Oh I wholeheartedly agree. Like I said, Twitter, or Youtube, or Facebook fan pages, or dev blogs, or forums, or pretty much anything else is a better venue for fan interaction or promotion. But I'm not out for their blood, demanding sacred retribution. I'm sure these individuals have realized their mistake, and I'm not going to boycott Telltale over something that doesn't really matter in the end. I mean, if this becomes a reoccurring problem, then let's get rabble-rousing, but it seems isolated in Telltale's case.

I guess my bottom line is that Metacritic user reviews didn't have a ton of integrity to lose. There are some very smart people writing posts and recommendations, but they are a tiny minority on the insane numbers fuelled feedback loop that is Metacritic.

Oh I certainly don't want "blood" either. I think a stern scolding will do (as well as being required to run out and get coffee for everyone while they play darts on a break), that should probably do it. What I do expect from Telltale to the community is a statement in essence saying, "Hey, we don't condone that, we didn't ever in any thought we ever had imagine that something like this would happen, we've now incorporated this into employee training so we expect to see no more of it in the future. We're sorry, it wasn't intentional, but nonetheless this was not the proper channel for our employees to express their views on a game on which they were involved."

In fact, I fully expect that's what we'll get, it might even be sincere:)

As far as metacritic, sure most of those posters are morons, like everywhere, you just skim them as if you're panning for gold and hope you get lucky with a few insightful posts.

As far as JP goes, I was expecting bargain bin fodder. Still I watched a few dev diaries and they seemed genuinely stoked about what they'd done so I was planning on reading a few, actual reviews at some point to see if there wasn't some hidden gemstone buried in that gamecase. I doubt there will be.

I have hated Telltale with a burning passion since they perma-banned me from there boards for defending another user from an onslaught of douchebaggery being committed by the one of the mods & their buttbuddies. Sure you could say this wasn't Telltale's fault... but it wasn't the first time the mod in question had done something like this & they never did anything about it. I will admit that things got a bit heated on my part, but that was only due to them being heated on their part. Funny thing is... the bitches who were basically trolling the poor bastard (who admitted to be just a kid) weren't even warned about it... so when I read something like this, it just makes me crack the fuck up.... shows exactly what kind of assholes have been working there all along.

sad :X they should have just stuck to monkey island , whats next telltale? an episodic game on terminator series? hmm that would be good though

I love someone's reply in the original response article,

"The f*** is happening? I've been playing Skyrim for the past few days."

Wait, there is someone who gives a shit about metacritic?

Yes... like my uncle. He put so much faith on metacritic even make it as guide before buying any new release.

/facedesk

Wow. Just wow.

^
Yeah sadly, but i still love him :)

Great, people are going to carpet bomb the metacritic score now. Predictable. Aces to you, Telltale employees, who thought that prodding the beast was a brilliant idea.

They've really taken a nosedive with this one. The fake reviews are a symptom of their desperation.

I'm inclined to agree, companies are usually too busy writing the scripts for the ' professional reviews' that will be influencing the critics' scores - thus influencing the fulfillment of conditions related to any contractual bonuses tied to the score itself - to worry about something as silly as the users' reviews.

Nevertheless, it's funny how when this kind of thing pops up there's always someone who immediately feels the need to point out that 'this happens all the time' as if what would make any difference, as if dishonesty and lack of integrity by virtue of being widespread would become any less despicable.

If they did it, it's because someone higher up told them to do so.

LOL, I think there are several lessons here, if you're going to do a fake review spend some time doing some research. Learn to use a few typos and grammar errors. And for the love of god don't do this under your own name.
Most likely, doing something like this really ought to be grounds for termination.