Slitherine

Posted: **Thu Nov 15, 2012 11:53 pm**

All, some of you may have already seen posts on this bizarre affair, this malicious attack on one of the hardest working development teams in the business is both disgraceful and unfair. So, what can be done to balance the scales:-).Well here goes, If anyone can provide credible information, sent to me privately, that leads to the identification of this individual, I will personally pay a reward of £1000 and at no stage whatsoever will the identity of our aspiring Internet sleuth be revealed.
Good hunting
JDM

There is a very strange situation developing on Metacritic and Gamespot.

Someone has been creating many dummy accounts and posting false reviews. They have created accounts for Slitherine, Matrix and the Lordz and are pretending to be us and posting false positive reviews. These reviews have been copied and pasted from other CTGW reviews. At least they are reviews of the the right game...

These are the false developer accounts that were created:
http://www.metacritic.com/user/MatrixGames2012
http://www.metacritic.com/user/SlitherineGames
http://www.metacritic.com/user/LordzGames

These accounts were not set up by us.

Then they have created many more accounts giving very bad reviews. These reviews are copied and pasted from completely different games. You can tell because they talk about features not in the game. For example there are no doors & dungeons in Commander the Great War!

All these accounts have only 1 review created just to post post a bad review about CTGW. These accounts are listed below - E.g.
http://www.metacritic.com/user/JMiles - this one talks about "Rugged defence" which is not in the game.
http://www.metacritic.com/user/Gazelle67
http://www.metacritic.com/user/Levada
http://www.metacritic.com/user/jopmores - this one complains the developers are rating their own games...
http://www.metacritic.com/user/Gret - this one talks about the doors and dungeons not working!
http://www.metacritic.com/user/JohnSteed67
http://www.metacritic.com/user/HTTbull - this one talked about inventory management. Inventory - seriously!
http://www.metacritic.com/user/GreatnessWar - this one says its from paradox.

All of the negative and bizarre comments have been marked as helpful by 13 users so not only did the person set up these fake reviews they took the time to go through and like all their fake reviews with other accounts. They also took the time to mark all the real reviews from actual players as unhelpful so all of their fantasy reviews go to the top of the list.

Someone has gone to a lot of effort to do all this across multiple sites.

It is very sad when a small indie developer spends years making a game to be faced with such malicious behavior, than runs the risk of ruining their games chances of success and potentially putting them out of business.

We have contacted Metacritic and Gamespot to try and resolve the issues but its quite difficult for us to explain to someone who doesn't know the game that these reviews are complete fantasy and made up.

If anyone has any information about the culprits we'd really appreciate it.

The other thing that would help is for anyone who can spare the time to report the abuse by clicking the link on the false reviews to add weight to our argument that these are completely spurious.

Please share this news as the more people who know what is going on for real, the less damage that can be done to the game.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:00 am**

I double it!

Have fun hunting...

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:06 am**

I plan to mention this to my computer expert friend. He's extremely net savvy and likely would have some ideas.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:36 am**

Very strange and disturbing indeed. To what possible end was this done? I hope this issue gets resolved soon!

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:44 am**

I'll throw in, on top of what Lordz and JD have put in (2,000 pounds), my last paycheck from Matrix Games/Slitherine. I will keep the amount undisclosed, but I have a good feeling the person or persons involved were responsible for my forced resignation.

Here's a first clue (but no solid evidence):
One of the reviews copied for the Metacritic review was from a German game. How many people have heard of Grotesque Tactics 2? Likely to be someone who was aware of this German game. I can only think of one renowned German in the wargaming community and his forum usernames contain the capital letters "GER".

-Curtis Szmania
Former Editor-in-Chief of The Wargamer

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:55 am**

I have honestly just created a forum account to post on this thread.

Basically what you are asking is for someone who obtain personally identifiable information on a multitude of users in order to prove that their reviews are malicious. While the intentions of this post may be good, and possibly a "last resort" because Metacritic is unwilling to remove these reviews, this post solicits a breach of Metacritic's user information database.

It is in the best interest of a site like Metacritic to not have information disclosure as it can be used against the users of the website in malicious ways. Leaking things like email addresses, connection information and other personally identifiable information is considered a huge breach of security and has made major news in the US with websites like Facebook, MySpace and others like it.

While it may be possible to breach MetaCritic's web security, I guarantee that methods that would have to be taken to obtain this info should be considered bordering on illegal (at least in the US). Probably not a good idea to solicit this type of activity on your forums.

Just saying.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:04 am**

Many thanks for your posting and of course we do not condone illegal activity, nothing could be further from our minds

Best Regards
JDM

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:02 am**

£2,000 and a forced resignation. Man this is heavy. Hope whoever's responsible gets found out and punished accordingly.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 5:33 am**

Someone allegedly posted a negative review of the new Close Combat Panthers in the Fog that slammed the AI performance. The "review" was posted on Finnish website. Now word leaked to other CC gaming site where it has caused detrimental expectations and sour mood.

Please tell me this "review" was bogus or made by disgruntled Beta-Tester? I thought the testers had to sign NDA and why would they post review if the game is not even finished yet?

Regardless please tell me that Slitherine is not going to produce another Close Combat game with terrible AI gameplay like the previous few releases? Ironic that such an old game keeps getting worse not better with new releases.

You have to keep the map scale down small enough where the AI can navigate properly. If the AI is not fixed, it won't sell and will be bad for the future of game.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:11 am**

If a beta tester has posted any information without permission they are in breach of their NDA and we take these violations seriously. I know the AI has been improved, but I don't know anything about this particular issue. I had great fun playing the Grand Campaign last week.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:54 am**

Walking away now.

I just read through a link to a discussion of some insanity being discussed over at BGG and nope I am not touching this any more.

I hope this dies fast and dies completely of course, but shaz has a point. The only people that actually could do what needs to be done, would be working in law enforcement.

There is sadly a very good reason why 99% of that which was my daily routine in 2001 no longer exists in my day today. There was simply too much crap from men that should know better (considering most today are likely called grampa by someone). None of this behaviour exists in any of my other numerous hobbies which tells me a lot.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:35 pm**

It is a very sad thing to drag great wargames thru the mud. There is someone i could think of... I am sure Iain knows who i mean.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:53 pm**

IainMcNeil wrote:If a beta tester has posted any information without permission they are in breach of their NDA and we take these violations seriously. I know the AI has been improved, but I don't know anything about this particular issue. I had great fun playing the Grand Campaign last week.

Not sure if this individual was authorized or not. Here is the link from someone that posted on Close Combat Series website. Again it would be a huge disappointment and very bad for the future of game if AI continued to see regression. As far as I know, the only way to truly improve the AI performance is to reduce the size of maps back to original sizes back in CC2 going back to the 90's. The newer releases kept expanding the size of maps, which makes the game virtually unplayable.

Compare original CC2 or CC3 to any of the newer releases and you can see the difference in AI performance. Most people say it is due to the larger maps which overcomplicates things for the AI. Small maps force the AI to fight. If this review is true...then perhaps the release date can get delayed until the AI can get fixed?

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.a ... og-ennakko
(loads slowly takes a few seconds)

Author: Matrix Games
Publisher: Matrix Games
Tested: PC Windows 7, Intel Core i5, 8 GB of RAM 3.4 GHz, GeForce GTX285
Coming Soon: PC
System requirements: Windows XP or higher, 800 MHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 256 MB graphics card
Players: 1, 2 (on the Internet)
More: digiostos
Game home page: Close Combat: the Panthers in the Fog
Tester: Jukka O. Kauppinen

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:56 pm**

DSWargamer wrote:None of this behaviour exists in any of my other numerous hobbies which tells me a lot.

I don't know what your other hobbies are, so I cannot comment. But, sadly, I see this kind of behaviour daily in a lot of hobbies. My professional work involves videogames, scriptwriting, comic-books, tabletop RPGs and other "hobby" fields: no one is free from this kind of stuff. Envy, lies, childishness, superiority complexes, bitterness, backstabbing et. al. can poision any kind of community. It is how the community reacts that makes the difference.

I must admit, however, that this episode is unusually both serious and childish

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 5:12 pm**

Reckall wrote:I don't know what your other hobbies are, so I cannot comment. But, sadly, I see this kind of behaviour daily in a lot of hobbies. My professional work involves videogames, scriptwriting, comic-books, tabletop RPGs and other "hobby" fields: no one is free from this kind of stuff. Envy, lies, childishness, superiority complexes, bitterness, backstabbing et. al. can poision any kind of community. It is how the community reacts that makes the difference.

I fully agree. I've witnessed this pattern behaviour being repeated so many times... And the smaller the community, the worse.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:37 pm**

I would like to publicly thank those of you who took the trouble to write, your support is very much appreciated. I would also like to thank those who provided helpful information.

I will be in touch shortly. Your suggestions of what we should do with the perpetrator were interesting

Your sense of fair play and comradeship have given us a real boost, you turned what started as a very nasty incident into an uplifting experience. Both the Lordz Games studios and the team want to offer you our sincere thanks.

Best wishes
JDM

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:52 pm**

I find the bogus reviews utterly farcical. CTGW has been out three days, not long enough for a serious review. Panthers is still in beta.

Real gamers know Slitherine does quality games.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:55 pm**

szmania wrote:I'll throw in, on top of what Lordz and JD have put in (2,000 pounds), my last paycheck from Matrix Games/Slitherine. I will keep the amount undisclosed, but I have a good feeling the person or persons involved were responsible for my forced resignation.

Here's a first clue (but no solid evidence):
One of the reviews copied for the Metacritic review was from a German game. How many people have heard of Grotesque Tactics 2? Likely to be someone who was aware of this German game. I can only think of one renowned German in the wargaming community and his forum usernames contain the capital letters "GER".

-Curtis Szmania
Former Editor-in-Chief of The Wargamer

I'd say your knowledge of the source copied into one of the bogus reviews is a little to convenient particularly given the obsurity of the source you've cited. I'm not buying that you just happened to come across it to help out your former employers. No proof here. It's just an observation of a little too much knowledge of the crime scene to be coincidence and a little too convenient a means to get revenge on a perceived offfense.

Good luck to Lords and Slitherine. By all accounts of those who've played the game, it's well done and worthy addition to the Slitherine/Matrix catalogue. It's on my list of games to purchase and play in the near future.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:19 pm**

Bison wrote: I'd say your knowledge of the source copied into one of the bogus reviews is a little to convenient particularly given the obsurity of the source you've cited. I'm not buying that you just happened to come across it to help out your former employers

Actually I've posted the source before szmania comment. I hope that this don't make me a suspect.

Do you know how I've discovered the source? I just copied and pasted part of the full paragraph into Google search, and bingo. You can try yourself.

Posted: **Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:31 pm**

VPaulus wrote:
Bison wrote: I'd say your knowledge of the source copied into one of the bogus reviews is a little to convenient particularly given the obsurity of the source you've cited. I'm not buying that you just happened to come across it to help out your former employers
Actually I've posted the source before szmania comment. I hope that this don't make me a suspect.
Do you know how I've discovered the source? I just copied and pasted part of the full paragraph into Google search, and bingo. You can try yourself.

I'd say your crazy if you were undermining the company you represent.

I did the google thing too, but many of the "reviews" are now removed. Regardless the whole affair is quite inane whoever did it.

Slitherine

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