Output Lag sells one thing: a clearly labeled promoted slot. This page explains exactly what that buys, what it can never buy, and how the money side works. Because if we’re going to take money from the industry we cover, you deserve to see the wall between the two.
What a promotion is
- One card, one place. A promoted card appears after the hero on the homepage and article pages as well as various specific pages across the website. Never more than one per page, never disguised as coverage, always indicated as promoted.
- Always labeled. Every promoted card carries a visible “Promoted” label. If it’s paid, it says so, every time it renders. That’s not just our policy, it’s an FTC requirement, and we like it that way.
- Rotated and capped. At most five promotions run at once, sharing the slot in rotation. We’d rather sell fewer placements than wallpaper the site.
- Time-boxed. Promotions run for 1, 7, 14, or 30 days, then simply end. Nothing renews silently.
What a promotion can never buy
Promotion buys placement, never coverage. Paying us does not get a game reviewed, does not change what we write, and has never moved a score in either direction. The people who approve promotions and the people who write reviews look at completely separate queues, and the review side can’t see who paid us anything. If a studio promotes a game we later review badly, the promotion changes nothing. And if that’s a dealbreaker, we’re the wrong site to advertise on.
Can you promote a review we wrote?
Yes, and we thought hard about this one. A solo developer promoting the review we gave their game is the best version of this feature. But the review being promoted was written before any money existed, is never edited because of a promotion, and scores are never shown on the promoted card itself; you have to click through and read the verdict in context, criticisms included. If we ever update a review, the promotion doesn’t get a say.
Every promotion is approved by a human
Payment never publishes anything. Every paid promotion lands in a review queue where a person checks it against this page before it goes live, usually within a day. If we decline it, the payment is refunded in full, automatically. Things we decline: content that isn’t on Output Lag, anything misleading, and anything we wouldn’t want next to our own name.
The money, plainly
Payments run through Stripe, so we never see or store card details. The traffic numbers on the pricing page are rounded (down) and honest, not inflated projections. Promotion revenue pays for the site’s running costs and the time it takes to keep reviews and guides free of any other kind of sponsorship. It also helps it so we can stick to our goal of never having general ads on the website that often ruin the sites we all used to love.
Questions?
If anything on this page doesn’t match what you see on the site, that’s a bug in our integrity, not just our code. Just tell us and we’ll fix it.