PR Firm Settles With FTC On Fake Game Reviews

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PR Firm Settles With FTC On Fake Game Reviews

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 27, 2010 @05:10AM from the amazing-summary-A-plus-plus-would-skim-again dept.

eldavojohn writes "So, you pay a PR firm like Reverb to generate some positive buzz for your new mobile game, and what do they do? Hire employees to post fake glowing reviews of your game wherever it's being distributed. The FTC says that's not okay due to regulations enacted last year requiring that paid reviews disclose they are paid reviews. Originally, the fear was that this regulation would target the small-time blogger, but this news of Reverb settling with the FTC over fake game reviews shows that the FTC is also targeting big PR firms. They said, 'We hope that this case will show advertisers that they have to be transparent in their practices and help guide other ad agencies.' The article says fake reviews like those alleged in the complaint (PDF) are pretty much the norm on iTunes. Reverb denies that this settlement is any acknowledgment of wrongdoing; rather, just a timesaver over a costly court battle. Will the FTC continue to make examples of big PR firms? Wait and see."

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Not just iTunes and games... by GuidedByVoices · 2010-08-27 05:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

These fake reviews are common for businesses as well. Take a look at restaurants on Yelp sometime; many "boost" their review status by posting fakes. How is the FTC actually able to deduce which are from a firm and which are legit anyway?

--
idioelectric - Electric per se, or containing electricity in its natural state.
1. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by idontgno · 2010-08-27 05:17 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Well, if we're talking about game reviews, I think a safe assumption is that if it's glowingly positive, it's fake.
  
  --
  Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
2. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by Locke2005 · 2010-08-27 05:21 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I bought the new iPad, and it made my penis grow 2 inches longer! True story!
  
  --
  I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
3. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-27 05:27 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Unfortunately for you it was only 2 inches to start with so it's still tiny.
4. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by T+Murphy · 2010-08-27 05:29 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The most obvious ones are where the section to list cons is just used to say more good things ("I have a hard time putting it down!").
  
  --
  My webcomic
5. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by dmonney · 2010-08-27 05:30 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Yelp was recently sued for extortion for modding down those who didn't pay though. Maybe that's what we are missing. We need to pay Apple!, oh wait that's already done by them making a "featured" secion.
  
  --
  --Accept it, I'm a programmer and don't use spellcheck. As long as I spell things wrong consistently my programs work fi
6. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by SailorSpork · 2010-08-27 05:39 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  I bought the new iPad, and it made my penis fall off! True story!
  Fixed that for ya... per FTC compliance.
7. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by garcia · 2010-08-27 05:50 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  They do it on blogs too. Unfortunately for them they can't capitalize on my site's high ranking for their restaurants because I track them down and expose them for what they are. See here: http://www.lazylightning.org/astroturfing-poor-attempts-at-changing-opinion
  If other sites were smart they'd be doing the same things. The actual userbase is far more pleased with the service you provide when you don't allow that sort of bullshit.
8. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by Monkeedude1212 · 2010-08-27 05:56 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Well, if we're talking about game reviews, I think a safe assumption is that if it's glowingly positive, it's fake.
  Hold your horses there cowboy. Now I don't disagree that game reviews are flooded with terribly positive reviews but there is no reason to assume that because a review is positive that it's faked.
  Because every odd once in a while, a good game WILL be released and it goes from glowingly positive to explosively positive. I think Portal is one of the more recent/popular ones, so it makes a great example. Now, how many positive reviews have you read for that game? Well if you're anything like me, you heard the positive reviews before the game even came out, which would normally be a great indicator that its about to flop. Most games get that sufficient build up that it ends up a bit disappointing in the end. (Halo ODST, we're looking at you).
  Now, there's no real "trick" to figuring out if a game review is fake or not. After all, some people are paid to write good reviews and some people are so inexperienced in gaming that they haven't actually played a good game. It'll make me sound like an old geezer to preach about classics so we'll steer clear of that.* But in all honesty, there are basically 2 types of reviews that come out. Type A is the kind you find on a tech site that basically works it as an advertising campaign for the game, by basically spewing everything thats on the box onto a web page and telling you to read it. Tybe B is a critique of the game, sometimes finding the most insurmountable details to nit pick on just to keep their cred as a cold-hearted-hard-to-please-hard-core-gamer.
  If there's any "trick" at all, its to not rely on reviews. Specifically the online ones, but even word of mouth can be misleading at times.** So to tie this all in to the article, I think its good that the FTC is working on this kind of stuff, even if it ends with "settling" out of court. Slow and steady wins the race, most change in North America gets enacted slowly so its good to see that kind of approach working in benefit of the consumers.
  *For Now
  ** One of my ex room-mates could not stop preaching about Borderlands. I had watched him play it a few times but it never really drew my interest as it seemed to be another run-kill-upgrade-repeat games with a few gimmicks here and there. Then he went on about how the opening theme song was just so good, but what he didn't realize was that it wasn't an original track, and it had been on the top of the radio charts for about 3 weeks before he even started playing the game, so when I drove to and from work I would hear it 3 times a day. He took the bus to school so I can't really blame him though.
9. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by elrous0 · 2010-08-27 06:01 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I don't know, because I'm too busy playing this new awesome game called "Kane and Lynch: Dead Men." The gameplay is so amazing and absorbing that I just can't tear myself away long enough to follow news stories. It's well-worth every penny of the $60 I paid for it and more. I would recommend it to everyone.
  
  --
  SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
10. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by dubbreak · 2010-08-27 06:34 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  I bought the new iPad, and it made my penis grow 2 inches longer! True story!
  It's called an erection.
  
  --
  "If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
11. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by Andrewkov · 2010-08-27 06:34 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  There's an app for that?
12. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-27 06:41 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I bought the new iPad, and it made my penis grow 2 inches longer! True story!
  I bought an iphone and got more sex.
  and boy is my ass tired...
13. Re:Not just iTunes and games... by stephanruby · 2010-08-27 11:11 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  How is the FTC actually able to deduce which are from a firm and which are legit anyway?
  I think they're going for the low hanging fruits first, many of which will be some of the worst offenders. Disgruntled former employees will be their primary source of information. And I'm guessing there will be a good number of them since this is not going to be a good job for anyone to have. The next ring down would be stupid PR firms that either brag/advertise what they're doing, or post suspect reviews from an ip address block that can easily be traced back to them.
  After that, I think it will be in the hands of the web sites/app stores themselves. For instance, Amazon has a verified real person flag for customer reviews. The next step would be to flag who amongst the reviewers, has officially paid for the merchandise/books/apps in question that they're reviewing. There is no need to prevent anonymous reviewers or unverified reviewers from posting reviews, for me just flagging them and giving me a way to filter out those reviews (should I need to) would be enough a precise moment in time.
  I suspect that if once Yelp/Amazon/App Store get bad enough, another better system will come along that's more trustworthy (at least for a short time) and will slowly siphon away many of their customers away. Which brings me to my last point, no system is perfect, no system is game-proof, it just needs to be good enough and slightly better than other potential alternatives.
Wait... by Locke2005 · 2010-08-27 05:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Why should I pay someone to post fake reviews when I can create false accounts and post fake reviews all by myself for free? Unless there is some foolproof method of positively establishing the identity of the poster, these reviews should be considered crap anyway.

--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
1. Re:Wait... by butterflysrage · 2010-08-27 05:21 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  volume... can you create hundreds, make sure none get taken down, repost the ones that do... day in and day out AND get your next game made?
  
  --
  the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
2. Re:Wait... by Monkeedude1212 · 2010-08-27 05:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Correctumundo!
  Why do people assume that just because something is free and trivial that you wouldn't pay someone to do it? Time is money, and its up to you to decide whether the money you save for posting your own fake reviews is worth the money you could be making doing something else - and whether the fake reviews are worth the money of paying someone else.
  I mean - I'll give the neighbourhood kid 10 bucks to mow my lawn, even though I have a lawn mower and could easily do it on a Saturday afternoon.
Business as usual by decipher_saint · 2010-08-27 05:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Video game reviewing is probably one of the least credible forms of "journalism" out there. Back in the day it was magazine editors that were getting rewards for pushing reviews in perhaps more positive directions than they needed to be. Then it was game reviewing websites. Now it's a swarm of goobers who post "user" reviews to sites.
I'm fairly confident in saying that video game reviews, for the most part, are useless (or perhaps to be taken for entertainment purposes only).

--
crazy dynamite monkey
1. Re:Business as usual by AdmiralXyz · 2010-08-27 05:49 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  It's not all bad, you just need to ignore both
  
  a) Big-name publications. As you say, they're pretty much factories which output wonderful reviews for the sake of early-access and other perks.
  
  b) Individual commenters and nobodies with blogs. They're either paid shills or, more commonly, frothing fanboys who don't meet any standards of objectivity.
  
  There are reliable sources, though, when you look outside of these categories. Sites like Ars Technica are pretty good, although since gaming is just one of several things they do, there's never any guarantee that they'll review the game you're interested in. Penny Arcade is of course the gold standard: Tycho (or Jerry, or whatever) is a great writer, and you can be damn sure that if he gives a game a thumbs-up, he's not doing it as a favor to some PR man. As long as you stick to established good sources you don't have to worry about scams like this.
  
  --
  Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
2. Re:Business as usual by cgenman · 2010-08-27 06:18 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I feel like there is a quality scale in gaming, and a tickle-your-fancy factor. Borderlands is a reasonable quality game, but it never quite tickled my fancy. Some reviews were strongly positive (decent quality, very much of interest to the reviewer), while others just went "meh" (decent quality, not of interest to the reviewer). By comparison, I loved that terrible Burger King Pocket Bike Racer game. It wasn't amazing or terrible, but it happened to strike a sweet spot in my personal brain between a love of bikes, a love of kart racers, and a love of really, really short racing games. Similarly, I'm a fan of DeathSmiles. It is of moderate to high quality. But the appeal is on a razor edge of gothic bullet hell players. No matter the quality level, I can't think of a single friend that would enjoy playing the game.
  I find it's most useful to skim the reviews to get a sense for the overall build quality of the game. And if the soul of the game also genuinely appeals, go for it.
  Full disclosure: I work in gaming.
  
  --
  The ______ Agenda
If I were kind of the judicial system by DoofusOfDeath · 2010-08-27 05:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

I would make it illegal to settle a lawsuit without admitting wrongdoing.
If you're innocent, then it's wrong for the plaintiff to get a dime from you. And if you're liable, then the results of discovery should be available to any other would-be plaintiff.
Settlements basically set up a shakedown system.
Are these by SnarfQuest · 2010-08-27 05:44 · Score: 2, Funny

Are these bloggers typical slashdot bloggers?
Duke Nukem Forever is the wonderfulest game ever gone and played. It is more better than the other one. I dont no of any gooder game available for the xbox windows. It wood only gets betterer if they cud have included Natalie Portman as a playable character.

--
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
So tell me ... by cdrguru · 2010-08-27 05:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

What is a review that isn't "fake" or paid for? Where do you find such a thing? Certainly not on the Internet.
There are two reasons for anyone to write something: they personally feel so strongly that they have to tell other people and they are getting paid to do it. The former is pretty much restricted to people with negative comments. So I guess that means any review that is positive is paid for.
Similarly, negative reviews about your competition are an extremely powerful tool if you assume that people are still reading fake, misleading reviews about anything. So that means a good portion of the negative reviews can be assumed to be put their by people trying to make their competition look bad.
So why would anyone believe a review on the Internet? Near as I can tell they are all fake or paid for.
1. Re:So tell me ... by LatencyKills · 2010-08-27 06:17 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  There's a third group of people you missed in your post - those who review games because they genuinely love playing them and want others to find the good ones and avoid the bad ones, and maybe even in some Darwinian fashion improve gaming as a whole. I've been doing online game reviews for almost a decade - companies send me games, some ask for me to review them specifically - and I've always posted my honest opinion of them without dilution or pressure from my agent. I've had companies send me games that I subsequently slammed. They're probably not happy about that, but it allows my readers to know that I do write unbiased reviews (or at least biased by nothing more than my own opinions). Here's a hint to finding fake reviews - if you're reading a game review with a banner ad for that game across the top of it, it's probably not a real review.
  
  --
  Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
yes by phantomfive · 2010-08-27 06:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Will the FTC continue to make examples of big PR firms?

It is the modus operandi of the FTC to go after big firms and hope that the smaller guys will play along. They suggest that if you notice a small business not obeying rules, you should report them to the BBB, report them to local authorities, or sue them yourself. Presumably they don't have enough resources to chase everyone, but for whatever reason, if you are a small blog, you have nothing to worry about from the FTC.

--
Qxe4
Re:Cool. Can we do this to Fox News? by Attila+Dimedici · 2010-08-27 06:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

Compare the number of political operatives from the Democratic Party who now work for MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC to the number of political operatives from the Republican Party who now work for Fox News (by political operative I mean someone who once held an elective office or worked in the government answerable directly to someone who held an elective office). I think you will find that each of the other networks have at least as many Democratic operatives (former?) working for them as Fox News has Republican operatives (former?). My impression based on comments I have seen online is that Fox News has more (former?) Democratic Party operatives working for it than MSNBC has Republican and that Fox News has fewer (former?) Republican Party operatives working for it than MSNBC has (former?) Democratic Party operatives. This may not be true as I watch neither one of them (or any other television news), but that is the impression I get.

--
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It's all around us by ProfanityHead · 2010-08-27 07:25 · Score: 2, Informative

Newegg, Amazon, any online reseller has reviews for each item where in some cases I'd guess 50% of them are fake.
At least on Amazon you can reply to a comment and challenge the person's authenticity.
I wouldn't see a reason why game reviews would be any different.