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Vote Manipulation Investigation Topic Sticky

A topic by romsteady created Nov 08, 2019 Views: 1,320 Replies: 18

Viewing posts 1 to 12

romsteadyHost5 years ago(+3)

Okay, I think I've done enough investigation to be able to identify two games that manipulated votes in different ways. I want to leave it up to people who participated to determine how I should handle both of these.

Manipulation #1 appears to be either a vote stuffing attempt. The game in question received significantly more votes than other titles, and every vote that it received outside of what appears to be votes by other jam participants would have been perfect max scores.

Manipulation #2 appears to be a vote suppression attempt. The game in question had a soft paywall in place that chased away most votes from participants, but due to advertising outside of itch, they brought in enough unique voters to get themselves top vote counts.

If you submitted a game in the jam, I am interested in your opinion about what I should do with both of these manipulations. Please vote below by saying if you want to consider each of these manipulations allowed or not. Majority rule of those who vote before noon Pacific on November 11 will affect whether or not these prizes will be paid to the current recipients or if the entries will be disqualified and the people next in line will receive the prizes.

As a side note, Shacknews Jam V will not be susceptible to either of these. Prizes in that jam will be split into two separate pools: Developer's Choice and Editor's Choice. Only developers who submitted games will be allowed to vote on the Developer's Choice prize pool.

StealthNinjaSubmitted5 years ago(+1)

First off, just wanted to say thank you so much for investigating this. My opinion is that these games should be disqualified, as it is in no way fair to everyone that worked hard in developing their games for this jam without manipulating votes.

GamerGage StudioSubmitted5 years ago (1 edit) (+1)(-1)

What the Hell Firstly i want to tell that the votes is Real Second it is not written that only jam participate or itch people can vote you dony mention it is your mistake if it was mentioned then we will not sharebecause everyone is different i dont cheat it is my first jam so i just want to tell you are a lier if you don't want to distribute money then dont held jams we done our best and who tell we have huge votes we dont have million and 50-60 votes anyone can get if he share. Now i dont want to tell decision is your. Thanks

HenryDorsettCaseSubmitted5 years ago(+1)

I don't think your game is one he is talking about.

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ortsacSubmitted5 years ago(+1)

We're giving Kushal a break because he didn't place as highly and he's very young. I think it's obvious there was vote manipulation there as well.

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GroovetoneSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

I think it was pretty clear that romsteady said the game that got a suspicious amount of outside votes with all perfect ratings was the guilty party.

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CassidyL5 years ago(+3)

They should be disqualified.

DEMBERGSubmitted5 years ago(+1)(-2)

Hello everyone :) We've seen the conversations that were made and since one of the games in question was our game we decided to keep away from the discussions about possible manipulation. Since every creator's opinion is welcome in this discussion, we will join it if you don't mind.

We are a group of 3, and we are making games for about a year now. Actually, one of our games was in the top 20 of GMTK Jam, which we didn't even think was possible. Even though you don't have any reason to believe me, I can only say that we don't have any reason to manipulate the votes, especially for a small prize pool. All we want is for people to play our games, and hopefully to like them. The only thing we did was to share on social media the jam and ask people to leave us a rating if they want to, which we thought was ok, considering that anyone can rate games. Also, and I'm only saying this because there seems to be a lot of confusion about this, our game is FREE. Yes, it has ads and you can pay a dollar to remove them, but that is all. Whether you play with or without the ads, you are playing the same game. Paying to remove the ads does not unlock ANY additional content.

We thought that a mobile game would be just as acceptable as a browser game or a windows-mac-linux build and we just took that route because we thought our game was very fitting of the concept of mobile gaming. We didn't make a mobile game with ads to discourage anyone to play it and frankly we were very disappointed that even though we took the time to check everyone's efforts, most of you did not do the same.

Even so, we understand that for some of you this was your first jam, but if I may leave you with an advice, this behavior is not fitting with the game developers' community, and even more so with the itch community. We are all here to help each other, learn from each other and do something that we love, and if you continue to use itch, you will find out that it is a community that shows a lot of love to everyone's efforts.

We as a group have participated in quite a lot of game jams since we started working together and I think none of us has ever come across such rude behavior in the past, and I feel that this is more about the prize pool than anything else. Aside from the fact that all of us have jobs (I personally am the programmer of the group and I work professionally in the game industry, in a small indie studio with 6 people), why would we try so desperately to win a prize of 100-200$?

In the end, we will support any decision made from the hosts and the Shacknews community, and we want to thank all the people that contributed to this jam taking place. I just want to clarify that we never did anything with the intent to manipulate the rating process, and we certainly could not care less about who wins the prize money. We hope that all of you continue making games and help the game dev community grow, and if you'll have us we'd really like to see you again in the Shacknews Jam V.

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StealthNinjaSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Hello, I would like to sum up some disagreements with statements in your reply and potential concerns regarding your jam submission:

Your game is free with ads. If there is any way you can generate ad revenue from people simply trying to play/test your game for the jam, it should not be allowed as a jam submission.
Your game is only available on the Google Play store, meaning those without access to it cannot play your game. You also included a misleading download button with no downloadable files, otherwise it probably wouldn't have been allowed to be submitted in the jam.
"...and frankly we were very disappointed that even though we took the time to check everyone's efforts, most of you did not do the same."

Your game was the 3rd most rated game, with 22 ratings, most of which came from outside the jam according to romsteady. For those that participated in the jam, some of them may not have been able to play your game as, again, they did not have access to the Google Play store.
"...this behavior is not fitting with the game developers' community, and even more so with the itch community."
"...I think none of us has ever come across such rude behavior in the past, and I feel that this is more about the prize pool than anything else"

These statements come off as extremely arrogant and make it seem like you're trying to play the victim here. Where is this coming from? No one in previous discussion posts or even your jam submission comments was rude to you, as far as I can see. There were only concerns as to how your game was submitted, the inclusion of ads in a jam submission, and the way you received votes.

Just to clarify, I do not benefit whether your game is disqualified or not, however, I believe it is unfair to others in the game jam if your game remains in the jam due to vote manipulation and the existence of some of the described issues. And if you "certainly could not care less about who wins the prize money", I hope you can understand as to why many of us believe this way. For the good of the game developers' and itch community, I hope you choose to resolve some of the above issues in future jam submissions, and I wish the best of luck to you in future jams.

DEMBERGSubmitted5 years ago(-2)

Even though we do not agree with our submission been thought of as violating rules, as I said before, we will support any final decision made about this. The points you mentioned that seem to you as violating rules weren't clearly specified about the jam, but it is a good thing that romsteady clarified that these will become rules for future jams.

When it comes to the comments I made about other participants not being polite, you can see for yourself rude comments made about us in a previous discussion, which was actually an announcement about the jam results, which, as much as our comments seem arrogant to you, seemed very pretentious to us, because they were made only after the winners were announced. And that made them seem even more about the prize pool than anything else. So let me say it once more: we could not care less about the prize pool, and we will gladly accept our disqualification if most of you feel that this is what must be done.

Now, about the game being only on the Play Store let me clarify that the only reason that we did not just upload an apk, is because I personally thought that the game would be more fun if it had leaderboard and achievements. And I'm saying this because I believe that some of you think that we did that for the ads, but this is irrelevant. Even if we submitted an apk, the game would still have ads. This is just the game we created. And if it is wrong to only upload an android build, it should also be wrong uploading only a windows build.

Also, one last thing if I may: the Download button HAS downloadable files. It is for downloading the OST of the game, in our minds a nice way to reward everyone who is kind enough to support us.

It seems I managed writing yet another extensive comment so I'll stop here. All in all, we are all very sorry that our submission created problems, but you have to understand that we also don't think that we' re in the wrong.

ortsacSubmitted5 years ago(+1)

I vote they're both disqualified. Thank you again for your diligence romsteady!

TickHeadDogSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

I say 100% disqualify those two. Obviously not made for this jam, which completely defeats the entire purpose of a game jam to begin with.

Game jams aren't for advertising your existing game.

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TickHeadDogSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

This from the person who commented on and voted top rank for a game that wasn't even playable in the jam ... Just give it up, you've been caught. If you're seeking exposure for your game this is not the way to go about it.

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thelebaronSubmitted5 years ago(+3)(-1)

my thoughts(shacknews name is unleashed)

Given that there really aren't rules on how voting takes place I'm begrudgingly inclined to not disqualify either(and lets face it, its not like we haven't seen the chatty attempt to sway an external competition or two before). Imho as long as the votes are tied to unique ip's, they stand as is.
That said I think #1 is pretty blatantly obvious, and #2 irks me because an entry for the jam should be available to download via itch & ads should not be in a jam entry either(this should be a rule for future jams).

That said, I think for JamV, in addition to the two choice awards you keep the itch vote(or you could make a chatty only vote) for a third community winner which gets a shiny chatty badge(and no monetary awards). id also be inclined to have community badge awards for the other two choice awards too.

GamerGage StudioSubmitted5 years ago(+1)(-1)

yes

princegamestudioSubmitted5 years ago(+1)(-1)

I feel likewise.

GroovetoneSubmitted5 years ago(+3)

Thank you for your diligence Romsteady, i vote to dq them.

I’m pretty new to the community, but I thought the whole reason behind the jams was to get experience using an engine and valuable feedback from other developers. The prize pool is nice but is no where near enough to actually compensate more then a days work in sound design, graphic design and programming.

Which is why its discouraging to see people using the jam as a platform to advertise your other games. Having a ton of outside votes with no real feedback really feels like a blatant attempt to win a prize pool. Presenting a game using previous assets/generators and not listing them makes me think the game was made for something else and wonder if the content was wholly original. By that i mean any sound, art or world creation. Having a game only downloadable through an app store then using the jam to generate add revenue...i really cant think of any decent justification for that. Lastly, there are a ton of jams out there so i dont really see any point submitting a project that doesn’t use the theme unless you are just interested in prize money for something you’ve already done.

TickHeadDogSubmitted5 years ago(+1)

Well said, I agree 100%.

treblig-punisherSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Alright, I might be joining the discussion a bit late, but hear me out first:

It is very easy to find loopholes in many systems, and try to take advantage of those to then play it safe stating that said thing wasn't specified or well defined. If you cared enough about the jam or had some dignity, the best you could've done was ask the jam organizers. Plain and simple.

Now let me be clear about some other things that made NO DAMN SENSE. You got a theme to work with, make the game about the theme. If you don't then you're disqualified instantly. Nothing else matters inside the jam at that point for your game. Now, you can still take the feedback to make the game into something more polished to be released later on. There will be many more jams after all. The issue I have here is people not following the theme at all. I bet many of the people who were not in the jam, rated the games based on how much fun they had, how much they liked the games etc. That's fine on a personal level, but completely unfair, and absurd regarding this competition. These people are just like anyone else on other social media outlets who give a like to anything they like. In those places, that behavior is fine. In game jams? nah get that outta here. I put a shit to on effort into my entry, just like many other people, and it sucks to see your efforts get blown away by people trying to both abuse the system and play the victim.

Now, one more thing:
I am seeing a lot of "it's not about the money" type of excuses here. If money it's not even a thing that matters to you, then why cheat? play by the rules or just don't play and let others enjoy the competition. You're learning and growing through this, so, just do it right, fair and square.

TLDR; DQ the cheaters, follow the rules, none of the absurd.

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Shacknews Jam: Do It IV Shacknews

Vote Manipulation Investigation Topic Sticky