oops

I know how irresistible it can be to weigh in on user ratings of your product and try to counteract the negative reviews of idiots who probably haven't even played the thing.

But when you generate a fluff account to post a fake review about how great your product is, try not to use one linked to your real name, it's a bit easy to catch. :)

(seen also at Dragon Age 2 Conspiracy)

Honestly, I've seen a LOT of dodgy reviews on the internet. I was looking at some guy's books on amazon, and the books looked AWFUL, the worst kind of vanity press, and the reviews were half one-star and half five-star. All the five-star reviews, if you checked, the reviewers had ONLY ever voted reviews on that guy's books. That's obviously suspicious, and if the author himself is making fake accounts and voting his books up, that's unethical. But what if those reviewers are friends of his? Real people who either share his tastes in writing and actually think his books don't suck, or who like their pal enough to claim they do? The reviews are just as meaningless, but are they actually unethical? I don't know. I'm largely content that Amazon makes it possible to track the reviewer's other reviews so that I can identify and ignore such data.

I tend to think it's tacky to beg my fans to go vote for me but I see people doing it all the time and I'm not sure there's anything actually unethical about it.

Someone claiming to have been the guy who originally discovered the connection says he was immediately banned from the Bioware forums for bringing it up. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, considering the OTHER recent big story of getting banned for criticising Bioware...