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Review and Ethics Policy

At WellPlayed we believe in being transparent with our readers and we pride ourselves on providing honest, fair and thorough opinions about all the games we have the opportunity to cover. Below you can find our review policy and code of ethics in full.

Review Policy and Ethics:

In order for our reviews to be as relevant and as helpful as possible to our readers, WellPlayed regularly receives review copies of games, as well as review consoles and hardware from developers, publishers, manufacturers or their affiliated PR firm prior to the official release date, which will be disclosed at the end of the review. As such, WellPlayed agrees to ­­and is bound by any embargo guidelines requested by the aforementioned companies. However, WellPlayed has never and will never accept bribes of any kind to influence a review score or opinion. While reviews are passed on to the providing company after a review is published, reviews and their scores are never discussed with any member of the development, publishing, manufacturing or PR team prior to publication. WellPlayed team members will on occasions purchase games and hardware for review purposes with their own money. While WellPlayed aims to publish reviews in a timely manner, not all titles are of the same length, and as such reviews will not be published until a thorough analysis has been conducted and any opinions can be supported.

Reviews are allocated to the writing team by the editing team and allocation is determined by several key factors: writing strength, availability and most importantly, familiarity (you wouldn’t give an open-world RPG to someone whose bread and butter is sport games etc.). Reviews are scored using a 1-10 system, with reviewers able to utilise point numbers (such as 7.5 or 5.8). Scores are submitted by the reviewer along with the review draft, which are verified by the editing team. If a member of the editing team feels that a review does not reflect its given score then the editing team will suggest a score based on the review text and communication with the reviewer will continue until a score is agreed upon. Under no circumstance does the editing team adjust scores without the consent of the original reviewer.

While WellPlayed does review games that are in Early Access, we do not score these reviews given their development is not complete.

WellPlayed also reviews hardware and accessories from time to time. These reviews will not be scored, instead a recommendation will be given on whether the product is worth purchasing.

Code of Ethics:

As an Australian media outlet, all members of WellPlayed must adhere to the guidelines found in the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance Journalist Code of Ethics, which states that ‘members engaged in journalism commit themselves to: honesty, fairness, independence and respect for the rights of others.’ You can view the code in full here.