Telltale devs caught juking Metacritic user reviews, studio stands behind them
When Telltale employees aren't busy getting into protracted online arguments over the handling of promotional Jeeps, they're apparently artificially boosting the user review score of the studio's latest release, Jurassic Park: The Game. GameSpot spotted as much this week after the game launched, pointing out that few reviewers (if any) received the game early for review, and that the only user reviews on Metacritic were notoriously high (10s), featuring "gushing" praise for the title.
As it turns out, after some quick Googling, the user reviews belonged to Telltale Games employees -- a user interface artist and a cinematic artist, according to GameSpot. Telltale, however, stands behind the two offenders. "Telltale Games do not censor or muzzle its employees in what they post on the internet," studio reps said. "It is being communicated internally that anyone who posts in an industry forum will acknowledge that they are a Telltale employee. In this instance, two people who were proud of the game they worked on, posted positively on Metacritic under recognizable online forum and XBLA account names."
In other words, if you had Googled the user names attached to the positive user reviews from Metacritic, you could discover their true identities, which, as we all know, most internet forum users are wont to do. No one on the internet ever bases their reactions off of what they see without looking deeper first. Nope. Never.
