Harmonix Employees Caught Astroturfing for Rock Band 4 on Amazon

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While we don’t normally cover Rock Band 4, it’s recently come to our attention that some questionable business is happening on Rock Band 4’s Amazon page.

A Reddit user by the name Camera9 found several 5 star reviews for the game made by employees at Harmonix.


It remained unclear if these were actually posted by Harmonix employees, however, we’ve learned these are in fact legitimate reviews posted by actual Harmonix employees, via a statement from the developer over on Destructoid:

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.

This isn’t the first time something like this happened, there was a similar incident with a Bioware employee during the release with Dragon Age 2. Now, these new reviews are either removed or edited to reflect the user being a Harmonix employee.

This may have just been a slight oversight on behalf of Harmonix, however, astroturfing is a very disappointing thing to see – and an ongoing issue that must be addressed at each incident.

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About

Writer at Niche Gamer. Passionate for video game journalism, and more than glad to be a part of it. I also write DOTA 2 stuff.


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