PR Firm Charged with Faking Game Reviews on iTunes Store

FTC says firm employees posted positive reviews pretending to be ordinary customers.

Gamers probably know better than anyone to be wary of glowing game reviews from seemingly "ordinary users" on the Internet, but now even the FTC is trying to make sure such "ordinary users" aren't in reality being paid for their opinions. The New York Times reports that PR firm Reverb Communications settled with the FTC over charges of having their employees post positive game reviews on the iTunes store without disclosing their working relationship with the companies that made the games.

These charges are the first to come under new Internet endorsement guidelines that passed last year, which now regulate promotional tactics across the Internet, including Facebook and Twitter. In essence, they basically come down to advertising agencies being required to be upfront with consumers about their ties with a product when promoting it online.

In this Reverb case, the FTC claims employees posted positive game reviews on the iTunes store in a manner that made them appear to be reviews coming from regular customers. There was no monetary penalty as part of the settlement, but Reverb agreed to remove all the reviews and to not post any more in the future without full disclosure of any ties to the companies that make the games.

For Reverb's part, they insist they broke no laws, and only settled out of expediency. "Rather than continuing to spend time and money arguing, and laying off employees to fight what we believed was a frivolous matter, we settled this case and ended the discussion," said executive Tracie Snitker.

The specific games for which the reviews were written (or even which companies they were written for) weren't revealed.