"Star Raids" Thrash Product Ratings, Get Company's Attention
Add this to the Consumerist toolbelt: Star Raids. If a company is pissing off a bunch of customers and refuses to change some aspect of their product, some consumers are finding it effective to band together and thrash the product's rating. An avalanche of "zero" ratings can make a ratings score plummet, and turn away potential customers. The fall-off in sales will definitely grab their attention.
It worked against a TurboTax rate hike, and the video game Spore for excessive DRM.
These are both pieces of software. The effectiveness is hardly limited to software. The Star Raid was successful because users of those products are more likely to be savvy enough to know the impact of such an attack, and to frequent a user-generated news-aggregation site like Digg or Slashdot where an issue, and call to arms, like this would tend to be publicized. To hand the tool to the broader populace, it just needs to be talked about in broader forums, like this one, natch.
Like the best Consumerist tools, it works because anyone can do it and it directly impacts the corporate balance sheet, which is the best (and often, only), way of getting them to give a damn.
One obvious limitation is that retailers can simply delete the onslaught of negative reviews. However, they do so at their peril. Censoring the angry users will likely only lead to further outcry beyond those initially ticked off, as Amazon also learned with Spore. Another limitation is that the product or service needs to be listed on a site that allows ratings. A subsidiary limitation is that site has to be well-trafficked enough to mater.
However, applied judiciously, it can be very effective.
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EA made a few concessions after they had the issues with spore. I think that most of those were due to the class action lawsuit and not the bad reviews though. EA is kinda like Sony in that it doesn't think the consumer is smart enough to understand how DRM screws them and treats them accordingly.
My favourite was the Mass Effect brouhaha a while back.
Check out this review. It's funny because it's true!
Can we start doing it with the Grocery shrink ray products on amazon?
@Gmork:
And these concessions are NOT good enough. All they did was increase the install limit to 5 (which doesn't always "take"), thus STILL rendering your game a RENTAL product.
About two weeks ago, they FINALLY came out with a de-authorization tool to de-auth your computer. This doesn't always "take" either.
The problem isn't the DRM limitations, it is THE DRM. SecuRom (or Suck-u-rom) DESTROYS peoples' computers. It is installed without warning into the CORE of your system.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to mess with my REGISTRY FILES in order to uninstall it. This is absolutely appalling, but expected, from a Sony brand.
Ah, let's just hope you guys and the general media don't overhype it so much so that it will become as useless as baking cookies for that credit card number. :)
Is that gun firing shooting stars?
Where can I get one of those?
@SJActress: I hate to break it to you, but virtually every program install writes to the REGISTRY FILES. True, SecuRom does go deeper, but I feel like there's almost another cookies==spyware thing coming.
@Gmork: The sad part is they're right. Most people aren't smart enough to understand just how bad DRM is. Or, rather, it's too much effort for them to apply their brain to such a thing. That's how the asshole companies get away with it in the first place! Sure, there were plenty of complaints about Spore, but think how many people bought it and didn't say a thing!
Yeah, once anyone in the news finds out about this, game over. I almost bought Spore. I hear about the DRM, didn't. I DID buy Sins of a Solar Empire, which has pretty much nothing to keep it from getting pirated. After my friends got pirated copies, some of them liked it so much they bought their own. As an aside, Sins sold like hotcakes. Many DRM-packed EA games did not.
damnit ben, I was in the process of putting my naughty pants on and everything.
my star often gets lost in translation
lotsa caps there, my friend... I couldn't help but hear my inner monologue's voice rising and falling some some guy with tourette's.
Companies are so dependent on ratings and reviews these days, but let's be honest, in the end, it's just about more knowledge. The people who do their research will still buy the 1* (assuming it's an issue you can deal with), and the ignorant will still buy the padded 5*.
@Gmork:
I think EA is starting to care. I have a feeling that they know they have pissed off their repeat customers like me, who went from buying 12-15 titles a year to no titles a year.
I think that has a lot to do with them trying valve out. On the upside, I don't have to look for the cd's for a game just to play or, for that matter, install. On the downside, I can't sell my games.
EA's practices make more sense if you assume that they're trying to prevent rentals, not piracy.
@Gmork: The whole DRM issue and the limited installs scared me away from Spore - and I've been an avid player of the Sims and Sims2 franchises of games for years, so I was all set to give it a shot. No way now.
EA ran into the same Securom issues a few years ago when they started putting it into the Sims2.
It is also morally bankrupt and a dishonest application of a ratings feature.
Agreed! I think this is called extortion!
@brent_r: That's not true. If I'm looking at a piece of software, and the company has crippled the software so much that it is useless to me (in my mind) I see no problem giving it a one star review. The problem comes when people give one star reviews to other products from the same company, such as rating all of apple's products one star just because your iPod broke.
I think this would be an appropriate response to Belkin's recent self-tampering of ratings on Amazon, wouldn't you agree? If they're going to pay people to vote up their products illegitimately, then wouldn't it make sense to vote them down?
@Con Seannery hates Facebook and Trebek:
The only type of DRM software I will buy is off of Steam. At least I know it will work on any computer I download it too. While it is possible Steam could fold up shop overnight and I could no longer log into my account the next day, I feel it is far more likely that they will provide a workaround for the users should they decide to stop providing the service.
@brent_r: It's "morally bankrupt" to give a bad review that you're legitimately angry about to something on the Internet?
@Con Seannery hates Facebook and Trebek: Sins of a Solar Empire has a heck of a lot going for it, though. It sells at an affordable price, it is really freaking fun, and the system requirements were reasonable for the "I assembled my rig from things I found in the school's dumpsters" college student crowd.
...I think I just gave away what demographic I'm from.
While "star raids" do have the potential to get a company's attention regarding a flaw in or related to a certain product (and barring review fraud situations), I'd prefer that customers simply give the product the review it deserves, taking into account the flaw. That's what reviews are for, and used properly they're invaluable to the customer. That's nice if star raids can get a company to remove nasty DRM from its game software, but the raiders are also screwing over compatriots who just want to know whether its a good game.
How about XM/Sirius? Can we do this to all their radios?
I don't get it. Are we supposed to laud this sort of thing? When companies artificially inflate ratings, that's wrong. When consumers artificially deflate ratings, that's....also wrong, no? Lets try to be consistent here.
@nolookingca: Try again; most programs uninstall fairly cleanly, leaving the occasional file and registry key undeleted.
When he talks about SecuROM, he means having to clean all that shit out manually, actually digging though registry entries to delete shit; one mistake on that level and you could break something serious.
@henwy:
The difference is when companies do it it is because they have a stake in the rating. A customer does not benefit directly from product ratings...at best they get the satisfaction of shitting on someone who shafted them.
Also, you're not going to get enough people to care enough to do something like this unless you're either on some forum full of trolls hungry for action, or you are actually talking to people who have been wronged.
The only way it would be comparable is if the people doing the star raids worked for say...Linksys, and started voting down Belkin products in order to sink their competitor.
@Pink Puppet: Ain't no shame there, baby, ain't no same at all. I liked it for it's being cheap as hell and it isn't all that demanding, which is why it's floating around school now.
I wonder if there is a way to get sirius/xm for lying about raising prices.
ah crap, should have read all the posts, sorry for the repeat.
@nolookingca: Perhaps, but not every program turns a perfectly legal dvd burner/software into an expensive paperweight; As SecuROM did to mine and so many others.
It installs a rootkit without warning or permission that alters the way your computer works. That's malware, not a cookie.
Add that to the secondary-market-killing install limit and you have the reason for the, I believe it's five now, class action suits going against EA.
More info here: [reclaimyourgame.com]
Considering there was a stink raised just a week ago for someone writing 5-star reviews for products, how is mass review fraud in the other direction any better?
So what you're saying is that if you don't have a stake in something, then it's okay to sh!t all over it? Ummm. I just don't see the reasoning here. It's one thing if these people purchased the product and then had qualms or complaints about some part that resulted in them personally posting a negative review. It just doesn't seem right for someone who doesn't own the item and has never used it to rate it either 5 stars or 0 stars. It's the exact same thing.
@RogueSophist: I think that if a game's associated components render your computer inoperable it's quite reasonable to give multiple 0 ratings.
@Mo0: Because in this case it's because of an actual issue. Most games don't render your computer inoperable. A pirated version won't either.
Why does no one see the difference between a company paying people to artificially inflate ratings, and "Star Raids" being organized to artificially deflate them?
If it wasn't for crooked PR people hiring people to do the former, the latter would not exist.
Has our concept of justice been so watered down that we have lost all willingness to distinguish between the instigator and the retaliator?
I would not condone a random Best Buy "Star Raid" on the grounds that Best Buy is an all-around shifty company whose entire survival predicates on selling super-profitable 'extras'. However, if there was a documented incident of Best Buy using chicanery to artificially make a product of service of theirs seem 'loved by the people', how can a "Star Raid" be anything BUT proper and just retribution?
In other words, if the worst crime you can accuse "Star Raiders" of is 'sinking to the level of the villainy they fight', how can it be wrong for them to act, given that the existence of Star Raids is justified entirely (and in an instigating fashion!) by the wrong that they seek to correct?
Having said all this blather, I'd like to see the negative reviews of Star Raids to consist *not* of manufactured 'reviews' of the product, but something along the lines of "I cannot trust a product manufactured by a company who will bribe people to post positive reviews, such as at (link)".
100 posts saying "ZOMG WTF THIS PRODUCT SUCKS!" will pale in effectiveness to 100 posts saying what I have suggested above. Let Amazon censor those who say the truth. More fuel for the fire, right?
@henwy:
No, it isn't the same thing. Stating facts you know about a product (but which are not advertised), like Spore's DRM, as a reason you will not buy the product and why others should not either is not dishonest.
If you're doing it honestly, if your opinion is not being colored by the fact (or generated by the fact that) you're going to be making more money if people think the thing is great (or terrible), yes, it is more ethical to bomb the hell out of a review site than if you're making shit up to make a buck.
If the purpose of review sites (including customer reviews on retail sites) is to help other people make a good choice by avoiding bad products or selecting good ones (there's no reason "star raids" couldn't be used for something that's spectacularly awesome) then whether you have a stake in the success of that product has everything to do with the value of your opinion. Star raids, if used honestly, add value to the review system. They are signal. Commercial spamming of that review system is noise. The star raiders are (again, if acting honestly) not doing any harm to the owners and primary users of the star system. Commercial spammers are.
One is better than the other.
@brent_r: i agree. now, the spore case is different b/c most of the reviews are about a certain aspect of the purchase that the user did not like. & i believe turbotax falls into the same category - long-time users were unhappy about a specific change to the software & rated accordingly.
but simply pulling up a bunch of belkin ads & flaming 1-star reviews on products you've never used b/c they wouldn't honor a $5 mail-in rebate is just as despicable as paying people to write reviews on products they've never used.
(holy run-on, batman!)
@johnva: If you didn't actually ever use the product? Yes, that's called "lying", and it's generally considered immoral.
Sooooooo anyone feel like taking some stars away from Monster cables?
@brent_r:
I concur. Is this not the polar opposite equivalent of pay-to-rate tactics employed by merchants?
@Con Seannery hates Facebook and Trebek:
Sins is a fantastic game, although I prefer games with an actual storyline or single player campaign. Yes, I realize it's more labor intensive and expensive to churn out games with campaigns. Additionally, Sins' true strength is its skirmish-based gameplay and multiplayer appeal. But hey, you could say the same thing about Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, and yet they managed to create a fun and involving single player campaign out of mostly skirmish matches. Then again, Stardock did create Galactic Civ II with a campaign, yet it universally (pun intended) sucks.
I like Sins, and Stardock's lack of DRM, so much that I'm considering dropping a few more bucks on a hard copy of Sins, just in case.
@Charles Mousseau: This isn't technically proven and documented, but would this be worthy of proper and just retribution?
Some people also do a 1 star review on Amazon to offset the Harriet Klausner bump.
Dunno how I feel about authors having their works denigrated simply because some shill 'reviewed' it, though.
@Con Seannery hates Facebook and Trebek: I'm in the same boat. I was seriously thinking about buying Spore, then heard about the whole DRM mess and decided against it. I bought Sins of a Solar Empire not just because it's a great game (it's the REAL Master of Orion 3, kinda!) but to support Stardock in what I feel are smart, ethical business decisions. This is what "vote with your wallet" means, people - exercise some intelligence and discretion in what you buy!
That reminds me, I need to find more people to play against.
I know that a couple instances of bad press on Amazon kept me away from a product or two. Sure you had to temper the "This prodct SUZZ00RZED!!!1!" from the ligitmate gripes, but a smart shopper should be doing that anyway.