The Dragon Ruby's book author, Michael T. Murdock, is accusing Conduit 2 developer High Voltage of trying to "Amazonbomb" his book in retaliation for his scathing Conduit 2 game review.
Murdock's review of the game was titled "Conduit 2 review: More like Con-don't-do-it 2" and in it he scathed the game's poor graphics, voice acting, level design and ridiculous ending (which he revealed in the review).
After the review was published, along with a link to his book's Amazon page, the book started getting several 1-star reviews. Later on, an internal High Voltage email was then leaked to the internet, suggesting that those 1-star reviews were posted by the studio's employees in retaliation to the author's 1-star game review.
"Michael was kind enough to recently provide us with a Conduit 2 review," the game's art director Matt Corso wrote in the leaked email. "And so in turn you all should feel at liberty to (of course read it first) and then return the favor by writing a reader review for Michael's book for him."
High Voltage Chief Creative Officer Eric Nofsinger confirmed the authenticity of Corso's email, but denied any bad intentions or wrong doings. "I think he wrote it in a very tongue-in-cheek kinda way," he claimed. "We would want to never attack anyone for their opinions on a game."
The art director who wrote the email also maintained a no-ill-intentions position. "My mind really wasn't in that dark of a place when I wrote that," he said. "In fact I seriously considered buying the book myself. I wanted to know how good it really was that this guy felt so in the right to trash our game and give away the ending like he did. And then post a plug to his book at the end, implying that we suck and he is totally great."
Even if we take Corso and Nofsinger up on their words, all evidence point that a "Amazonbombing" attack took place against the book as several 1-star user reviews were posted back to back after the email circulated within the studio. Some of those reviews were removed abruptly after the email leaked to the internet.
As for Murdock, he doesn't believe that High Voltage are as innocent as they claim to be. "They don't honestly care about what happened, and they're trying to get their hands out of the cookie jar before they get smacked," he said. "They simply have no remorse for what they've done, and they think the industry and everyone else will just laugh it off. I hope that doesn't happen. A game company shouldn't just keep shooting themselves in the foot, hoping their limp goes away."
Sadly, it seems that at the time of writing this story several internet trolls took it upon themselves to post more 1-star reviews on the book's Amazon page.
