chicanery
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App Store review shenanigans, real and imagined
We first heard from iPhoneography and SCW last week about their two-man campaign to have skeevy developer Molinker pulled from the App Store (I included a link to their post, possibly a bit too subtly, in Sunday's post about the NYT story). Molinker was allegedly using the underhanded (and unfortunately under-caught) trick of distributing promo codes to 'puppet' reviewers who gave the company's photography apps five stars... and noticeably failed to review anything else on the store. Since the independent reviewers of the same apps were uniformly one-star, this resulted in star distribution graphs for the apps that looked like sideways versions of the devil's horns. Satanic mischief, indeed. After the site delivered its investigation results via email to App Store top cop Phil Schiller, the offending applications (more than 1,000 of them) were summarily yanked from the store. While it's good news for the App Store ecosystem that this kind of behavior is being monitored and corrected, and the iPhoneography team are to be commended for their diligence (although I doubt they'll be getting the requested "investigations reward for unearthing this blatant attempt at misleading and stealing from the public"), review manipulation schemes are seldom this blatant or easily identified -- and sometimes we start seeing them even when they may not really be there...
Requiem: Bloodymare closed beta officially begins February 29th
Despite what we were told at GDC and mentioned in our previous coverage, Requiem: Bloodymare isn't entering closed beta in a month's time -- it does so at the end of this week! I don't mind a little chicanery from time to time, especially if the payoff is an earlier-than-expected gift. Regardless, to play this title you'll need to obtain an access code, which you'll be able to get in the following ways:Registered users of FilePlanet have access to a limited number of beta codes as of Tuesday, and what's more, these users can access the closed beta immediately, days ahead of schedule. The day of closed beta launch, both MMORPG.com and MMOSITE.com will have codes available. Wednesday, March 26th at 10 AM PST marks the end of the closed beta. FilePlanet users, time to see if there's anything left.[Thanks, Colin!]
NOT E307: Fake Golden Sun DS announced
Only a couple of hours before Nintendo's E3 media briefing yesterday, rumors of a new Golden Sun game for the DS began to spread like a fast-moving cancer, traveling through the internet's lymphatic system, taking over gaming blogs and forums. Even Joystiq, the wind beneath our wings, fell victim to the malignant screenshots that were supposedly leaked from a "secret press gathering" by person-in-the-know gobo_4227.To your right, you'll see one of those supposed screenshots of Golden Sun: The Sooth Sayer compared with promotional artwork that was released for Golden Sun: The Lost Age back in 2002. Unless you count the bloom filter and "Touch to Start" text, the images are exact twins. The fact that we've heard no official mention of the new RPG -- or any other Camelot-developed title for either Nintendo console -- whilst E3 continues makes this rumor seem even more unconvincing. %Gallery-4800%
