Yesterday, a Reddit post surfaced a rumor that Harmonix employees were papering Amazon product listing for Rock Band 4 with positive reviews. Today, the developer has owned up, admitting that its employees are behind the ratings.

Redditors linked reviewers to real names, which appear to include one employee stating that she is a “new fan.” Destructoid further matches additional reviews to people with names matching Harmonix employees.

When approached for comment, Harmonix admitted that its staff is behind some of the glowing reviews. “Harmonix has clarified its internal policy about posting reviews of our own products on retail sites, and we've asked that existing reviews be edited to identify Harmonix employees or be removed entirely,” a representative told us. “While we believe the reviews posted by a few employees were sincere and without ill intentions, as a studio we don’t believe these are appropriate actions. We appreciate the feedback from the community, and take our relationship with our fans seriously."

Provided that the links between reviews and those credited on Rock Band products are all accurate, it appears at least six employees left positive reviews. Rock Band 4 was released on October 6 and performed well critically. It has also suffered from confusing DLC and track export implementation and a dearth of hardware at retail, particularly a vital Xbox One adapter for legacy instruments produced by partner MadCatz.

[Source: Reddit, Imgur via Destructoid]

Our Take

What isn’t clear is if employees were incentivized at the corporate level or took it upon themselves. Either way, it’s a terrible look for a company that is in the midst of a major competitive period.

Even if this was done with the best of intentions, reviewing your own product has the appearance of attempting to skew consumer perception. It's better to leave messaging to clearly labeled corporate PR and advertising.