Why you'll never see a paid review here

Every so often we get an email offering money to feature a game or bump its score. The answer is always no, and I want to explain why we bother saying it publicly.

The whole value of a review is trust. The moment a rating can be bought, it stops meaning anything, and readers can smell that instantly. We'd rather stay small and honest than grow on the back of reviews nobody believes.

That means our praise is real and so is our criticism. If a game bores us halfway through, we write that. If it surprised us, like Lucky Coin did, we'll happily gush. Either way, the words are ours.

Developers are welcome to send us games to try. We'll play them fairly. What they can't do is influence what we say afterwards, and we make that clear from the first message.