There was a youtube interview with Greg Lisby floating around that included a very misleading question and some odd editing. I thought I’d try to clarify things as much as possible, so I contacted Dr. Greg Lisby with a few additional questions.

I’d like to add that Dr. Lisby hasn’t yet addressed all of my questions, and I’ll make another blog post once I receive his second reply.

(Emphasis added.)

…

You’re right that there needs to be a benefit for both parties, but the benefit for the journalist could be as small as the developer paying the journalist’s subscription to the game in order for the journalist to review it. While I understand what you’re saying about Patreon, what the journalist has to gain is free access to the game itself, something no one else has. Of course, the quick and easy answer to your question about how a video game journalist would pay a game to be reviewed without creating a conflict of interest would be for the journalist to pay his/her own subscription to access the game to be reviewed. As I said earlier, that’s the position of Consumer Reports and most major American news media. Thus, I would agree with you and say anyone can support a game developer monetarily, as long as there is no expectation of any benefit in any way. The question, of course, is what does “any benefit in any way” mean? That’s the ethical definitional challenge. I hope this is clearer. My philosophy of ethics is what I refer to as a philosophy of integrity. Integrity as you know is from the math term, integer, which means undivided and indivisible. So I try my best to apply the same rules and standards to all questions similarly posed. I know access to a car is not the same as access to a video game. But the situations seem to me to be parallel.

*** Hope you understand my position on ethics a bit better now. I will get to your questions soon.

Greg Lisby Gregory C. Lisby, Ph.D., J.D.

Professor | Acting Chair

Member, State Bar of Georgia

In other words, he’s of the position that:

1) Monetarily supporting a developer assuming nothing is given to the journalist in return for that contribution is never unethical.

And that..

2) If the only thing gained is access to the work of the developer, that’s considered typical of the “enthusiast press” genre and is not innately an ethical breach.

It should be noted that this is also the conclusion that The Guardian reached, which is a long and storied newspaper that’s won plenty of awards, etc.

At the end of the day: a Patreon subscription is not evidence of corruption, and everyone would do better to stop treating it as such.