I don't work for publication, but I still do think so called "major" sites are most of time just marketing tools. And too bad that smaller studios would try pretty hard to get a decent reviewer to review their game, while big studio would probably don't give a fuck since they buy most ADs anyway.
Not even youtuber are trust worthy these days, you can just see in their eyes that they struggle pretty hard to recommend some games in their video.
To be honest, I wish this kickstarter support by track-record and result trend to continue, so that [smaller] developers could just making games and profits, without being bullied around by presses and publishers.
I do know how press business works, I wrote articles/reviews for local game magazine before(2000~2007). And I just pass whenever games set a "lower bound" score that sent my way, someone else can do that( usually the poor editor himself.) Otherwise the publisher will threat to pull ADs and stop giving out info to the magazine, and that's how it works now as well, despite digitally. No early access, no viewership, no revenue, simple as that.
