🚀 go-pugleaf

Tim Smith wrote:
> In article <94b9b5835db6b616cfdd9f7dd549cf0b@pseudo.borked.net>,
>  DC <nobody@pseudo.borked.net> wrote:
>   
>> 1Up.com http://atu.ca/647
>>
>> If you take a look at Spore's listing on Amazon.com 
>> http://atu.ca/SPORE you may be surprised to notice that the 
>> game (as of this writing) has an abysmal user rating of one-
>> and-a-half stars. But that isn't necessarily an indictment 
>> of the game's quality -- out of 184 customer reviews, 159 
>> are one-star ratings, and just about all of them have one 
>> thing in common: pure, vile hatred of the game's digital 
>> rights management, or DRM (via Destructoid).
>>     
>
> Quite a few of them have something else in common: they are from people 
> who either have not written any amazon reviews before this, or are from 
> people that had one or two reviews a long time ago, plus a negative 
> Kindle review a year ago, and now this.
>
> I don't know how widespread that is, but there is definitely some kind 
> of organized attempt to rig the vote.
>
> This wouldn't be the first time.  There's some anti-DRM people 
> systematically tagging Kindle books with anti-DRM terms and slogans.
>
> It's not just anti-DRM people who try to manipulate Amazon.  When Ron 
> Paul's book came out, there was a call on a popular Paul website to go 
> give the book five stars, and links to that quickly circulated.  It very 
> quickly got several hundred 5 star reviews, and each of those was voted 
> as helpful by hundreds of people (yup...not only did the Paul flock 
> members have time to go to Amazon, make new accounts, and add 5 star 
> reviews, they had time to go vote up each other's reviews).  
>   

I love how quickly conspiracy theorists can jump to conclusions.  You do 
realize that it could just be that people REALLY DON'T LIKE THE DRM, 
don't you?  Spore is one of those games that appeals to a wider, 
different audience, so maybe those people have never written reviews 
because they've never had cause to.  Maybe they are younger or older 
than the usual demographic that buys and rates games at Amazon.  Or 
maybe, just maybe, they've just put up with shortcomings in the past and 
never felt the need to complain about anything until they ran into 
something that got them so up in arms they felt the need to rebel and 
make their voice heard!

Seriously, the DRM on Spore is ridiculous and only punishes and limits 
the legitimate purchasers of the game, it will not stop the hardcore 
pirates.  It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to think that maybe those 
legitimate purchasers are upset and want people to know about it.  Maybe 
they (like ALL other protesters EVER) are hoping that their viewpoints 
will eventually make their way to someone who matters and can make a 
difference, like the game publishing company.

CoinSpin