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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MJGraham" data-source="post: 6328141" data-attributes="member: 6777356">Unless a product is free to make and free to buy, I'm not sure there is any such thing as a free review. Somebody has to pay for it. I've tried to get one of my roleplaying games reviewed by sending reviewers a free PDF of the game. I did get a review and I'm very thankful for it. Sending out free copies of my game did teach me a few things. I learned that reviewers who accept free products often have massive list of games to review already and that its easier to get a review when people already know and like your work. The last one is a bit of a catch 22 situation if you're a small publisher. A lot of them rely on reviews to help them get a large enough audience to warrant getting a review. It is not the only way to increase their sales, but it can be an important one.I don't think that reviewer are owed free copies of anyone's work and at my most suspicious, I wonder if there's an implicit agreement between publishers and reviewers to give favourable reviews to games that are freely given to reviewers. Or maybe not an implicit agreement as such, but a kind of moral obligation. A "I should give this game a good review because I didn't have to pay for it" moral obligation.I think that reviews are probably best when reviewers do have to buy their own copies of the games they review. It helps them to think like a consumer and it probably makes it easier to decide if it is worth the price it is being sold at. But having said that, I do understand why publishers send out free review copies and I don't blame reviewers for accepting them. If I was a reviewer, I would probably accept free games. I'd like to think I wouldn't feel entitled to them, but maybe I would after a while. Who knows how I would be like if I became a successful reviewer.</blockquote>

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