Former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern accused BioWare of “astroturfing” reviews for its upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard game.
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
Kern’s accusation comes in the wake of YouTuber Fextralife accusing BioWare of attempting to manipulate reviews by not handing out review codes to creators critical of the game.
In a video upload to YouTube, Fextralife observed that a number of potential players expressed they would wait for reviews before they decided to purchase this game. He then noted that EA likely observed this too and said, “is, EA’s marketing team probably saw this and decided that they needed to make the reviews as positive as possible trying to exclude those that might give the game a seven or an eight while also reaching out, finding press and content creators that would maybe give the game a nine or above.”
“Just think about this for a second if you’re on the EA end and you’re trying to manipulate review scores because you want high review scores, what are you going to do? You’re going to research press and content creators and what they usually give to games score-wise to give you a general idea of how they’re going to review your game,” he added.
After noting how Fextralife never gives 9s or 10s, he said, “You’re about to get a bunch of reviews that have been curated by the publisher for their likelihood of being extremely positive in an attempt to manipulate your view of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. They want you think there is a universal consensus that the game is amazing thereby convincing you that you should try it, but also influencing future review scores as it’s difficult to be the outlier. If you’ve ever done a review for a game or something, you’ll realize that if you’re the only giving a high review when everyone else is giving it a low review score, it’s difficult. Or if you’re the only one giving it a low review score and everyone else is giving it a high review score, it’s a very difficult position to be in.”
“So if you see a bunch of positive review scores come out today, think about all the people that are going to be playing afterward and how much pressure they’re going to feel to give the game slightly better score than they would have given it just to avoid maybe some undue pressure. And sometimes that doesn’t even happen consciously. It’s just done subconsciously.”
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
ext, he noted, “I want to be very clear, here. That I don’t think the press and creators publishing their videos early are going to be lying. These reviewers have been screened to maximize the chances that you’re seeing positive reviews. There will probably be some exceptions, of course, I don’t think everyone’s going to give the game a positive review.
“But EA is banking that those are few and far between in an attempt to keep the aggregate score of the game high,” he added.
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
Following this accusation by Fextralife, Kern made his own, but did so while observing that many outlets that reviewed the game used the same language that the game’s Creative Director used on Blue Sky.
Epler wrote, “so 5 years ago, when i first re-joined the project as Narrative Director after a hiatus on Anthem, I was asked my goals for the project and one of the ones I put was ‘i want to see the phrase ‘a triumphant return to form for BioWare’ in at least one review’ excited to finally mark that goal done.”
He added in another post, “this project has been both the greatest privilege and the hardest dev cycle of my career to say i’m proud of this team would be an understatement, and to say i’m thrilled at the reviews would be similar whew.”
John Epler on Blue Sky
Kern shared these posts from Epler alongside screenshots from Metacritic and what appears to be a Google search where it shows numerous outlets describing Veilguard as a “return to form.” That just so happens to be the phrase that Epler said he wanted to see in at least one review.
Kern wrote, “We need to talk about CAPTURED gaming JOURNALISM and how CORRUPT it’s become. Dragon Age Veilguard is ASTROTURFING articles and reviews now, parroting the lead narrative designer of the game. Look at these reviews and articles that all repeat the same phrase and ask yourself what is going on.”
We need to talk about CAPTURED gaming JOURNALISM and how CORRUPT it’s become.
Dragon Age Veilguard is ASTROTURFING articles and reviews now, parroting the lead narrative designer of the game.
Look at these reviews and articles that all repeat the same phrase and ask yourself… pic.twitter.com/o3ejdlpyLx
— Grummz (@Grummz) October 29, 2024
READ: New ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ Gameplay Confirms Game Is Ultra Woke
Kern was not the only one to observe this. YouTuber Smash JT also observed, “Have had a bunch of folks share this image of metacritic’s ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ reviews with me and… anyone notice anything strange?”
Have had a bunch of folks share this image of metacritic’s ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ reviews with me and… anyone notice anything strange? pic.twitter.com/wuql55Ck8f
— Smash JT (@SmashJT) October 29, 2024
YouTuber Hypnotic also wrote, “Gaming Urinalists are a joke. The reviews seem to either all be written by AI, or they simply coordinate together the write the same narrative about a game that they NEED to be a commercial success, even if it ends up mostly likely being a financial failure.”
He added, “‘A return to form for Bioware’ ‘You can make your character trans officially in the story’ The desperation is palpitating. You can smell it in the air.”
Gaming Urinalists are a joke. The reviews seem to either all be written by AI, or they simply coordinate together the write the same narrative about a game that they NEED to be a commercial success, even if it ends up mostly likely being a financial failure.
“A return to form… pic.twitter.com/Zs531P9Ck2
— Hypnotic (@RealHypnotic1) October 29, 2024
Interestingly enough, all of this comes on the back of Ubisoft being exposed for working with third party agencies that had final approval over what YouTubers could and could not say about Star Wars Outlaws.
German YouTube channel PietSmiet admitted that a third party agency had to approve its Star Wars Outlaws preview video.
As translated by DeepL, the channel posted, “I completely understand the arguments that were made here and that was not correct. I had the opportunity to play the game for 4 hours and it was edited into over an hour of video. As part of the review process, the entire video was thrown back to us and an intermediary agency, not Ubisoft, asked for a lot of changes, especially to the wording at the beginning. But since I personally thought the game was really cool, I didn’t see that as a big problem. This was a huge miscalculation.”
It added, “Sorry, you don’t have to pre-order a game, of course. You can buy whatever you like with your money. I absolutely enjoyed the version I was shown. The process behind it was for the ass and I’m sorry that we didn’t print more against it, but let ourselves be beaten wide open. Big sorry for that.”
A comment from PietSmiet
We’ve seen this outside of video games as well. SyFy Wire’s Dany Roth admitted to making positive reviews for films and in order to maintain access with companies like Disney.
He stated on SyFy Wire’s podcast “Who Won The Week, “Here’s the actual reality. Here’s where we actually are in the industry if you want to talk about quote access media. Every single person that wants to have access to things early, that wants to get access to things so that traffic is drawn to their site will on occasion. Everybody at this podcast, everybody in our industry occasionally has to play softball, occasionally has to look the other way a little bit. Everybody has to do it. In the sense that I hated a movie, but I won’t say that I hated a movie. Or an actor behaved a sort of way, and you don’t want to put it out there that that happened.”
Co-host Karama Horne then chimed in, “Right, because you might not get the next review.”
Roth continued, “To some degree everybody in our industry that is part of this quote on quote access media has to decide which battles they want to pick. Which of the ones where my voice is the one that has to get said.”
Rotten Tomatoes critic admits they give fake positive reviews to maintain their access. pic.twitter.com/A7w2qwPOom
— Dataracer (@Dataracer117) March 7, 2019
What do you make of BioWare being accused of astroturfing and attempting to manipulate reviews for Dragon Age: The Veilguard?
