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Home News BioWare Employee Caught Writing User Review for Dragon Age II

GAMING NEWS

BioWare Employee Caught Writing User Review for Dragon Age II

Posted on Tuesday, March 15 @ 15:32:59 Eastern by


Reddit user GatoFiasco found something curious on Metacritic, when he found that the top user review (since taken down) by Avanost was a bit too lofty in his praise for Dragon Age II:

The immersion and combat of this game are unmatched! A truly moving and fun epic. Anything negative you’ll see about this game is an overreaction of personal preference. For what it is, it is flawlessly executed and endlessly entertaining.

Since Avanost only reviewed one game - Dragon Age II - GatoFiasco investigated further and found that Avanost is an engineer for BioWare.

Now, I don't think Bioware is doing any kind of astroturfing or "rent-a-crowd" here where they are having their employees write positives user reviews all over the Internet. It's certainly a question of ethics, though. There's nothing incredibly wrong with writing positive praise for a game that you've worked on (if so, then indie developers would never say anything), but it is a matter of integrity. According to the FTC Publishing Guidelines:

Bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

According to some supposed "industry veterans", this practice actually happens all the time; if so, that's injustice to the consumer. Not that we should believe Metacritic user reviews, anyway, but it is a form of deception disguised as personal opinion.

[Source]
Related Games:   Dragon Age 2
Tags:   EA, Bioware, Dragon Age, metacritic


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Comments
  • SKX
    SKX
    Joined: Oct 2008
    Posted: Mar 15th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
    He was probably frustrated at some pimply 13 year old ripping on a game that he worked hard on. I see no problem with this, its user feedback, you take it with a grain of salt no matter who it is.
    0 0
  • De-Ting
    De-Ting
    Joined: Nov 2006
    Posted: Mar 15th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
    GatoFiasco...an epic name for an epic man. Also, lots of companies have employees promoting their products through reviews. Just look at the Apple App Store. It's disgusting.
    0 0
  • 213EDD
    213EDD
    Joined: Sep 2007
    Posted: Mar 15th, 2011 at 8:35 pm
    i would have done it for him myself
    0 0
  • Rinnon
    Rinnon
    Joined: Nov 2005
    Posted: Mar 15th, 2011 at 10:59 pm
    On a side note, I find it intriguing that the game faired so positively on the Reviewer side of things, and so Negatively on the user side of things. I mean, I agree you take user feedback with a grain of salt, but when there's a 300 person sample size, trends usually don't come out of nowhere. I don't read Metacritic very regularly, does this happen often?
    0 0
  • 213EDD
    213EDD
    Joined: Sep 2007
    Posted: Mar 16th, 2011 at 8:42 am
    @Rinnon They're just mad because console versions are glitchy and PC version players don't think it has mod support (it does)
    0 0

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