HAHa +1. I think the developers using the least amount of shilling are the ones with so many friends and family giving them 5 stars that such a strategy isn't necessary. The following is the the type of pm devs send me: QUOTE: Re: excuse me, Could you help me for my game "[DELETED]"?maybe you like it Quote: Originally Posted by Grubjelly Ok thanks for letting me know about it. I'll take a look at both the TA thread and app store page. Cheers Quote: Originally Posted by DELETED i known you like shoot game..so.... Thanks very much for all the guys here support,help.... if my PM make you unhappy, i have to say sorry about it. IF YOU LIKE IT ,please help me tell your friends, colleague, classmates to try the LITE VERSION, or buy it,to now,i got nothing income from i quit my job 4 months ago. sure, i want to make more perfect games for iPhone users. so i need your guys surpport! thanks! detail please see this thread: [REMOVED[ by the way, i am not good at english, but i am sure you can understand what's the mean... thanks a lot~~~~i hope you like it.... END QUOTE
You jus can't get over me catching you lying with your pants down in another thread and pointing out how dumb you arE when you boasted that GTA is not even nominated in an Indy games award Of course they won't pm you dumbo have you ever pointed out a possible shiller? All you do is kiss their arse
Don't put much attention to that kid he's just trying to hard to earn his niche in an internet forum. In fairness he's done some pretty amazing things too like posting 714 times in a single thread ( a TA record I reckon), he's a borderland spammer and frankly I'm done with him.
Warning: wall of text Sarcastic and shiz, take your stupid argument somewhere else. I'm pretty sure everybody is sick of seeing it all over the place, and I can't imagine the mods haven't noticed either. Shiz is a good guy and good member, and I know he's better than this and wouldn't like seeing him get put ITO over this petty crap. Azrael and Sarcastic, shiz may have started it in this thread but you guys are continuing it. Just please stop. The banhammer's been dropping all over the place lately, and I wouldn't be surprised if all 3 of you were on thin ice. Sorry to sound like your guys' mom, but it's really getting on my nerves. /rant @grubjelly, I know exactly which dev that is, I've got similar PM's like that. It doesn't really bother me, but technically it IS spamming. If I show interest in the game thread and the dev PM's me, that's different. But if it's just a mass PM about a game I've never heard of, then I consider that intrusive. As far as shilling goes, I think it definitely falls in a grey area. And sometimes I feel like the people on this forum are a little TOO MUCH on a crusade to fight the shill reviews. For example, I can't recall what game it was, but the dev made a thread for it and amongst the first posts was someone pointing out several 5 star reviews in iTunes. The game had JUST come out, so the chance that some people had already bought the game, played it, and deemed it worthy of 5 stars all within a couple hours seemed pretty shady. The dev responded back, stating that his family and friends were aware of his game being out and he knew for a fact those reviews were from some of them. The TA members continued to harass the dev about this, for lack of a better term. Finally, he offered to ask his family to take down their reviews, which is what finally caused everybody to back off. This is where the grey area comes in IMO. The dev stated that he didn't ask any of them to give 5 star reviews, but they did anyway as a show of support for someone close to them. And the types of reviews that were posted weren't written in a deceptive way, trying to trick people into thinking they were the intended satisfied customers of the product. They were along the lines of "Great app, my favorite!" and "Good job on this game, it's fun!". Personally, I don't put a lot of stock in iTunes reviews in general, but if I happen to be reading thru them for some insight into a game, I SURELY don't take these vague, one sentence reviews with anything but a grain of salt. I'll be looking for the meatier reviews that actually describe the things I"m interested in knowing. I know for a fact that if I spent months working on an app, and it finally made it's way onto the store, my friends and family would adorn it with good ratings, even if the app truly sucked. It's what friends and family do, support the ones they love. The only way I'd prevent that is if I contacted everyone ahead of time and said "hey please don't rate my app, I don't want it to potentially make me look bad" which would probably be confusing and possibly hurtful to them that I don't want their support. It doesn't happen often, but this is one instance where I felt the dev didn't have any bad intentions but was still getting unfairly scrutinized. The type of shilling that is absolutely not EVER acceptable to me, is the deceptive kind. Pretending to be a customer on a forum, for example. Or multiple reviews all written by the same person, but failing to make them look any different from each other. Or if devs REQUEST 5 star reviews from people, for promo codes or whatever. Stuff like this I don't think is ever ok. The example I gave above is really the only rare exception where I don't exactly condone what's being done, but I also don't feel like I'm trying to be played for a chump by the dev. Also, it would depend on how the dev responded to the situation, and in that case it definitely seemed there was no intended harm on his part. But even then, who knows! Basically, my advice is to do your own research, and try to be smart enough not to get fooled by a shill.
I'm pretty tired of it too but that kid is all over me, stalking my post and even campaigning against me. I just gotta ignore him I guess!
I really don't care if devs shill. If the game is good it is irelevant to me. While it isn't right and could sway a stupid person who listens to iTunes reviews to think a game is better than it is, I honestly don't care
Tons of small devs do it and I already know a few BIG companies that do it too. I NEVER trust reviews anymore when viewing them on the iphone because of this. On itunes you can check the reviewers history and it's appalling to see how many companies don't even bother hiding their tracks!
y r u calling him a douche? All he was doing was trying to protect the pm sender's identity. He was also nice enough to send you the pm and in return you criticize him and show everyone the pm when he told you not to. And plus I myself have gotten those types of pm's so SG is not just BSing about everything. Just because not everyone has gotten those types of pm's doesnt make SG a liar. And plus he even apologized back to u so he probably is not just doing this to start arguments
Reading through the thread I believe da shiz whiz is the douche here, and I agree with the above that such pm shouldn't have been posted here for all to see, I feel sorry for vivid games if they are indeed ligitimate.
i dont care really. if the app is good, then the shill reviews are accurate. if the app is bad, then i would have trusted my instinct not to buy it. i dont tend to read reviews anyway, i just see the most critical to see if there are any glitches or bugs.
i dunt know wat u r sying cuz Can you type legitimately? Seriously, VividGames hasn't even gone near SG nor vice versa. And who are you to start flaming on me? SG's already apologized, so just **** off - it's none of your business. Don't try to start a flame war with me.
