TemplarGR does make a good point about new age shilling. If I was making a game, I'd rather have a popular streamer play it for a week where I know for sure thousands of his viewers are being exposed to it than run a thirty second advertisement which most people will either skip after three seconds or not even see due to adblock.
These streamers are goldmines for developers since a streamer has a loyal fanbase that will happily hang off what they say while a developer saves a lot of money from having to put together any actual marketing campaign.
Typical forms of video game shilling:
1) Video game magazines (companies bought ads=good reviews for their games), this form is obsolete because internet
2) Video game site reviews (again, no site is subscription based, everyone is based on ad money... People caught on to the bribed reviews of the various IGNs and Gamespots and now they are obsolete as well)
3) Youtube, twitch, streamer shills. These people make their money off video game companies bribing them under the table to let's play or promote their shit. 99,9% of the streamer population is a shill. How do you think they are making enough money to live off it, google ad sense? HAHAHAHAHAHA! Yes, the law in some places has a requirement to report when a video is sponsored, but they don't have to report it if they can hide it well enough... Those people are called "influencers" now, but they are really just old fashioned shills.
4) Forum, metacritic, youtube comment, reddit, shills. People who get paid to comment on the internet and pretend to be normal gamers and then proceed to claim a certain game is good, you should buy it. Very apparent on Metacritic, where each user review at the time of release for a new game, is made by a brand new account with no review history on the site. Don't believe me? Look it up yourselves. Go visit any major game day 1 and see how many 9s and 10s it will get from brand new accounts...
Want another example? Any Blizzard subreddit or forum... It is full of "users" who are really Blizzard employees and will downvote and attack ANYONE who dares even mildly criticize their game. When called upon it, they will pretend they are just blind "fanboys" and not employees. What separates those from the true "fanboys"? They have a strange "allowance" to bend the rules, like calling someone names, they post a lot, almost instantly, on any negative remark, but they never insert any new information in a discussion, in other words, they never make their own complaints/feedback/whatever. They just react to criticism for damage control etc...
People need to understand that the world is full of poor people, especially in asia, who would gladly get a few dollars in order to write stuff online. It is a cheap and effective way to promote products. Do you really think that companies which makes millions and even billions of dollars, would shy away from hiring a few poor people to create positive buzz around their stuff? Is paying millions for a TV ad better?
This is not just video games obviously. "Influencers" are fucking everywhere online. From travel agents, to clothes, to cars, politicians, etc, shilling is half the traffic on internet these days, the other half is porn, as i always say
