well, non hardcore gamers anyway.. When a company like Ea puts out something, gamers are automatically skeptical and for good reason. They have earned that shady title for years of being shady to their customers.
This latest news goes to show that you can't fool people for long now that people can go straight to the net with news. Ea has earned a reputation for being the way they are for a reason. No amount of paying or persuading will reverse that. It will help with uninformed people, but making good games and being honest is the only way to repair their damaged reputation . And with the latest stuff from Ea, that reputation has just sunk in deeper.
This is the part people will hate.
A part of me can understand why Microsoft/Ea would do this. Making games/hardware is a huge risk, and a bad outlook on your product (deserving or not)can be very damaging in this day and age. Microsoft for example has a pretty bad reputation on the internet for forcing drm, forcing kinect ect. Does it deserve the backlash it's gotten after reversing those things ? I would say no, but that's just my opinion. Yes, they tried to force drm, kinect, but in the end they reversed those things and launched with a system that shared their vision and gamers visions.
So paying people to say positive things is their quick fix for repairing that damaged reputation. If people are watching youtube videos hearing things like "this system is great, no drm, no forced kinect ect, that will help reverse peoples negative outlook on the system. Not saying i agree with it, just that i can see why you would want to do something like this as a company who is in great danger of losing money due to a somewhat unfair outlook on their product.
Same kinda goes for Ea, is it fair that every game they produce brings skepticism ? In my opinion, In a way yes, but in a way no. They've earned that title, but in order to continue to pour money in to AAA games, they need to at least try to repair that reputation and have confidence they will make a profit. Again, i don't agree with paying people, it's slimy, filthy and many other words, but i can see why, from a company standpoint, they would do something like this.
In a lot of ways, the internet can be unfair with gaming. People pass judgement on games before they even play them, and many times, deem them failures before they even release. That can be really unfair for a company releasing a multimillion dollar game. The nature of the internet is to jump on to whatever is seen as "Good" or "Bad", most people don't even know why they do it, but a lot of people do because it's what everyone else is doing. It can be very damaging at times. I've seen it happen with so many gaming related things over the years. And it destroyed the outlook on that particular subject simply because it caught on.
Again, not saying i agree with paying for positive comments, just that i can see why a company would want to do stuff like this because of the potential disaster their product might unfairly face. In a way, they might see it as "fighting back" against unfair judgement.