So Dragon Age 2 is finally out and is being met with mixed reviews. The most common argument around is that it isn’t as good as Origins but it isn’t terrible. Fair enough. Worse things could certainly be said, so you would imagine that Bioware could take the criticism with dignity. Unfortunately, Bioware has proven itself unable to act like a professional company.
Bioware has been caught red handed writing a misleading review for Dragon Age 2 on Metacritic. The review has since been pulled once they were found out, though the introduction blerb was saved in the cache. How did they get found out exactly? Read on.
A user on Reddit (popular global forum), GatoFiasco, was reading the top user review and noticed something about it that didn’t quite fit. It sounded almost patronizing, calling the game flawless and stating that any negative reaction to the game is merely a conflict of personal preference. So GatoFiasco decided to check out the user who posted this review, Avanost (who has since deleted their Metacritic profile) and discovered that their only review was the Dragon Age 2 review. Interesting. GatoFiasco then googled the name, Avanost, and found their profile on Plurk, revealing a name, Chris Hoban. Taking this search with a grain of salt, he realized this could just be another person on the internet with the username of Avanost and so he wasn’t expecting anything to come of it. However, a simple google search of Chris Hoban reveals that he is, in fact, an applications engineer at Bioware.
As I have pointed out, Bioware has since removed the review and Chris’s profile from Metacritic at an effort of damage control. So what does this all mean? Obviously the company wants their game to sell well, regardless of its actual value since the employees of Bioware need to put food on the table. Nobody is going to say the product that they are selling is bad. That’s not even what we are saying, Dragon Age 2 isn’t bad, but it isn’t the immaculate gift from God that this review made it out to be. This show of deceit, however, puts Bioware in a tainted light, the same kind of light that Eidos has been known to revel in with the firing of Jeff Gertsmann, a former reviewer for Gamespot who refused to give Kane and Lynch a favorable review against the wishes of Eidos. It is unknown if Bioware is the host of any other tom foolery similar to this. In all honesty, I wouldn’t doubt it. With this cute, little stunt many fans have lost their trust in Bioware and I’m a little inclined to side with them. Deception such as this cannot be tolerated. Bioware, I hope this is the only time this has happened and that this employee is punished appropriately.
Let this be a lesson to you, do some research before you buy a game and don’t base your opinion off of one review.
Edit: Zomg! Reddit found this article! Check out the story at its source.
