PR Firm Settles With FTC On Fake Game Reviews 105
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."
Re:Not just iTunes and games... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:4, 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?
Business as usual (Score:3, 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).
Re:Not just iTunes and games... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:4, 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.
Re:Business as usual (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not just iTunes and games... (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.
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.
Re:So tell me ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not just iTunes and games... (Score:3, 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.