How so? Until I got to college my second job (after "sandwich artist" at Wendy's) was as a paid contributor to one of the two powerhouse gaming blogs at the time (the one that wasn't Kotaku; if you were in the scene back then, you'd heard of us), back when blogging was first coming to the public consciousness and the term "blogosphere" had yet to be coined. And while in retrospect I'd classify the quality of my own writing as "tabloid amateur" at best (please, God, don't go look at it!), we held ourselves to quite high standards of integrity: we could not accept any gifts from publishers, including paying for our own lodging and airfare when traveling to events; if we attended after-parties (at E3 and such), we had to disclose our presence and acknowledge any conflicts of interest; and when receiving games to review not only did we have to disclose as such, but we were forbidden from keeping any games, so we held raffles in order to award the games to our readers (back when physical copies were the norm, remember). If even our flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants blog could adhere to standards, why is everyone so dim on the prospect of integrity for game journalists?

The blogs on that scale sadly do not set the standard; as long as IGN and Gamespot are willing to put up with these shenanigans, the game companies can get away with it.