It's not ok, but it's one dude. If Bioware got caught doing this twenty times over id be outraged, like everyone else.
 
But to be fair everyone does that shit anyway, which is why metacritic is stupid to begin with.

lol that pic is epic

" @Tebbit said:

" @yinstarrunner said:

" @Tebbit said:

" If it's OK for people who haven't played the game to give it 0's, it's equally OK for someone who made said game to award it a 10. 
 

Actually neither of those are OK.  Would EA be justified in requiring all employees to meet a certain "review quota" on metacritic user reviews? Because the message I'm getting from this thread is that people don't actually give a shit about ethics, so they might as well go all out. After all, user score means less than the critical reviews, but it's not entirely irrelevant.  Better to have an inflated one than one that's low.   Every sale counts. "

Would EA be justified in setting a review quota? Of course not! That would be ethically wrong, and if that's the case here (and to be honest I have no idea), that would be ethically terrible. However what I suspect is the case here (and again I'm just guessing) is that that guy just wrote a review for the game, maybe because he felt he needed to right the injustices present in the user reviews section, maybe just 'cos. If you're going to say "because you made this product, you can't review it", then you should equally be asking "how many of these user reviews are based on a full playthrough of the game? How many of these people don't even own the game? How many are basing their score off of the 3 hours they played before losing interest?" What determines the legitimacy of a user review, and how would you police it?  Purely from Metacritic's viewpoint, user reviews consist of reviews from a broad range of people, with different experiences and backgrounds colouring their individual scores and write-ups. If you start excluding people for specific biases then wouldn't the whole thing be kinda redundant? It's not like Critic scores are made up exclusively of reviews by industry experts. "

It's not that hard to determine the legitimacy of a user review.If someone has a monetary stake in the success or failure of a product and is masquerading as someone who doesn't, whether it be employees anonymously posting user reviews or big publications claiming fairness while catering to their advertisers, it is filthy. I really don't understand why everyone is OK with this.  It must just be because it's Bioware and the fact that the game got a ton of negative reaction.  Edit: it also makes me sad that the anonymity of the internet means things like this have probably been going on for a really long time now and will ultimately pick up the pace even more as time goes on.  Depressing. "

Doesn't metacritic just add up official reviews? If so, who cares.  

First of all, your analogy makes no sense to me.  Is the musician, roadie, or sound guy posing as a third party when asked this question? No, because everyone already knows he's involved with the band.Yeah, it is a USER REVIEW.  You're correct.  Just because it's not published in a magazine doesn't make this any less of an ethics violation.  There's a clear conflict-of-interest in a place where there shouldn't be one. I still think that the only reason this is getting a pass is because it's Bioware.  I bet if something like this happened with THQ and Homefront people wouldn't be so OK with it.  Or if, say, a bunch of devs working on the Witcher 2 were found out to be behind some of the downvoting on DAII. "

" @yinstarrunner said:

First of all, your analogy makes no sense to me.  Is the musician, roadie, or sound guy posing as a third party when asked this question? No, because everyone already knows he's involved with the band.Yeah, it is a USER REVIEW.  You're correct.  Just because it's not published in a magazine doesn't make this any less of an ethics violation.  There's a clear conflict-of-interest in a place where there shouldn't be one. I still think that the only reason this is getting a pass is because it's Bioware.  I bet if something like this happened with THQ and Homefront people wouldn't be so OK with it.  Or if, say, a bunch of devs working on the Witcher 2 were found out to be behind some of the downvoting on DAII. "

Why would I make an analogy if they were a neutral party...  I'll even use a real world example. Mike Portnoy, the former drummer of Dream Theater, was asked to fill in for Avenged Sevenfold when their drummer died.  Do you think if people asked him "How do you feel about the guys in the band?" he would reply, "I shouldn't say."  In fact, I know for a fact he complimented them in several interviews. "

" I bet if something like this happened with THQ and Homefront people wouldn't be so OK with it. "

Meh, this type of stuff happens all the time.  They make profiles to hype things up on message boards using internet language (I saw examples with 1337 speak, lol).  This includes reviews.
 
Who knows, there could be Bioware employees on this site!!

it's a user review, who cares? The guy might have been in accounting or something, he can put a review on metacritic if he wants to.

" @Cataphract1014 said:

" @yinstarrunner said:

First of all, your analogy makes no sense to me.  Is the musician, roadie, or sound guy posing as a third party when asked this question? No, because everyone already knows he's involved with the band.Yeah, it is a USER REVIEW.  You're correct.  Just because it's not published in a magazine doesn't make this any less of an ethics violation.  There's a clear conflict-of-interest in a place where there shouldn't be one. I still think that the only reason this is getting a pass is because it's Bioware.  I bet if something like this happened with THQ and Homefront people wouldn't be so OK with it.  Or if, say, a bunch of devs working on the Witcher 2 were found out to be behind some of the downvoting on DAII. "

Why would I make an analogy if they were a neutral party...  I'll even use a real world example. Mike Portnoy, the former drummer of Dream Theater, was asked to fill in for Avenged Sevenfold when their drummer died.  Do you think if people asked him "How do you feel about the guys in the band?" he would reply, "I shouldn't say."  In fact, I know for a fact he complimented them in several interviews. "

I missed the part where Mike Portnoy hid behind anonymity and virally marketed his band around the internet without disclosing his actual position within it. "

I was reading through these the other day, and i took it that someone had posted that ironically and to take the piss at another 10 star user review that seemed obviously written by a PR machine. 
 
I'm still not convinced that isnt what this is and its fooled everyone.