Sorry OP for this being so far off topic. pic unrelated
Journalist being biased and having reviews bought off? Coloured me shocked! But seriously, the things I was responding to about was "JOURNOS ARE STOPPING GAMES FROM BEING SOLD", when that's not really the case. If anything, the publishers are the ones doing that and being retarded, and most of the examples you gave me amounted to "my game didn't sell well therefore no sequel was made/studio was shut down" which isn't the same thing. This problem lies not in the journalist but with the publishers and marketing teams, sometimes even the devs, for taking part in shady business with journalist, this is a problem they alone created. Honestly I feel a huge part of the "game's not being made if it doesn't meet a certain numerical score" would be solved by doing what most e-celebs have been saying for a while and just getting rid of the number scale in every way shape and form. It's a lazy way for lazy people to form opinions on things they haven't seen and/or played, same with movies, not to mention no one seems to be able to agree with what the fucking numbers mean most of the time. Most people think 7 or less is shit, smart people think 5 is the most baseline you can get, and anything higher is good, less is bad, etc.
Ok now most of that just told me that indie devs either suck at marketing and managing their time/money/crew, or suck journalist dick. Again, that seems to be more of a problem with the devs than the journalist. I REAAAALLLY get the feeling that people shouldn't be making the journalist out to be the bigger problem here, when, from what you have shown me, the problem seems to be with the publishers/consumers who think the number a game gets = how good it is. If that were the case God Hand would be shit.
All in all, thank you for actually substantiating your claims, even if they didn't really have anything to do with what I was originally saying, instead of telling me "lol just google it" or "I'M NOT GONNA SPOONFEED YOU" or shit like that.
No one will be able to stop you from buying specific things except your local government or by having a gun to your head. Stopping things from BEING SOLD, now that is a different thing entirely. It's one thing for the government to block something being sold in your country, etc. but there are tons of reasons why things could just not be put up for sale, like that one movie about killing that one terrorist where that same terrorist threatened to bomb theaters if it was put up on screen. I have no knowledge of games not even going for sale anywhere because of journos alone. I can only imagine that has happened because of journos + publishers. Again, this seems to be a bigger fault of publishers, and devs not having other options/taking it up the ass like good goys.
AGAIN, no one will ever be able to stop you from putting your money where you want. If you want a game made bad enough that isn't actually being made because of lack of funding, either make it yourself or convince a dev you like to use kikestarter, because if it's worth any money in the first place, than it shouldn't be too hard to get money via that and decent self advertising, hell you may not even need that, any half decent looking game on there usually gets a fair amount of traction, especially if you have a decent dev behind it.