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EA's Dungeon Keeper Ratings Below a 5 Go To Email Black Hole

fplatten writes "I would definitely call this unethical manipulation of the ratings system: the Worst Company in America, EA is routing all ratings made in game of 1 to 4 stars as an email that is sent to EA, but all 5 star ratings are routed to the Google Play store, where its rating is currently 4.3 out of 5."

14 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. I can't wait for the next EA game... by znanue · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hear it's going to be called "Dungeon Keeper Beta".

  2. Re:Fraud? by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, since EA is publicly traded, couldn't this count as a material misrepresentation to the stock market?

  3. No rating API by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why on earth is google allowing anyone to submit ratings via any API

    It's not. From the article:

    Thus the only way to give the game something other than full marks is to say you'll award it five stars, then actually rate it less when taken to the marketplace.

    In other words, the 5 Stars button goes to the app's page in Google Play Store, and the 1-4 Stars button goes to the "leave feedback" screen. A player can leave a lower rating by tapping 5 Stars, waiting for the Play page to open, and tapping a lower star rating.

  4. Yet another reason.. by Sable+Drakon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Never rate an app from within the app itself. We all know it's super convienent, but at the same time it's subject to this kind of trickery.

    --
    The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
  5. Re:Works for Slashdot as well... by Rostis · · Score: 5, Funny

    Aha, you must be that "audience" I've been hearing about.

  6. Re: Give Me Mod Points Slashdot, I fight for the U by Dzimas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The beta design simply doesn't have the information density of the production version. Instead of scanning for interesting comments, I scroll until I get sick of scrolling and then back out to the next thread. This isn't a situation in which users are grumbling because they don't like change; it's an instance where the redesign has a dramatic negative effect on the UX. That's a potential site killer.

  7. Re:Disingenuous and manipulative summary, article by Xeno+man · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except that it is not well intentioned. What they are doing is per-filtering people and anyone that says they would rate 5, they direct them to the rating site. Anyone that does not want to rate 5 they direct away from the rating site. Regardless what they may or may not do with user feed back, they are still artificially inflating their games score by hiding the rating site from anyone that doesn't want to give full ratings.

  8. Re:What? by pellik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Neither. It's the super-paywall version where every tile you want to build takes 24 hours unless you pay them $2 PER TILE.

  9. Re:Right: Beat them @ their OWN game by fisted · · Score: 5, Informative

    You are kidding right? "Solving" this by abusing the hosts file is the most crude solution one could possibly come up with, and, btw, renders /. entirely inoperable (what a loss...).

    Guess either you aren't the real apk, or you indeed have the poor technical understanding you seem infamous for.

    for the record, slashdot sets a cookie. it's called betagroup. It appears to contain an integer value between 0 and 99. The poor souls where this number is sufficiently small (ATM <20) get redirected to beta. The others do not.
    In case the solution has not become obvious yet modify that cookie.

    -- "But I use chrome, you insensitive clod!"

  10. Re:Works for Slashdot as well... by arth1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    guys seriously I think beta is stupid... but all the anti Beta posts are ruining this site more then that is.

    Um, you are aware that disruption is the point of picketing, right? The idea is to get not just the slashdot editors to notice, but the upper management who may be unaware of what's going on.
    Disrupting the forums enough that it awakens those with power to actually make decisions is necessary to save slashdot.

    If slashdot feeds us non-committed platitudes and corpspeak svada, chances are they do the same upwards too.
    Hopefully some paying advertisers will notice soon, and make a phone call. It's not in their interest to sponsor a forum full of unhappy people, whether they're unhappy with DICE or unhappy with the protests.

    I hope it won't take too long before someone is forced to swallow a camel and finally admit that they messed up. Then we can move on, get a new usable design made from scratch, and have a thriving community of posters.
    But I'd rather see a few days of picketed topics now than to see Slashdot die within a few months. All your guys postings are worth a lot more to me than rational discussions right now and a dead site down the road.

    So forgive us for disrupting your comment reading right now. If you can think of any other way to get the top brass to see that the site is broken, and that an overwhelming majority of those who make people come to visit the site won't accept the beta, even with band-aids on it, please let us know. Using the "appropriate" channels have gotten us exactly nowhere, they've ignored feedback for four months.

  11. Re: Works for Slashdot as well... by Bob9113 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    displayed on a nerd=site where all negative comments about the quality of the site are hidden away as -1 or off topic

    Don't look now, but your negative comment about the quality of this site is currently modded as +4 Interesting.

    Ah-Ha! But that only proves the point! You see, they intentionally allowed your comment to be modded up so they can point to it and say, "See, we didn't mod that one into oblivion!" Tricksy Hobbitses!

    Oh yeah, and, Fuck Beta.

  12. Re:What? by Merls+the+Sneaky · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No joke. Total biscuit gives you a quick look in this video.
    http://youtu.be/6DJmS7prcmE?t=...

    If this is the future of gaming according to EA they can shove it up their arse.

  13. Re: Works for Slashdot as well... by war4peace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe all the downmods are coming from people like me, who come to /. for the articles and comments, not caring about site design, who owns what and political bullshit implications.
    I come here to see informative comments on the subject at hand and read relevant news. What you guys are doing is noise I loathe.
    It's like going to a cafe to have a good coffee and overhear interesting conversation about the soft volume music playing, and when owner decides to redesign the cafe's interior, some tards start screaming in my ear whenever a new song is played, just because they don't like the new paintwork.
    And when other patrons flag them as vandals, they come up with a "conspiracy theory".
    You and your kind are vandals in my opinion. You don't like the new cafe paintwork? Feel free to go to another or create your own. but please, leave me be. Allow me to read the articles and relevant comments.
    You're the kid in this video, and I'm the other customer.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  14. Re:Works for Slashdot as well... by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    UI changes are not something to act disruptive in every fricking thread over, even if they reduce features.

    Slashdot has two things, comments and a UI. If you fuck up the UI so that you can't easily comment, it will have zero things. Many of us have dare I say invested a lot of time here, and it's reasonable to attempt to protect that investment by spending more time bitching about the proposed changes. The fact that you're seeing so many messages of complaint is that it's a big deal to many people. If you're not one of them, consider yourself counted, but realize that you're protesting protest which is both bitchy and hypocritical.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"