So each dev is encouraging others to buy the competitors product to make a phony review.. maybe you should have not started the cycle then.. But at the end a sale is sale not? If the evil dev is sending you daily 1000 customers to write you bad reviews i would send him flowers and some pralines. If this is about single bad reviews, then well whats the fuzz about it? Its not like one single itunes review has any impact.
well then we disgree about a single bad review.. if all review are bad you might assume thats there is no ill will from other devs but there is really something wrong witht he game/app in this case.. but i have a slight dejavu here.. because exactly the same stuff happened with "YOU" ... you got bad reviews for a broken product.. maybe the repetive clones of clock apps have all more or less the same fundamental design flaw in them.. ? who knows.. and my post made no sense, really? they need to BUY your app to write a review.. so even a bad review is a sale.. and if they do that a couple times, well then they give you MONEY for that.. if the app/game in question is good, your "normal" vustomers good reviews will take care of fake reviews quite quickly.. i've seen people arguing over comments in the itunes section.. again hysteria doesnt solve a problem thats not there.. a single bad review is negated by a good one.. and most people don't even read the reviews anyway.. they don't even read the descriptions..
In my experience, a negative review does not have a negative effect on sales (quite the opposite, actually.) Sales appear to increase after any kind of review is posted. Figure that one out.
there lies alot of truth in it.. if you get any review bad or good, someone is interested to spend time and effort to post about his findings.. if your app goes unnoticed or does not spark any comments at all thats even worse. the fact is bad reviews =! bad sales.. an app needs to be bought to be reviewed if alot of people buy it and give you bad reviews, the sales get you pushed up the ranks and get your more visibility /chance of more sales.. if that ends up with even more bad reviews, maybe something is wrong with the game.. its always easy to point the fault at others and being completly ignorant and crying foul play after every second corner.. maybe i'm just not the person who believes much of such conspiracy stories.
lol.. did not even noticed that syndicate removed all of his stuff.. well basic thing was that he posted that developer kill each other by rating the oponents app with a low rating.. apparently he got into a catfight with another developer and then they churned out bad reviews to the other ones application.. and my argument was that if your hostile developer buys alot of your apps to rank them bad thoose are still sales who get you up in the ranking and that bad ranks are not as harmfull as alot of people think.. a majority of customers outside don't read reviews, nor are the reading even the desciption.. apparently we agreed to dissagree and he then apparently removed any of his posts.. which i find very odd .. weird behaviour..
Touche', good sir. Well played. @ This thread: I think the OP should play his hand a bit differently: If I were him, I'd anger as many other developers as possible. If the trend holds, he won't even NEED to appeal to normal customers - he can get his entire income from angry rivals. He'll wind up with a 1-star-rated app, but it will be on the top-grossing charts (which may even net him some curiosity purchases). Sounds like a plan to me. : ) "Go fourth and agitate"
If you're worried about a single negative review, I think you need to find some better things to occupy your time with. Even the best popular games often have anywhere between tens and hundreds of negative reviews. Hell, Angry Birds has nearly 2000 1 star reviews.
not convinced Bit of a disingenuous comparison, Eli - with many less reviews than angry birds, each negative review for him takes up a much larger % of a potential buyer's impression. Angry Birds may have nearly 2k 1-star reviews, but it also happens to have around 42-43k 5-star reviews that completely marginalize and drown out the infinitely smaller negative comments (not to mention, it is a press darling). This would simply not be the case with a smaller game that has less reviews, less word-of-mouth, etc. - it's all about the ratio of positive-to-negative, and less the actual number. All in all, I don't think you can position this as angry birds being successful despite some negative reviews, but rather angry birds accumulating that many negative reviews precisely because of it's widespread success.
