It's true. Apparently they've been doing it for ages which explains the shitty Holiday EGM filled wit more ads then a jumbo-tron. It all makes sense really, they gave Halo 3 a perfect score even though online wasn't even working. So its either they love mediocre single player games or they got the money hat from Microsoft.
Need proof? I heard it from quite a few un-named insiders that work at Ziff Davis and 1up. We should ban all of 1up and Ziff Davis ASAP. I'll get VGCats to make a comic about it too to even further validate its truth.
Stay tuned as I expose IGN, Gamespy, and whatever else.