Is there any evidence of actual paid reviews by IGN or any other big conglomerate?
>>383594213
Driv3rgate but it wasn't IGN and it's unknown if there was any money involved. It was more of an exclusive early coverage for 2 game journos.
Most of the time you're not reviewing a game well because the company straight up paid you to.
It's more to do with the fact that if you review the games badly you will stop receiving early copies and getting invited to press events, making you way less competitive among other reviewers.
Nintendo doesn't have to directly pay people to review their games well, because they're aware of how much they can fuck up the review sites if they please.