Fake votes on Google Play

[fmmarzoa]

Hi there,

I am pretty sure that a guy that has a game """like""" my one it is voting negative and publishing bad comments on Google Play about my game on a daily basis, just to force my app to go down and get more profit in his one. I think he is using several gmail accounts for that and may be the emulator to fake several devices.

He contacts me by email the first days I publish my own application because I have commented on his one with my true and unique Google Play account a month BEFORE I published my game, and he excused the poorest quality of his work telling me that he was unemployed, and was not a proffesional programmier, that he did it its best and so on in a such pathetic way... I felt so sad by him that I decided to erase my own comments (well, I substituted the text by a '-', since I did not found a way to delete them on Google Play).

Since that, I have received several negative valorations without comments on my own game, and even a review so shameless that includes spam of his own game, that nobody likes except himself with his several fake accounts.

So, do you know is there is any way to handle such attacks?

Thanks a lot in advance,

[Magnesus]

Use the spam report button. Maybe it will help. Shame people do things like that.

[Mats]

You can contact Google, maybe through here: https://support.google.com/googleplay/a ... wer=136601
explain the problem and let them have a look at it.

[fmmarzoa]

Hi,

I am thinking about a different aproach to the problem, just getting more valorations for satisfied users, adding an screen when closing the application encouraging them to write a review. Is there any easy way to put a link to the market within the application, so the users can just get there by clicking on it?

Thanks in advance,

[fmmarzoa]

Hi,

I have finally added a dialog that when you are about to close the game after passing level 5, it shows a message asking you for rating with to buttons: "Rate it" and "Later". If the user press on "Rate it" it opens the market link of my application and stores a flag on settings to not show again that dialog, and if it clicks on "Later" it will be showed again the next time the user closes the application.

This way I have get two new 5 stars votes without text review on English version, and more than five 5 stars votes with text on Spanish one, so I think it is working. Now it is a bit harder for that s*cker to sabotage my game through fake negative reviews.

Best regards,

[fmmarzoa]

Just another post to say that I am very pleased with the results of this new addition.

I was having about 2-3 reviews per day on my Spanish game version before putting the dialog asking for reviews, and less than 24 hours after publishing I have ELEVEN reviews more, the vast majority with five stars but a couple just with four.

On the other hand it had no effect on the English one. May be cultural differences between Spain and USA peoples... anyway the English version is growing a lot of slower than Spanish one and being unistalled more often, and I do not have very clear why. Although I suspect the English version panels may be more challenging than Spanish ones.

If you want to give it a try, you can found them by com.marzoa.wheelfree and com.marzoa.ruletafree for both English and Spanish versions. Feedback is very wellcome.