" I believe that everybody can be bought if the offer is high enough". This is a thing people who can be bought often say, just like dog training guides tell you how to motivate your dog by use of "treats". Some dogs, though, just are not sufficiently interested in food to change their behavior significantly because it's offered and some people are not sufficiently interested in money.

If you define "offer" as in the above statement as "lever", however, it's more likely to be true. There's probably a lever that can be used to change most people's behavior but that lever is often not a bribe but a threat. Many people would certainly endorse just about anything if the alternative was being shot, for example. Then again, history is littered with examples of people who wouldn't, so even that doesn't work as an absolute.

Absolutes outside of the hard sciences never hold true so it's counterproductive to claim they do when making a point. Like I just did.
 

Not every statement is an absolute, you need to consider the context in which it is written, instead of isolating it and taking it to mean something completely different. I would claim that in the context discussed here, that is "bought" meaning "persuaded to endorse a product on the internet" a bribe works a lot better than a threat. At least I am not aware of cases where YouTubers were forced to endorse products under the threat of violence.
 

I agree with your post and would actually say it applies to pretty much all of YouTube and Twitch and beyond.

I think that content creators are more influenced by companies then many of them might think. While I don't believe everyone is just a paid shill giving reviews for money I do believe that the mutually beneficial relationship between game devs and creators naturally leads to a relationship where both sides are often "nicer" to each other then they otherwise would be.

I watch a fair amount of WoW content creators. It's my way of keeping up with the game even though I don't play anymore. When the "Exodus" to FF14 picked up steam many of them said they wouldn't touch WoW again and they were tired of the hype cycle for each new expansion, etc. Yet here we are prepping for a new expansion and just about all of them are covering the game again.

Even Asmongold, infamous for being a rage streamer, has softened his tone towards Blizzard recently seemingly because Blizzard is finally engaging with him behind the scenes.

Of course content creators will tend to chase whatever get views so these relationships are often fickle and only last as long as the views do.

 

Company I work for, accepting such a gift would be a breach of ethics.
 

It’s a very interesting and symbiotic relationship. Games Workshop, for example, changed their tune from ignoring and shutting down content creators to sending them free samples, inviting them to events, and generally working with them. They realised that by marketing to YouTube creators, they could in turn market to a much larger extended audience with ease. Many content creators are just freelancer marketeers that don’t realise it.