Carl's review of Dream Home Decorator pack is out

I don't think Carl's being influenced by the fandom's negativity, at least not on any noticeable level. Like many of us, his frustrations over the game have been growing. Sims 4 has been going on for almost 7 years, and a lot of its flaws and failings haven't been addressed - if anything, some of them have gotten worse over time. You see it in a lot of his videos, and not just his reviews: he knows what he wants to see and what the game can do to improve, but nothing is being done.

And I don't think he's being negative to cater to people. Reviews are tricky with this fandom - if you're too positive, you get called a shill and bootlicker who swallow up everything you're given. If you're too negative, people say you're a troll, a hater, doing it for views and not credible. Plumbella and Grimcookies even talked about this in some of their reviews, where they have to preface things by saying "I tried to be positive so people don't think I'm a hater" or "I've been positive in my reviews and people called me a bootlicker." I don't think it's fair to accuse most people of catering to fans, since anything but completely neutral or is going to get you side-eyes.

That said, the Game Changer program will inherently have biases because the big GCs know many of the Gurus personally and are friends with them, and they get the packs for free, before anyone else. Even if they come to a positive opinion on their own, the system is set up in a certain way. LGR, himself, brought this up and said that's why he opted out of getting free review copies. But that's not relevant to my overall point, which is that reviewers can be unfairly criticized. There's an inherent bias in the system, but that doesn't mean reviewers are easily influenced.