Syncaine is now admittedly paid by Aventurine to promote Darkfall. Basically he has a "Buy Darkfall" add on his blog, and if people use that to buy Darkfall, he gets 20%, which I think is rather generous. Apart from being a perfect opportunity to make jokes about him as a corporate sellout, I think that this is quite a nice option of blog financing. Sure beats Google ads, which often end up selling gold, or other dubious wares. Syncaine at least knows what he is promoting.
The other side of the coin of course is that now the world's only blog speaking nicely about Darkfall having a "material relationship" with the makers of Darkfall, and thus losing credibility. I don't really think it matters in this case, Syncaine was already notoriously unable to even remotely consider the possibility that not every feature of Darkfall was absolutely perfect. But people who don't know him will see the add, see his Darkfall posts, and make a wrong but understandable conclusion.
Furthermore it is unlikely that this will end up as standard model for MMORPG blog financing, because very few games will ever offer it. Can you imagine the fight which would break out if World of Warcraft offered such a community promotion program, and people started WoW blogs just to get a slice of the pie?
I'd be interested in hearing your opinion about MMORPG bloggers being paid to sell MMORPGs on their blogs. Great way of financing, or end of independant journalism, what do you think?
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