Dr. Omali will teach you how to spot fake reviews.
Tag: Manipulation
Community: Shockingly People Who Pre-Order Digitally Are Huge Fanboys
And it shows a flaw in Sony’s digital storefront.
Continue reading “Community: Shockingly People Who Pre-Order Digitally Are Huge Fanboys”
Steam Cleaned: Developer Berarts Ltd. Banned (Possibly) For Rigging Reviews
Valve has taken an axe to a fair number of Steam games this week, but for this edition of Steam Cleaned I’m going to focus on Berarts Ltd. who appears to have been banned for rigging Steam reviews. I can’t confirm this 100% because they haven’t made a comment nor is Valve going to say anything publicly, but after viewing the company’s itinerary of games there are some discrepancies that must be noted.
First let’s point out their six titles:
- The Pyramid Prison
- Pentagonal Saloon
- Pentagonal Saloon 2
- Karar X
- Awaiting Salvation
- Platonic Paranoia
Particularly that Berarts games have a lot of repeat reviewers. Take Lowell here who owns two unbanned games yet managed six product reviews.
Going through the review list by hand, I managed to find a ton of accounts that look a lot like Lowell; Accounts private so I can’t see their reviews on one page, own less unbanned games than they have reviews for (and have not reviewed), and just happened to review the entire library of Berarts games or most of them.
- Benedict: Private account, 1 product on account, reviews on all six titles.
- Lowell: Private account, 2 products on account, reviews on all six titles.
- __KaiserSoze__: Private account, 2 products on account, reviews on four titles.
- Manle: Private account, 16 products on account, reviews on all six titles.
- Racheldaws: Private account, 3 products on account, reviews on all six titles.
- AndersVoice: No info, 1 product on account, reviews on all six titles.
- Stephen: Private account, 20 products on account, reviews on all six titles.
I won’t bore you by going over every name on the list but there are a lot of accounts reviewing Berarts Games that meet the criteria above, way too many to be a coincidence. Evidently Valve saw the same because Berarts is no longer welcome on the Steam platform along with several other developers. But more on them later.
Steam Cleaned: Cyber Watch Dev Manipulates Review Scores To Counter Mine
Update 1/17/20: Cyber Watch is still up to its shadiness. Another positive review from a user who created their account on January 15 expressly to play Cyber Watch and nothing else and leave a positive review within 24 hours of creating their account.
In addition, our friend kaushikarathi7 has changed their name and moved from India to Germany.
Original Story:
Cyber Watch’s developer is dumb, they are really dumb, for real. And they just made a fatal mistake.
Cyber Watch is a low quality Unreal shooter that I chatted about just a day or so ago, and I went back on the Steam page today because I wanted to see if anyone else got duped into buying the game and left a review. What I found was even better, three positive reviews two of which contain snarky references to my commentary on the game. Even better, they all come from relatively new accounts with one product. Let’s dive in.
The first review is by a user named bhadana9474, a new account that owns one game and hails from Uttar Pradesh, India which also happens to house Cyber Watch’s developer. Keshav Bhadana, where have I heard that name before? Oh right, he’s listed as a developer for Cyber Watch. I like how he references the developer’s inexperience as “from what I can tell,” as though he only has second hand experience and isn’t actively working on the title.
Now let’s look at review #2:
Another account that only owns one game from Uttar Pradesh, India. What are the odds! Ashish Chaudhary…where have I heard that name before? Okay you know where this is going, Ashish is also a credited developer on Cyber Watch.
Oh my lord, a third account that only owns one game and hails from Uttar Pradesh, India. WHAT ARE THE ODDS? 100% evidently. Kaushika Rathi, where have I heard that name before? Actually this is one is a trick since there is no Kaushika Rathi listed in the developer section. There is however a Kartikay Rathi. Related to the developer? Boy it would be a hell of a coincidence if someone named Rathi from the same area of India just happened to set up a Steam account, only buy Cyber Watch, and leave a positive review within the same time span as the actual developers and after playing ten minutes.
I was born on a day and that day wasn’t yesterday.
Review manipulation is of course grounds for immediate termination, and the attempt to manipulate Cyber Watch’s review score is just as poorly thought out as the game itself. All images referenced above have been archived in order to keep the data sealed fresh for your enjoyment.
[Column] Bulkhead Interactive Asks Community To Manipulate Steam Reviews
Bulkhead Interactive is playing with fire, and I have a feeling they’re going to get burned.
World War 2 shooter Battalion 1944 currently stands at a 31% “Mostly Negative” rating on Steam, with 115 currently playing users and an all time peak of 16,341. Earlier today, Bulkhead’s community manager posted a thread on the game’s Reddit page asking the community to review, which can be very easily interpreted as “review positively,” especially given the explicitly stated goal of this campaign is to improve the game’s recent review score from mostly negative to mostly positive.
The statement very coyly tries to avoid any guaranteed accusations of review manipulation by telling players that their reviews can be positive or negative, it doesn’t matter as long as they’re giving their feedback. I have to wonder who Bulkhead thinks they’re fooling by trying to play dumb, especially when comments like the one below are being made to players who say that they enjoy the game, but don’t want to give a positive review because the player base is so small. Since Battalion is an online-only multiplayer game with no bots, the low player base can make the game nigh unplayable at off-peak hours.
“Player numbers are not the game that you’re reviewing, is the game good is the question.”
So give the game a positive or negative review, it doesn’t matter, just remember that you’re not to review the game based on criteria that we (Bulkhead) don’t approve of. Specifically criteria that would make the game look bad, like its low player count. Bulkhead even went so far as to dangle an incentive for getting the review score up, noting such feat as a prerequisite for the company to hold a sale.
“Any player who would like to leave a review, please do so as soon as possible. The reason being is that we would like to see the ‘Recent Reviews’ change as soon as possible, so that we can do our first sale. It’s a very achievable task but one that requires the community, new players, devs, and old players to work together.”
MMO Fallout 