Otherland, a massively multiplayer online game on Steam’s Early Access program from developer Drago Entertainment, has reportedly received numerous fake, positive reviews in exchange for payment from the developer, according to an editorial on MMOs.com.
The editorial asserts Drago Entertainment paid people to write fake, positive reviews for Otherland citing the game’s review trajectory going from “mostly negative” to “mostly positive” on Steam, despite the game’s developer not fixing many of the issues raised in the initial (negative) reviews.
A developer from Drago Entertainment responded to the aforementioned editorial, denying that the developer had purchased positive reviews for Otherland, and also saying, “We got many negative reviews in a similar manner, that is from accounts with limited playtime and no other reviews.” This is in reference to the editorial’s primary concerns with the reviews in question: Grammatically incorrect writing/spelling, little to no playtime logged for Otherland by the account posting the review, and no other reviews for other games posted by those accounts in question.
The developer’s full response can be found below:
Dear all,
we know this is a serious issue and we are looking into it. To be clear: Drago did not buy any reviews. We did give keys to a bunch of people as part of sweepstakes or promotions including partners, testers, friends (as is common in the industry)… we are investigating this and will have questionable reviews (about a dozen as we can see) removed.
However, I also still like to point out that we got many negative reviews in a similar manner, that is from accounts with limited playtime and no other reviews.
BR
Alpha
Source: MMOs.com
