re: What is your GOtY for 2015 up to this point?

Not necessarily direct payments. Pay out the arse for ads, have big private release parties, etc.

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The ex-employee alleges that IGN has been setting review scores far in advance for years stating, “IGN gets paid by game publishers to modify the score. The only reason IGN is worth so much money to the eyes of investors is because they disappointingly have such a large influence on game sales. There’s no proper value for that so people have wildly different estimates from less than 100 million to 600 million. I wonder what sort of justification IGN uses to value their company. I wonder if companies even care and instead just look at the numbers.”

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Reviews only have an impact if they're 90+, and then the impact is huge.

We don't take steps to get good reviews, we take steps to make good games. Then we invite reviews to fancy promotional events to warm them up on the game before they play it on their own.

I think of our launch parties as warm-up comedians for the main act. Warm-up comedians are there to get you laughing and excited, so when the star performer walks onstage, you're primed and ready to enjoy the set. Our promo events are the same way. We bring out media to a fancy location, wine and dine them, show them the best parts of our game, and generally build anticipation for release. The theory is that, once they get the game and play it privately, they already have a positive association with the game, which may influence their final score.

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Can we get a link for any of this?

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The ex-employee alleges

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Every company has an ex employee that alleges something. That is not considered proof of anything. The rant has plenty of "insider" sources. Should we listen to those?

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We don't take steps to get good reviews, we take steps to make good games. Then we invite reviews to fancy promotional events to warm them up on the game before they play it on their own.

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This right here says that they don't pay for reviews. As for the parties, I have heard many employees of multiple sites say that these happen less and less as they discovered them to be a waste of money. Reviewers didn't like going and found it to be a bad way to review a game.

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Destiny is a great example here. The ads were all over and it sold well. However, the reviews were nothing special for it. Wouldn't destiny and Activision be the most likely candidate to pay for a great review?

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Yes and no. Reactions to games with a ton of hype either fall into two categories:
1. Reviewers wants to trash the game to go against the mindset that they think prevails or to drive in click revenue
2. Reviewer is caught into the hype and deliver a tinted review

Not that every hyped game is actually worse than it is, but the critics are often not very different than your average gamer and can get very excited too. Destiny, much like watch_dogs, got put under a serious microscope and was criticized heavily for launch content. Activision worked a lot with Sony and I imagine that most the advertising was paid for by Sony. While they no doubt had events and swag, it was always going to be big, regardless of what critics said.

Dude they just announced exclusive timed DLC for Red Bull drinkers...

I think what they are doing with Red Bull is a first. I've never seen a game include a mission/quest with something like that. The Mountain Dew and Doritos stuff was always double XP stuff iirc.

LINK

Like this is one of the most bizarre things I have seen

Witcher 3

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Mr Gardoki

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Quick off topic. Gardoki, there's a new Persona 5 trailer. It's looking nice!

For those night-long MLG benders, I usually mix Mountain Dew, Red Bull and crushed up Doritos and put them in a feeding tube.

I still have hope for it to come out this year.