After posting about the practice of employing "Manchurian Fans" to shill products in the gaming world, Stephanie Schopp, an employee of Nvidia's marketing buddies at AEG, replied to the post assuring us that "the program... is far less nefarious than your rather damaging article/blog above claims it to be." She continues, "These members were not 'paid in hardware' as your article states, but sent hardware to give us (NVIDIA through AEG) feedback, positive or negative, regarding their experience with it. They were never told what to say, nor did they sign any document forbidding them to discuss their relationship with NVIDIA or AEG. They are not actors: they were real, informed, hardware enthusiasts that could help us further understand what it was the community wanted from hardware vendors." She then directs us to two posts regarding the issue.

ChrisRay, a poster at Beyond3D, owned up to his involvement with the focus group program, illustrating a relationship that, in fact, does not seem as nefarious as was thought. He does however say, "We signed an NDA which covered generic material regarding proprietary, unreleased hardware/software which prohibited me from discussing such topics." Stephanie is quick to point out that they did not "sign any document forbidding them to discuss their relationship with NVIDIA or AEG." Why did nobody discuss it then?

Regarding the sending of hardware, Joel from The Consumerist writes, "Mr. Perez posed this question to us: If a customer goes to the store and purchases an Nvidia product, then writes a review of the product online, is the opinion any less valid than when the customer receives the product for free? We feel the answer is obvious." Instead of coming clean about the program immediately, Mr. Perez's responses to The Consumerist have been--for a PR professional--uncharacteristically flippant, threatening, and circuitous, and the bad press is coming back to bite them.

While Nvidia's program may fall short of the worst abuse possible using this sort of focus group program, it would benefit from increased transparency, if only to remove the appearance of impropriety.  It's full disclosure: if you're handing out free hardware to test, those who receive it should be compelled to acknowledge their benefactors.