Review policy & the score scale
What a Gaming Trend Wire score means, and the facts every score comes with.
The scale, explicitly
Scores run 0 to 10 with one decimal, and the whole scale is used. 9 to 10: an essential game, misses included. 7 to 8.9: a good to great game we would recommend to its audience. 5 to 6.9: a mixed game — real strengths, real problems, know what you are buying. 3 to 4.9: a poor game that most people should skip. 0 to 2.9: broken, misleadingly sold, or both. A 7 here is a recommendation, not a shrug: we do not grade on the industry's inflated curve.
Every score ships with its receipts
- The platforms we actually tested, not the platforms the game shipped on.
- The hours we played, honestly stated.
- Whether the review code was supplied by the publisher or bought by us.
- A written verdict: the score is the summary of an argument, never a substitute for one.
Process
Reviews are finished before they are scored, not the other way around. Publishers get no preview of scores or text, embargoes are honoured but never traded for favourable treatment, and a review is updated (with a logged correction note) if a game changes so substantially that the verdict no longer holds.
Review structured data
Review markup for search engines is emitted only where a real, complete review exists — a score, a verdict, and a named game. We never publish invented or aggregated ratings.