…and there’s illegal and unethical.
Such is the case of Reverb Communications, whose employees in late August 2010 posed as consumers who just happened to love Rock Band so much that they gave it great reviews on iTunes. The company told The New York Times it did no wrong, but MobileCrunch.com said its investigation and other evidence shows that the company systematically placed glowing reviews on products produced by companies it represents.
The company said its employees only posted about games they had bought. But new Federal Trade Commission rules say bloggers, marketers and others must reveal their relationships.
A quick look this morning showed that the company’s site is down, but Google’s cache comes to the rescue.
This isn’t the first time a company has hidden its hand to sell a game in which players fake-play a fake instrument. In 2008, a guy named Kevin who worked a fry machine in Fort Wayne, Ind., uploaded its cool “Bike Hero” video to YouTube. Only later was it reported that Activision paid a company six figures to create the video, which is still online.
Why, oh why, must gamers trick us so?