{"id":14830,"date":"2011-10-18T20:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T18:45:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"ea-allegedly-solicits-favourable-battlefield-3-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/14830-ea-allegedly-solicits-favourable-battlefield-3-reviews","title":{"rendered":"EA allegedly solicits favourable Battlefield 3 reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of the Norwegian games press have outed<\/a> EA for allegedly trying to manipulate Battlefield 3 review scores.<\/p>\n

According to Norwegian news site NRK.no, in order to get an early review copy of Battlefield 3, editorial staff had to fill out a questionnaire. Based on the answers submitted by the journalist, EA would decide whether or not to send the publication an early review copy.<\/p>\n

The questionnaire starts by asking for fairly generic contact information, but then asks the publisher to supply the review scores awarded to Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops. It also asks about the reviewer’s previous experience with Battlefield, and whether or not they are a fan of Battlefield and Call of Duty.<\/p>\n

It then asks how long the reviewer has been playing Battlefield games for, and whether or not they are excited at the prospect of Battlefield 3. Finally, the questionnaire asks what the reviewer’s thoughts on the Battlefield 3 beta were, and what their present view of the game is.<\/p>\n

While EA has not gone so far as to straight up bribe publications for positive reviews, auditing reviewers before agreeing to supply them with early review copies is directly influencing the review scores that will appear before the game is released.<\/p>\n

Only allowing reviewers who are fans of the Battlefield franchise, and who are excited about Battlefield 3 to post reviews before the game is released will inevitably lead to disproportionately high review scores.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

EA Norway has since apologised for sending out the questionnaire, claiming it was a product of human error and that EA does not plan to continue sending out similar questionnaires.<\/p>\n

Here in South Africa we are lucky if we get our review copies on release day, so you don’t have to worry about MyGaming being manipulated by any devious ploys.<\/p>\n

EA allegedly solicits favourable Battlefield 3 review scores<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EA Norway caught out, claims it was "human error"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}