Is it me or does anyone else have the view that it might be other developers that give your apps a bad review on iTunes? I say this because I have a couple of really ridiculous reviews on my game. One says ‘developer couldn’t have played it as you can’t even aim your weapon’ Which considering I have 130,000 players playing it and able to aim quite fine, this seems a ridiculous comment. Then I have a ‘Doesn’t work on iPhone’ comment. Once again impossible as I thoroughly tested it on all iPhones before releasing it plus the majority of my players are playing it on iPhones.
If I saw a ‘Doesn’t work on iPad/iPhone’ comment on an app it would certainly make me think twice before downloading it so I can’t help thinking this kind of blatently wrong comment is designed to sabotage you app.
Just thought I’d put this out there and see what others thought.
I wouldn’t take it too personally. If it were a repeated thing or if you saw it yourself than it would be different but it doesn’t sound like it to me.
There isn’t a game in the world that doesn’t get reviews like that. It’s a big, dumb world, and there could be any number of reasons for those reviews. Maybe they were angry at their mom that day, maybe they tried playing on their Android and got angry because they thought it was an iPhone. Seriously, the only games that don’t get bad reviews are games no one’s ever heard of.
Never underestimate dumb / drunk people. I knew this girl that called the cable company to tell them it was out… she needed to replace the batteries in her remote.
That, plus people who are effectively taking a detail and make it an absolute judgement about the whole game (“I can’t jump on the platform at level 3” → “this game is shit”), which is also a very common behaviour in today’s era of to-the-minute consumerism. Some people will just complain for anything, because it makes them feel like they’re having some kind of importance they wish they would have elsewhere.
Or anything … Like Khanstruct wrote, there could be any number of reasons for those reviews (apart from well-thought ones).
Just be relax about it, it will happen, whatever the game. Only take in consideration well constructed criticism.
I think the negative comments annoy me more when it’s a free app! I really don’t mind constructive critisim, and on a paid version thats great and actulally helpful. But free players that can’t seem to touch the touch screen get on my goat, yet amazingly are able to string 3 or 4 words together to try and put other potential players off.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone else get annoyed when someone plays your free app and then complains it has iAd’s or AdMob adverts on it. (with an option to pay a paltry 99 cents to get rid of the adverts? I don’t know why some people think I should work for free.
I wouldn’t take bad reviews to mean that at all. I’ve heard lots of non-devs say things exactly like you got. They don’t think before they post, and they don’t take others into consideration at all.
Yeah you just need to grow thicker skin. You cant please everyone all the time. I think the popular game is the more likely you will run into either jerks or trolls.
I do know that large companies will hire kids to spam rave about their products online to force viral marketing. It stands to reason they would discreetly want them to bad mouth the competition also. Never trust anyone over the internet except me, I am you’re only real friend. Now I’m going to get back to playing startrek online, that game is amazing!! And it’s free to play!
Developing a thick skin, remaining cool, and responding diplomatically are less-touted but equally important tools in the indie developer skill set. When the inane comments pop up, I go grab a coffee and take two minutes to think about the reply, if indeed any.
True but there seems to be no way for a developer to correct the false comments. For example I did have a bug in version 1.0 that was a cause of a bad comment, but it has long been fixed and there is no way to tell new potential players that the issue is fixed. Well except for the product ‘whats new’ bit of the product description.
There’s some obscure and dirty practices made by big studios (i won’t say which one but trust me, they still doing that). Just before an app launch, we usually had to buy others people app and give mixed reviews (between 1 star and 3 stars) and dumb them down to sh*t. Of course, i never done that garbage as i was working mainly on PS3 projects but you know, that kind of dirty practice is done almost in a daily basis.
[EDIT] Same goes for their own games 5 stars and ultra awesome reviews.
