Reported over on Destructoid from a rumour posted on Reddit, several Harmonix employees have been found to be leaving their own game five star reviews over on Amazon.

Harmonix have confirmed that their staff have done this and put out this statement

"Harmonix has clarified its internal policy about posting reviews of our own products on retail sites, and we've asked that existing reviews be edited to identify Harmonix employees or be removed entirely. While we believe the reviews posted by a few employees were sincere and without ill intentions, as a studio we don’t believe these are appropriate actions. We appreciate the feedback from the community, and take our relationship with our fans seriously."

Following that, some of the reviews have been deleted while other's have been updated to reflect they where written by people who worked on the game. Matthew Nordhaus (Project manager) added this to his review

"I added this review half in jest (as you might be able to tell from the tone of the original). In hindsight, it's probably important that I note that I worked on the game and work for Harmonix. That being said, I'm confident that if I didn't I would still give the game five stars. It's a beautiful, peaceful, cooperative game, rare enough already in today's landscape, that I can play with my wife and kids. Music discovery, playing with your family and friends, and cooperation make Rock Bandmy favorite."

This isn't a new practice. Something like this happened with Bioware before where it was found that employees where leaving great metacritic reviews. And just like when Bioware employees did it this leaves a bad impression.

I've no problem with a car sales man trying to sell me a car or an employee of a video games company telling me their game is great. Just let me know that you are who you are first and don't allow your view to be part of some metric.

It's the "don't allow your game to be part of a metric" part that is the problem. There's no way to remove your review from being listed, so even if all of those employees listed their names, the game would still have a significant bump at a glance. We have no problem with PR telling us that a game is good, or commercials trying to sell it, but as soon as you go officially on records and try to bump the scores of your own product, it's less okay.

Also, Nodhaus's edit makes his review even grosser.

Guess I'm the only one that just assumed this sort of stuff was happening. Don't take customer views on entertainment products seriously and it would help. That's why I come to places like Giant Bomb for coverage.

I'm assuming higher up big wigs (pope?) were unaware of these shennanigans. I'm kinda tired of being outraged about every damn little thing anyway so i'll chalk it up to poor decision making and move on.

Hope this doesn't mean rock band 4's having a rough time of it. It seems like a good foundation they can build upon. Seems things will be tougher for them as (at least from jeff's impression in the last mailbag) guitar hero looks pretty decent.

I was living under the assumption that literally every product on Amazon was doing this

Maybe they like the game they made. I couldn't care less.

That seems like a risky thing to do while Amazon have started suing hundreds upon hundreds of people who have been leaving false reviews of products.

That is pretty sad actually, but I bet it happens a lot across media.

They left the reviews under 'user reviews'. A section that should always be taken really lightly.

Was it totally ethical? No. Was it terribly wrong or out of the ordinary? No.

It's funny this is getting such attention but in reality this happens way too much and for worse games than Rock Band.

Is there any indication of how well this game is doing sales wise so far? Seems like it completely came and went without anyone really talking about it. To me, at least.

@milkman said:

According to Eurogamer.net, it placed 10th in UK sales charts at launch week, which is not that great.

And yea, there wasn't a whole lot promotion for this game. AFAIK Mad Catz is handling that along with publishing (and making instruments, of course), which makes me even more surprised about that. There were news earlier this year that MC itself stated that they really really need RB4 to be a success in order to have a future as a company, yet MC was really awful in supplying enough hardware stock at launch and even though there was foresight in that they made the firmware in the new instruments updatable, it's kinda bad that they needed to do so from day 1 and still have issues with some fans...

While I understand where you're coming from, I still really hate hand-waving a corporation's bad behavior with "well, it's not out of the ordinary," or "well, it could have been worse."

This is why you have to monitor your workers internetusage and not let them have permanent email adresses.

@spaceinsomniac: I'm not saying we should ignore this, I'm saying there needs to be context before the internet turns into a witch hunt. Too often opinions are formed based on just a few facts in a single case.

90% of user reviews online are paid for anyway though

@finaldasa: I'm not trying to prompt a witch hunt or anything. I only view this as a bad thing because I think Harmonix are a decent studio that make some neat games and I'd hate to see something like this do damage to them when they seem like they're really not in a great position right now.

But what other context is there going to be? Yes, other places probably do this too or they buy reviews and facebook likes and that's all terrible. So do we say Harmonix are allowed to it because if they don't they'll get lost in the sea of games? Like I said, I don't want Eric Popes head on a stick or anything, I just think this was kind of a dumb move by some of their employees, who most likely only meant the best and genuinely do believe their product is a five star product.

I see this no different than people who 1 star books and games because they have a bent against someone who worked on it. It really doesn't bother me that much.

@jesus_phish: Naw, didn't mean you were. I meant the internet at large. Stories like this very quickly become concentrated into Twitter long headlines and quick opinions are formed. Especially now that Harmonix has responded and made a mends. Also you have to realize these developers care a lot for their game and love what they've helped create.

I totally agree this is unethical and Harmonix should be shamed for their actions. But I think the internet reacts too quickly, judges too quickly, and never takes the time to examine the larger issue at hand. Hard to get angry or upset at just Harmonix.

@heartagram: I trust user reviews more than professional gaming reviews, I can take a larger sample size and narrow down how the game felt to a wide diverse audience rather than just one person/publication.

Maybe I am in the wrong but you can be damn sure that if I was trying to have a successful product I would be dropping good reviews left and right 90% of people just see that star rating why would you not tip the scales in your favor.

Not saying its moral or the right thing but I can't say I am the least bit upset that the people that actually made the game think it is good or tried to help the image of their game or even if it was from higher up I can't be mad at a company wanting to see more product sold if it's as easy as having a few staff members write a paragraph and push a few buttons.

@evilsbane: Yes it is that easy, this is news and sites like giantbomb should shine a light on it to hold companies accountable.

After reviewing the fact I think - meh.

Some of them did it as a joke in a way that was likely not really so jokey. They compnay administration has told them, "Hey idiots this looks even worse than bad review...so cut it out"

And, in the end this is not nearly the black bag project some people are Reddit were hoping it would be. So, again 'meh' not really harm was done to consumers, it was a stupid idea on the employee's part, and it is perty much over.

@monkeyking1969: aww, i was starting to feel outraged! :(

Who buys games based on Amazon reviews anyway? I guess it's for the hot QVC market that doesn't know about the vidya games.

They're Amazon reviews. Who cares?

Why would they need to boost their reviews? Everybody is talking about the latest and greatest plastic instrument music game!!

Oh sorry, i thought it was still 2008, my bad, no one cares anymore.

I wonder if there will be anyone left at Harmonix in the near future.

Haven't listened to the bombcast yet this week. Anyone know if the crew has discussed this on it or elsewhere on this site? Curious to hear their take.

I understand about those five star reviews, but how about the 1 star reviews then, which could be in the form of a backlash and have even bigger lingering effect?