There's a lot you can do to influence the review that's not literally paying for it. You can do everything paid trips to your studio for a preview, you can review embargo it until the release date, you can dictate what screenshots and videos they can use and at the worst you can just not send a review code to a publication that didn't cooperate last time.
Or maybe you just have a rabid fanbase that thinks everything you shit out is gold so they harass reviewers that give a "low" score.
How do the screenshots and videos influence the score or impression from playing the actual game? How does the embargo affect anything about the review content? At worst, the players would just see the same review on the release day.
Even if everybody pre-orders, platforms like Steam do not count the pre-order period towards their two weeks policy, so you still get two weeks or two gameplay hours to decide.
Everything I've listed is a non-exhaustive list of things CD Project did to get raving reviews for Cyberpunk on release. People may have forgotten about it but they did not allow gameplay videos, only allowed screenshots from promotional material and also promised reviewers that all the bugs and performance problems would be fixed by a day one patch.
So yes, they can and do influence reviews, even if not by literally sending money.
There's a lot you can do to influence the review that's not literally paying for it. You can do everything paid trips to your studio for a preview, you can review embargo it until the release date, you can dictate what screenshots and videos they can use and at the worst you can just not send a review code to a publication that didn't cooperate last time.
Or maybe you just have a rabid fanbase that thinks everything you shit out is gold so they harass reviewers that give a "low" score.
How do the screenshots and videos influence the score or impression from playing the actual game? How does the embargo affect anything about the review content? At worst, the players would just see the same review on the release day.
Even if everybody pre-orders, platforms like Steam do not count the pre-order period towards their two weeks policy, so you still get two weeks or two gameplay hours to decide.
Everything I've listed is a non-exhaustive list of things CD Project did to get raving reviews for Cyberpunk on release. People may have forgotten about it but they did not allow gameplay videos, only allowed screenshots from promotional material and also promised reviewers that all the bugs and performance problems would be fixed by a day one patch.
So yes, they can and do influence reviews, even if not by literally sending money.