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I suspect that someone may be attempting to cheat by leaving comments on numerous games without actually playing or rating them properly.

A topic by Retro-Bit Bandit created Aug 14, 2023 Views: 540 Replies: 23
Viewing posts 1 to 8
Submitted

I've noticed an individual consistently leaving nearly identical comments on multiple games, often followed by a request to check out their own game. This behavior struck me as odd. So, I decided to investigate further by checking out their recent community posts. What I found is that they've been commenting on around 30 games in just about 15 minutes, and it seems they're still going at this immense speed. Call me skeptical, but I'm finding it hard to believe that a person could play, rate, comment, and move on to another game all within 1-2 minute intervals for a continuous 30 minutes, while still going at this speed as of writing.

Perhaps I'm overthinking it, but my main intention is to ensure that everyone's games are rated fairly.
Submitted

Who is it and what games did they comment on

Submitted

Even with this behavior I am not comfortable nor is it right to call out a person in that manner. I am mostly writing this in hopes that a moderator will pick this up, while also telling people to be a bit cautious when spotting strange comments

Submitted

okay I will look out for them 

Submitted

Do you mean they are as the Jam Host said "Rate for Rate" or do you mean this "It's alright to ask someone to play your game if you've played, rated, and gave feedback for their game"

Submitted

No it is not rate for rate, and of course it is alright asking people to rate their game after they themselves have played commented and rated. What I am saying is that it is not alright when the person consistently only uses around 1min (if even any time) on a game, provide a quick comment as if they have played the game properly and then repeats that process as fast as possible to get ratings for their own game.

Submitted

Ok - I always try to provide feedback for everyone's game I play and I've done this for a few games. But I've seen what I'm doing is wrong. My bad. I didn't mean to make the Jam unfair.

Submitted

This post wasn't actually specifically targeted towards you, it was another person I noticed, though there might be others doing the same. Actually I have checked out your comments and you seem to be good, can't actually see what should be wrong about them, you provide feedback specifically for the game that isn't just first impression and it is obvious you have played through them. Don't worry you seem to be just fine :)

Submitted

Ok thank you. I just don't want to be violating any rules or making the jam unfair especially since I really like The engine and the community. It's my second Jam and it would be a shame if I ruined it for everyone else.

Submitted

Don't worry about it, these people seem to be doing it intentionally. I am actually impressed about how you have gone through so many games already and provided proper feedback, please don't let my post discourage you or change what you are already doing, it was meant for some completely different people

Submitted

👍🏾

Jam Host

It's not really realistic for us to moderate everyone who's rating games. It's almost certain that some people will rate games in bad faith, but this is why we do judge voting at the end of the jam. The community voting portion of the jam is great for broadly separating games based on quality, but because of those sorts of bad actors, the results can't be 100% trusted. So we do the judges' pick with a team of people to try and sort the top-rated games from the community picks, along with some gems we notice while monitoring the jam. 👍

Submitted

I fully understand. Then I will just leave up the post as a word of caution and to show those who do it that it is not going unnoticed. Thank you for all the hard work you guys have already put into the jam :)

Jam Host

👍

Submitted

I guess I noticed the same thing. When you see their recent comments section, It's the same comment asking to check their games over and over again.

Submitted

I agree. This person(I think were all talking about the same one) has left comments on pages without games saying "great job, well done. btw check out my game:"

And when you go to thier page it has almost 80 ratings, while the ones on the "in need of ratings" page have like 3

I don't think it's cheating, but something feels wrong enough for multiple ppl to be commenting about it as u can see

Submitted (1 edit)

I spent a good couple of days diving into playing and voting on the games during the initial phase. And you know, it struck me that it's completely reasonable to kindly ask others to check out my game and provide their thoughts. Being a developer, I'm truly invested in getting my game out there, connecting with as many players as possible, and genuinely understanding their feedback. To be honest, snagging a prize isn't my main objective; I'm genuinely looking to establish a connection between players and my game. Requesting feedback definitely doesn't qualify as cheating – it's a privilege that everyone is entitled to exercise. I hope this helps clarify my perspective!

I also want to bring up that, despite having limited time to work on my own game, I dedicated a whole day to creating YouTube tutorials aimed at assisting fellow participants in the game jam. Trust me, if my primary concern was winning a prize, I wouldn't have taken the time to do this.

YouTube Tutorials: 

Submitted

It seems like you misunderstood my point, and that might be on me I should have been more clear. I am not against people asking for feedback in the comment sections as long as they have played and rated the game properly, you are absolutely right that is a totally reasonable thing to do. I am trying to say that people should play through the games properly, it is not fair in any regard no matter the goal to just open the game for 1min just to give the game a first impression comment for then to just move on to the next game to repeat the process, people have spent a lot of time on these games and they deserve proper feedback and ratings. I don't know if you are one of those people, I surely hope not, as I said to someone earlier in this thread I am not going to call anyone out, I just observed something I saw as suspicious activity and wanted to share my thoughts. But I am glad you voiced your perspective to clear out any misunderstandings

Submitted

> I'm genuinely looking to establish a connection between players and my game

Well, maybe if you aim to do that, you can genuinely establish a connection between you and others game. I don't know if you play the games or not, but commenting "Nice game, well done", is not a genuine feedback, at least on my personal opinion. I coulld paste the same comment on every game and ask for GENUINE connection to MY GAME. I'm not saying is against the rules, it's just that it feels so forced. I don't know if the post refers about you, but I personally don't like comments that take more characters asking for their own game rather than the actual review/feedback.

Submitted

Yes, I agree with your point. It's true that everyone wants specific feedback for their games. I played all of the games in the jam, and you can imagine that it took a lot of time. Writing feedback for each game was really hard for me, especially since there are more than 200 games. I might have repeated myself a few times, but I did try to give special comments to more than 50 games and recommended people who couldn't uploaded games to include links in the comments.

But I do understand your point, and I'll go back and edit my comments to give more feedback where I can. I hope you understand that I didn't mean any harm, and I'm sorry if there was any trouble or mistakes because of this.

Submitted(+1)

In my opinion, jams are for connecting with devs more than for gathering players, it's to exchange game design ideas and make everyone a little bit more experienced at the end. That's why it's not so pleasant for other devs to feel like they are just "a potential player for this person's game, even though my own game wasn't worth more than a few seconds of their time". 

Submitted

Just to clarify I am asking for ratings but I am rating and playing the person's game

I think everyone who feels personally attacked has misunderstood the topic. There was one user who spammed (possibly botting) the same message to all games, trying to get his own submission engagements. Within a time where it would have been impossible to have tried all the games.

That was ONE person playing unfair guys. Relax! :)

I think it's great to point this issue out though!

Show post...

seriously, enough. I tried a game called "extensiON" and i played it properly.

Then i told the developer to fix the bug. After i call this as a best game that i added in th collection and followed him/her. 


Maybe, i think this cheating might be not suitable because there ratings are just innumerable. In fact, i did not publish it because if my email verification.


Atleast, they get to rate "extensiON" properly instead of those 100% cheat rates.