I'm going to jump in and get this thread back on track. Mr ugly is doing a nice job of really trolling it in another direction. Mr ugly. May I ask what it is that you do in the business? What is your insight based on? The points of this thread are: 1. To openly discuss the issue of fake reviews 2. Draw attention to a NEW method of generating downloads/reviews that was created and tested with flappy bird and is now being used in at least the other two apps of Asian origin I see in the top. Cheating has been around. But not like this. 3. Discover how the method is being done. Even if you believe it's ok to cheat and that it's part of the game, then let's level the playing field and reveal how it's done to everyone. This method is new and effective and will only grow affecting the whole ecosystem of apps. The scammers are not creating anything decent because they don't have to. They know they will just cheat to the top. What we are seeing is just the beginning. These aren't developers spending millions on faking reviews. These are developers using a hack. Do you honestly think dong the flappy bird creator a no name developer from Vietnam came up with 4million$ to buy 4 million reviews? No way! This is some sort of hack that can apparently be done by the developer himself. I want to bring this to light so powers greater than me can investigate, expose them, and shut it down. This is nonsense. Any person with any sort of business sense would realize this as a threat to us. If trolls want to come and try to say otherwise, well, then they're either just trolling, they have no direct involvement in the industry (and are unaffected by anything) , or they are cheaters themselves. It boils down to these 3 sides. Which one are you on Mr. ugly?
I just downloaded your game, the graphics are great but it doesn't seem to have the feel that makes it addictive.
Welcome to the thread, TechnoNecro. Looks like you just joined to comment on this particular thread. If you would like to provide feedback, which I love hearing, feel free to keep it on the TA Glint thread.
Well, weren't there threads on reddit dedicated to the funny things people there were posting in their Flappy Bird reviews and encouraging others to do the same? But even on games that are obviously NOT being reviewed by bots (because they don't have very many reviews) I often see ridiculous reviews that barely make sense. People like to goof around.
Now this is getting into Weird Zone because that's exactly my experience with the game, down to every single little move. So Glint boy, you know what to do. Make the purpose of the game clearer, rework the difficulty curve, change that icon eventually and really polish those assets. Overall, the game still looks nice, so it's close to have "the thing", the very right gimmick. I like the overall menu interface and the transition, very well done. By the way, there's something you're probably missing out, quite major in fact. Your playfield is a sort of funnel with a hole at the bottom. After four levels, there still is nothing that even hints at this particular structure and its hole having any relevance to the game's rules. What gives?
So? A free ugly game that's quickly consumed is not going to float on reviews. It is not even worth spending the time to type about it much. So ugly, cheap and throwaway apps are not logically going to get huge amounts of reviews. Even less 5 stars. Even less reviews that dwarf the Constitution in length. Apple is a huge brand, it's neither here nor there as far as we're concerned. We're dealing with noname apps that trust the highest places with clear scammy methods with more energy than before. Huh, respectfully, just no. You say that it would not impact us, but that's wrong. The more black marketing gets used, the more blotted the top of the pyramid will be, and obviously it will cascade down, and sooner or later, without rules and with a need to compete against these efficient unethical methods, using fire against fire will affect the lower ranks, so even the 200~300 ranks will get stuffed. Then the process repeats itself to 500~1000, which is the bare minimum to hope really living off full time development (and with more than one app in your repository). It is very obvious we can't turn an eye on it or just silently walk the sidetrack. We have to be vocal about that. In the end, it is hurting Apple. No their wallet, but their brand. Their App Store is becoming utterly rotten. Yet they count a lot on the self made man paradigm to attract plenty of hipster'n'cool devs to make nice and shiny apps and, eventually, make it big in a honest way so Apple can spin their PR machine to roll the presses full steam for the glamourous headlines. It's even hurting the entire ecosystem around the stores: if reviews, real word of mouth, videos and all that stuff can't weigh much against bot farms and sweatshops that easily outproduce the summary of all previous elements, it's really, really bad, and there's no reason for this not to happen. As I said, $1 spent on black marketing nowadays is much more worthwhile than any legit method. If you reach a limit in the download-review outpouring, you can always invest the excess in the social networks with a huge mass of BS tweets and spam. Besides, user acquisition is not a given with white marketing. It's a tough process and works much better with a good product to sell. Then again, you don't do much white marketing when you're an indie. None of that will bring you higher than fake downloads and reviews, that's the hard truth. What you refuse to admit is that the phenomenon has gone one gear up. If that wasn't enough, the onslaught of clones for certain products makes things even harder... and clone makers have little to loose... so they'll play the system for quick profits... and pollute, rise and eat more of the finite ad market there is our there. The App Store isn't as liberal and democratic as Google Play, and it's already bad enough as it is. If anything, we DON'T need more liberty to enter the store. We need LESS. With a seal of quality/authority. The point, though, is that we're way beyond this line.
What? *some* threads on Reddit? How many, and when exactly? Can we call that totally irrelevant? I'm talking about a phenomenon that would be no secret. Up to the point we wouldn't have to talk about it here, because there would be no point denying it or even looking for evidence that it happened. Hello?? MILLIONS of reviews. Yes, it happens, but they hardly come in whole volumes worth of super tankers either, do they?
It's not a secret. Everyone everywhere was talking about Flappy Bird and posting reviews and talking about the reviews. They do if your game is Flappy Bird. That game rivaled Gangnam Style in mind share, from what I've read even surpassed it.
Glint boy here. There are 115 levels in the game. Every five levels introduce a new game mechanic, power-up or obstacle. The second world introduces a tiny dot that fits snugly into the funnel, giving the player more time, and will become clear once you have passed world one. As world one was meant as a training level, it's possible that it simply takes too long to get through before more fun elements are introduced. As always, I appreciate your feedback and will implement your changes into the game.
Why not change the theme a little, make the dots sports balls, marbles or emoticon faces. Heck if it's too much trouble just call the dots gumballs. In terms of the hole's relevance I got up to level 2-5 and it appears the whole is for little flashy dots which you probably didn't notice to fall in and give you extra time. This is around the time I stopped since after different methods it seems the only way I could beat it is if I had rings to pay for continues.
Hey guys please keep the thread on track. If you want to discuss feedback on your game please make another thread for it. I don't mean to be rude but this thread is meant to voice our concerns about the issue at hand. If some higher up is reading through it, I don't want it polluted with off topic conversations making the thread annoying to read and keep focused. Granted I know it is a slight chance that people will take notice and write press about it, but it IS a chance and that is the goal here. Thanks.
I wish apple made it easier for people to give real reviews. Maybe that would in turn reduce the amount of fake reviews. At the moment people have to, go back to the app in the app store, click on the review section, and then enter their password (can't even use fingerprint scanner, has to be typed), before they can even write a review. And really who is actually going to do this, unless the game is really bad. They should either make it easier, or just get rid of reviews altogether. I also am starting to think that almost every positive review is fake, as I think fake review accounts do a number of reviews on different games to make the account look more real, and also to hide which app they are really trying to promote. Apple can't really ban an app based on fake reviews, if the fake person has reviewed 5 other apps as well. That is why I think I get reviews that look like they are fake sometimes on my apps, even though I have not done anything to promote them.
Thing is, if BL's memories of the review count are correct and mainly concerned the iOS version, then it's mighty fishy, clearly, because iOS has less reviews than Android and with +4M reviews in such little time, the game would have litteraly beaten Candy Crush Saga and its 93 M DAU accumulated over two years (I think, something like that). Besides, you may remember some people and articles talking about *some* similar kind of review (the same typical yet few quotations that were copied here and there as examples), but that would be about it. Hardly about the quantity itself (anything you'll find right now as an indicator of review counts is an article from Reuters from early Feb quoted everywhere and then, plus another one mentionning 400,000 reviews) or anything about the massive pleasure of typing crap because it was fun. Really, please prove me wrong. Try finding on Internet any large trail of all that "LOL@review" trend you talk about. And when you'll have collected a sizeable amount of evidence from websites, blogs, forums, social networks and commentary zones full of such relevant chatter, please post links here. Until then...
I think, somehow, that it's possible that the process is left cumbersome precisely to deter spammers. Although it will certainly not stop fake reviewers postsing on purpose. Not to say that easying the entry will make it easy for everybody, especially the bad guys. We certainly don't want that to happen. Yes, it shouldn't take much work to make your account legit. Only the nature and content of your reviews will make things fishy. This mechanic is what I think is behind the posting of fake reviews in various places. It just makes the whole thing very messy and hard to track, and Apple can't even know for sure who's behind those reviews if a minimum of smart IP scrambling is used.
Well, I'm not sure we have any reason to assume his story of millions of reviews disappearing overnight is correct. Sometimes the app store glitches out. Maybe the number was just wrong, and apple corrected the NUMBER but didn't actually delete any reviews. That seems to be just as plausible an explanation, if not even more plausible. Nonetheless, here is an article from toucharcade that compares flappy bird to other internet phenomenon: http://toucharcade.com/2014/02/10/flappy-bird-mania-is-stronger-than-eve/ Interest in flappy bird was definitely high enough to account for millions of reviews. There wouldn't even need to be a concentrated campaign to make it happen. With interest that great, it was like the whole world was of nearly one mind with regard to flappy bird.
I agree. A lack of evidence on his part is unfortunate and only calls for speculation. Only Apple knows "for sure" by now. Thanks for the link but that hardly covers my request. There's no argument over a surge in reviews once the app spread across the world. This isn't a topic about legitimate reviews once the world is exposed to the thing. The question is about the number of reviews and their nature that make apps go up before they get remarked by regular outlets. Anyway, never mind, we're probably not really on topic, unless we have a load of reviews to look at for this specific app, which isn't possible anymore.
There is no question that I saw that many reviews because I was blown away by it. I even showed it to my friend and my partner! It also stayed that way for 2 days. Then suddenly when it dropped I was confused so I checked again and again to try to understand where they could have gone. My first thought was maybe it's a glitch as well so I checked again and the 4 million reviews indeed had disappeared and suddenly he pulled the app. Let's for a moment just say though, that it was a glitch. How do you explain a similar phenomena for don't step white tile using your theory, that the market of people were simply so excited to post bad but 5 star reviews about an app? Is don't step white tile also a competition for who can write a review? And what about the app 2048, also displaying the same exact review pattern? The only difference in these two is that they didn't have 4 million++. But if you are using the scam technique after seeing that 4 million Drew too much attention, would you do it again? Of course not.
