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Fakespot - RDR2 Amazon Reviews Get An F (for fake)

joe_zazen

joe_zazen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,490
Another member who cant post threads made this post:

akasha said:
FYI, Fakespot gives grade F on the Red Dead Redemption 2 Amazon reviews. Grade F means that fake reviews are very likely.

In the first month after release RDR2 reviews have been in the 3-4 range on 3 local Amazon sites pages I use. Then, on two of them they climbed to 4.5 within few weeks. One explanation is that people who really played through the whole game started reviewing during the holidays, but then Fakespot would not detect them as fake reviews.

For comparison, Fakespot on other recent open world games:

Witcher 3
Grade A (low chance of fake reviews) [edit actually ranks F]

Breath of the Wild
Grade A

Horizon Zero Dawn
Grade A [edit actually ranks a C]

Wish I had the privileges to post this as a new thread. If someone who has them reads this, feel free to open it yourself.


copypasta:

Red Dead Redemption 2 PS4 (Fakespot)

How are reviewers describing this item?
game, great, best, good and awesome.

Interesting tidbit: the most used word by reviewers is game.
Our engine has profiled the reviewer patterns and has determined that there is high deception involved.

Our engine has analyzed and discovered that 29.2% of the reviews are reliable.
This product had a total of 1,040 reviews on Jan 19 2019.
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& asked for a thread.

Edit: reviewmeta.com seems to be a better site for this sort of thing
 
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JayBabay

JayBabay

Member
Oct 25, 2017
700
California
I use fakespot all the time for Amazon items that aren't known brands to make sure that there's nothing sketchy going on with the high reviews. Never thought to apply it to games.
 
Joeyro

Joeyro

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,757
I have spent few minutes in amazon right now and the reviews seem varied , does their algorithm determine fake reviews by key words being used over and over? or by length as well?
 
rpm

rpm

Into the Woods
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
12,356
Parts Unknown
The links provided for W3 and HZD show that they have ratings of F and C, respectively, not As.
 
Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,873
Netherlands
Wouldn't be surprised. Big film production companies are known to massively astroturf IMDb too, and I would certainly not put this below Take Two.
 
tyfon

tyfon

Member
Nov 2, 2017
3,680
Norway
Lol.. Witcher 3 gets a 0/5 after the "adjustment".

Even if I never managed to get into the controls on that game I don't think it's a 0/5 :)
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,580
So many people on the internet and so few can acknowledge that they are often in contact with fake shit. Idk if this site is accurate but it's good that they are at least trying something. We should have a thousand sites watching for this and other types of manipulation.
 
Heckler456

Heckler456

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,256
Belgium
Crayon said:
So many people on the internet and so few can acknowledge that they are often in contact with fake shit. Idk if this site is accurate but it's good that they are at least trying something. We should have a thousand sites watching for this and other types of manipulation.
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Me not believing in the results of a poorly defined "engine" doesn't mean I'm not skeptical about Amazon reviews. I never rely on those reviews anyway. I might take them into account when they're really detailed, and always in conjunction with a ton of other sources.
 
wrowa

wrowa

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,373
Without any information as to why they think the reviews are likely to be fake, this is almost entirey useless. There's no way to even try to understand whether the algorithm finds false positives or is indeed discovering fakes.

Also, I kinda wonder if gaming fans have learnt to be shills for their favorite games to such a degree that a general algorithm thinks they are fake people. If you rate a random product, reviews are more like "Yeah, this does a solid job for its price, would buy again" while a game review is more like "Holy shit, the long awaited masterpiece by R* and it's just as expected: the best game of all time period". It makes sense an algorithm specialzed on more general products, would find the latter rather suspicious. Actually, it would be interesting if this would also be true for other media, e.g blockbuster movies and popular books.
 
OP
OP
joe_zazen

joe_zazen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,490
Reviewmeta seems to be a better site. They give an explanation of what they do and look at the reviews individual. Rdr2 eviews are 'unatural' and fail. Adjusted rating goes from 4.1 to a 4.0, quite the hit there, lol.
 
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joe_zazen

joe_zazen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,490
wrowa said:
Also, I kinda wonder if gaming fans have learnt to be shills for their favorite games to such a degree that a general algorithm thinks they are fake people. If you rate a random product, reviews are more like "Yeah, this does a solid job for its price, would buy again" while a game review is more like "Holy shit, the long awaited masterpiece by R* and it's just as expected: the best game of all time period". It makes sense an algorithm specialzed on more general products, would find the latter rather suspicious. Actually, it would be interesting if this would also be true for other media, e.g blockbuster movies and popular books.
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I think some have. :/

Ask here what system to buy (including pc) or whether the latest exclusive is worth buying and you will get obvious distortions bordering on lies trying to sway you one way or another. They fight for their team and in so doing decieve their peers. Loyalty to a corp trumping loyalty to your peers is kinda shitty. And if it happns here, it is gonna happen elsewhere.

It is an interesting monkeywrench that these engines dont have to account for when looking at reviews about irons and cappuccino makers.
 
roguesquirrel

roguesquirrel

The Fallen
Oct 29, 2017
5,487
Tried a few hair products that i know pay for 5 star reviews and they got As on fakespot. Dont really know how reliable their algorithim is
 
Whompa

Whompa

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
4,254
Kinda hard to tell one way or another. In general, debating about which games you like or dislike is pretty pointless. Same goes with movies, or most any form of artwork.
 
Yog-Sothoth

Yog-Sothoth

Member
Oct 1, 2018
3,225
I'm sure there is fake shit for RDR2 out there as much as there is for any major game, but this tool doesn't seem to be very reliable.
 
Jay Shadow

Jay Shadow

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,608
joe_zazen said:
There is also a site called reviewmeta, i am going to check that one too.
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I have the plugin for review meta. It adjusts PS4 from a 4.1 to a 4.0. And the Xbox one stays at 4.5. In both cases it throws out 40-50% of the reviews mostly for past behavior that could potentially be sketchy, but the score remains about the same.
 
ItIsOkBro

ItIsOkBro

Happy New Year!!
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
9,515
"Interesting tidbit: the most used word by reviewers is game."

fascinating
 
xabbott

xabbott

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,065
Florida
This tool isn't useful for game reviews. Much more useful for sketchy random knock off items.

Games get enough actual reviews.

Not to mention how these reviews are often manipulated by vendors. Rockstar didn't need to convince people to buy RDR2 just Amazon. They ordered based on algorithms/demand.
 

Deleted member 49804

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 21, 2018
1,868
New Xbox One S bundles always get fake review 1 stars.
Amazon reviews are fascinating. I don't know how one of the biggest tech companies in the world could not implement a better system.
 
EvilBoris

EvilBoris

Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest
Verified
Oct 29, 2017
16,684
Is this a real thing?

A bunch of the recent Sony exclusive titles have the same F grade.
 
OP
OP
joe_zazen

joe_zazen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,490
EvilBoris said:
Is this a real thing?

A bunch of the recent Sony exclusive titles have the same F grade.
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Try reviewmeta.com, fakespot is dodgy wrt gsmes for whatever reason.

KennyX said:
New Xbox One S bundles always get fake review 1 stars.
Amazon reviews are fascinating. I don't know how one of the biggest tech companies in the world could not implement a better system.
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From what I've read, amazon is a 100% a data driven company and have enormous expertise there, and they could most definately implement a better system. But, they only act on data that increase sales and profits and a better review system wont feed into that. It is why there are counterfit items all over that site, and not just from third party sellers either. They could eliminate that stuff overnight night, but it would hurt sales.

Also interesting to note is that their mastery of data and customers means they are, in fact, rarely the cheapest option any more but most believe they are. They know their shit.
 
EvilBoris

EvilBoris

Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest
Verified
Oct 29, 2017
16,684
joe_zazen said:
Try reviewmeta.com, fakespot is dodgy wrt gsmes for whatever reason.



From what I've read, amazon is a 100% a data driven company and have enormous expertise there, and they could most definately implement a better system. But, they only act on data that increase sales and profits and a better review system wont feed into that. It is why there are counterfit items all over that site, and not just from third party sellers either. They could eliminate that stuff overnight night, but it would hurt sales.

Also interesting to note is that their mastery of data and customers means they are, in fact, rarely the cheapest option any more but most believe they are. They know their shit.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That reviewmeta gives a lot more detail about how it works, that is much better
 
roguesquirrel

roguesquirrel

The Fallen
Oct 29, 2017
5,487
joe_zazen said:
Can you test reviewmeta?
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Tried reviewmeta, and not only did the first product i tried failed (as expected), products from another brand I was going to check next showed up in their "overlapping review history" section. Definitely seems more reliable

edit- looking through RDR2 ps4 on reviewmeta, it really looks like hyped gamer behavior just appearing like astroturfers to the algorithim. Two of the elements that look iffy to the site are an excessive number of high scoring reviews in a small timeframe (ie launch day) and a bunch of unverified reviews. If it was like i dunno, a coffee maker thatd look weird to me but for a game it just checks out as shit gamers do.
 
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