Metacritic Spammed With Fake Positive Reviews of Assassin's Creed Origins

[Steevo]

The odds of Ubi behind behind it are slim to none. Considering the sheer money publishers spend on marketing, they'd probably pay native english speakers to post fake reviews and/or hire YouTubers/Streamers to give positive reviews (the latter they already have been doing for years). People just hate Ubisoft so much (and with fair reasoning) that they're attributing dodgy practice to them.

They could pay PewDiePie a few hundred thousand and that would probably net them more guaranteed sales than using some backwater Chinese/Russian fake review botnet.

EDIT: I'd go as far to say as this is purposefully being done to bring the game/publisher into a negative light. Astroturfing a bunch of blatantly fake positive reviews is a great way to bring Ubi's and AssCreed's image down.

To assume that you would have to assume that the majority of people skim more of the net than 95% of the population, and they don't, so the 5% of population that do, maybe 2% are gamers who will delve deeper to know that they are fake reviews.

Next lets assume there was a cost associated with this, and that cost had to be lower than the perceived benefit. So who would benefit from a lot of positive reviews, with a low cost to a minor amount of players who will actually know, and more importantly care about them being fake? Ahh, Ubisoft would. Do they have "enemy developers" who would do this to undermine them for a few thousand gamers VS the millions they will probably sell to console users, and average PC gamers? None stand out.

So for your idea to be true, there would have to be someone out there who is stupid enough to think that spamming some game title as positive in hopes that a few thousands angry gamers would not purchase it, and instead purchase something else...... well. It fails the razor test.

 

[Dimi]

I loved every Splinter Cell game. Really enjoyed Far Cry 3, AC Black Flag and most of the Ghost Recon games and the Rainbow Six series.

To say Ubisoft makes only bad games is just plain wrong. They've made mistakes but there are Publishers who are MUCH much worse. Activision, EA comes to mind.

This was probably done by a bored kid. I mean, who on earth goes to Metacritic to make a purchase decision on a game?

For a laugh and a giggle is the only reason i ever visit that horrible site.

 

[Vayra86]

I wonder why Ubi would resort to this. It seems beneath them.

Or am I giving them too much credit? lol

Yes. I mean how many screwups did they rack up the past five years? I've lost count, all I know is that a problem free Ubisoft release is frontpage news

Lets see if I can make a list of failed releases

The Division
AC: Unity
AC: Origins
For Honor
HOMM VI + Xpac
Watch Dogs
....

 

[neatfeatguy]

I don't think Ubi would go about doing this, even if AC:O wasn't selling as well as they hoped. A lot of people already gripe about Uplay issues and problems with Ubi games, I just can't fathom them doing this to harm their self. Could you imagine the backlash the company would get if it were true, though?

I've never been much of a fan of games from Ubisoft - I'm sure there are some I own or have owned in the past that I had no issues with or really liked, but they don't stand out at the moment.

Far Cry (original - pre Ubi) was amazing. I just recently re-installed it from my CDs (yeah, that's right, still got the original discs....man, I feel old) and I had to dig out my burned DVDs to find the game patches for all my older games and then locate the one that held Far Cry patches. I got about an hour into it and it's still pretty cool to see the AI being halfway decent at flanking your position and searching you out. There are games still being released to this day that suck with AI.

When Ubi picked up the Far Cry IP and released FarCry 2 - I pretty much lost all interest in FarCry series. I played FarCry 3, it was a decent shooter, but that's about all it was.

Overall, I'm just really not that impressed with their Uplay service and the AC games have become repetitive and dull, regardless of how well the ship battles play out. The first handful of AC games were entertaining due to the uniqueness of them and how they were able to add to them, but once Revelations came out, that was about the last I could stand playing the same thing over and over again. I did stumble through ACIII and I do have AC: Rogue, but only because it was dirt cheap and I've already grown bored of the game and I'm only about 30% of the way through the main story.

I'm hoping Ubi isn't stupid enough to have places putting out fake reviews for their AC:O game.....but you never know. Sometimes these companies keep surprising you with the stupid crap they continue to do.

 

[Vario]

Well the first three Rainbow Six games were amazing. Especially Raven Shield.

I don't think Ubi would go about doing this, even if AC:O wasn't selling as well as they hoped. A lot of people already gripe about Uplay issues and problems with Ubi games, I just can't fathom them doing this to harm their self. Could you imagine the backlash the company would get if it were true, though?

I've never been much of a fan of games from Ubisoft - I'm sure there are some I own or have owned in the past that I had no issues with or really liked, but they don't stand out at the moment.

Far Cry (original - pre Ubi) was amazing. I just recently re-installed it from my CDs (yeah, that's right, still got the original discs....man, I feel old) and I had to dig out my burned DVDs to find the game patches for all my older games and then locate the one that held Far Cry patches. I got about an hour into it and it's still pretty cool to see the AI being halfway decent at flanking your position and searching you out. There are games still being released to this day that suck with AI.

When Ubi picked up the Far Cry IP and released FarCry 2 - I pretty much lost all interest in FarCry series. I played FarCry 3, it was a decent shooter, but that's about all it was.

Overall, I'm just really not that impressed with their Uplay service and the AC games have become repetitive and dull, regardless of how well the ship battles play out. The first handful of AC games were entertaining due to the uniqueness of them and how they were able to add to them, but once Revelations came out, that was about the last I could stand playing the same thing over and over again. I did stumble through ACIII and I do have AC: Rogue, but only because it was dirt cheap and I've already grown bored of the game and I'm only about 30% of the way through the main story.

I'm hoping Ubi isn't stupid enough to have places putting out fake reviews for their AC:O game.....but you never know. Sometimes these companies keep surprising you with the stupid crap they continue to do.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I loved every Splinter Cell game. Really enjoyed Far Cry 3, AC Black Flag and most of the Ghost Recon games and the Rainbow Six series.

To say Ubisoft makes only bad games is just plain wrong. They've made mistakes but there are Publishers who are MUCH much worse. Activision, EA comes to mind.

This was probably done by a bored kid. I mean, who on earth goes to Metacritic to make a purchase decision on a game?

For a laugh and a giggle is the only reason i ever visit that horrible site.

Yes, a single bored kid went and made tons of fake accounts to spam a game mommy wouldnt buy him.

that somehow doesnt seem very likely, unless said kid has 14 hands to make said accounts with.

This is the same company that puts 3 layers of DRM on games now. It wouldnt surprise me if the did this thinking it would make their game look good, them being completely removed from reality and all.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Do you really think they would hire people who cannot write English very well to repeatedly write just a few variations of the fake reviews?

 

[StrayKAT]

Do you really think they would hire people who cannot write English very well to repeatedly write just a few variations of the fake reviews?

Well, Ubi is French, after all

Seriously though, if not them, who else gains from this?

 

[Prima.Vera]

Bad publicity is still publicity