Mr. Tact wrote on Feb 15, 2018, 18:12:

Kxmode wrote on Feb 15, 2018, 13:14:
Cheaters never prosper, and yet people appear to forget this.

Ha! If only this were true. Check out the financial industry, there whoever cheats most gets the most money.

Apples and oranges. The financial industry is full of cheaters, so applying that saying there is irrelevant to begin with.

Kxmode wrote on Feb 15, 2018, 13:14:
Cheaters never prosper, and yet people appear to forget this.

Ha! If only this were true. Check out the financial industry, there whoever cheats most gets the most money.

I worked for a company (~20 years ago) that asked it's employees to do this... I thought it was pretty shitty, so I kept the email (for a year or two).

Cheaters never prosper, and yet people appear to forget this.

Cutter wrote on Feb 15, 2018, 09:53:
It is ZERO different from any other type of payola. Remember that shit from a few years back with sites like PC Lamer getting static because of their giving good reviews to big advertisers and shitty ones to those who weren't? All in the pretense of maintaining the appearance of being professional and unbiased when nothing could be further from the truth. It's STILL the same. There are no free lunches. Someone gives you something they expect something in return.

Nonsense, the integrity of your ethics starts and stops with you and only with you. And if I had been in such a situation (thankfully none of my employees are nor were stupid enough to try that) I would have leaked this shit instantly. I absolutely despise such scummy behaviors in this industry.

And no amount of money or threat would let me forget that principle. I never reviewed any game I worked on. Especially before Steam made public who got games for free (Although that system is HUGELY flawed)

It is ZERO different from any other type of payola. Remember that shit from a few years back with sites like PC Lamer getting static because of their giving good reviews to big advertisers and shitty ones to those who weren't? All in the pretense of maintaining the appearance of being professional and unbiased when nothing could be further from the truth. It's STILL the same. There are no free lunches. Someone gives you something they expect something in return.

Blackhawk wrote on Feb 15, 2018, 01:16:
Valve essentially put them out of business.

Which is the scary part of Valve's kinda-sorta monopoly on PC, but 10+ years of warnings were never heard and it ain't gonna happen now.

KilrathiAce wrote on Feb 15, 2018, 01:36:
Too bad Valve doesnt do this to people who do same thing to spam bunch of negative reviews in order to hurt overall reviews of a game, and often even 0.1 hours or less. Oh yea...

Well they don't have to spam nowadays, its enough to buy the games out today and see for ya self ....sadly.

The time for games made with passion for the game is over...now they are halfbaked with only one thing in mind ....DLC ..microtransaction.

Hallelujah haaaaaaaaalelujah.

Too bad Valve doesnt do this to people who do same thing to spam bunch of negative reviews in order to hurt overall reviews of a game, and often even 0.1 hours or less. Oh yea...

Valve essentially put them out of business.

I worked in the casino industry shortly after the mob era. This is exactly how that was cleaned up - you make the penalties for getting caught so severe that it isn't worth the risk anymore.

eRe4s3r wrote on Feb 14, 2018, 22:58:

Cutter wrote on Feb 14, 2018, 20:30:
The only difference here is these guys got caught. Devs/pubs giving away copies for positive reviews is zero different.

It's plenty different, employees are banned by TOS from reviewing (including freelancers), non employers are not. Any Indy dev working on Steam knows this, because they read the TOS before signing on.

I know I did And you'd be surprised how much more relevant review score is nowadays, Steams entire algo uses review score primarily. So a good youtube channel promoing your game might not actually do anything for you if that doesn't translate to (positive) reviews. It has become super important to pick the right youtubers and streamers to give games too.

Also, any "product given for free" review gets flagged and easily visible.

Employees can still make topics in forums or boards or whatever. But reality is that this was a shitty low quality MMO

It's all about the score, and products given for free don't count towards that. Only products purchased on Steam count, to reduce abuse. I thought he'd specifically tell employees to buy it on Steam; he didn't go that far but he offered to reimburse employees so at least he wanted to avoid the "free" label.

Cutter wrote on Feb 14, 2018, 20:30:
The only difference here is these guys got caught. Devs/pubs giving away copies for positive reviews is zero different.

It's plenty different, employees are banned by TOS from reviewing (including freelancers), non employers are not. Any Indy dev working on Steam knows this, because they read the TOS before signing on.

I know I did And you'd be surprised how much more relevant review score is nowadays, Steams entire algo uses review score primarily. So a good youtube channel promoing your game might not actually do anything for you if that doesn't translate to (positive) reviews. It has become super important to pick the right youtubers and streamers to give games too.

Also, any "product given for free" review gets flagged and easily visible.

Employees can still make topics in forums or boards or whatever. But reality is that this was a shitty low quality MMO

The only difference here is these guys got caught. Devs/pubs giving away copies for positive reviews is zero different.

Yikes, and they were talking about losing their jobs before...

If Amazon did the same it would cut their catalog by 98.9%