Harmonix issued an official apology after it was discovered that several employees have posted positive reviews of Rock Band 4 in Amazon's customer reviews.
The reviews were spotted by Reddit user, Documental38, who noticed that at least 7 Harmonix employees have reviewed Rock Band 4 on Amazon without disclosing their affiliation. While some fans tried to rationalize that those reviews might've been posted by internet trolls disguised as Harmonix employees, the company itself was quick to admit the mistake.
Harmonix issued a statement confirming that those reviews were made by its employees, but insisted that they were done in good faith.
"Harmonix has clarified its internal policy about posting reviews of our own products on retail sites, and we've asked that existing reviews be edited to identify Harmonix employees or be removed entirely. While we believe the reviews posted by a few employees were sincere and without ill intentions, as a studio we don’t believe these are appropriate actions. We appreciate the feedback from the community, and take our relationship with our fans seriously."
Harmonix might've acknowledged the problem, but – to us – its actions feel more like damage control than taking responsibility for a mistake. We still find it hard to believe that more than 7 employees made the same mistake individually. This is a huge number, compared to the normal zero number of employee reviews posted for all other games, including past titles in the Rock Band series. Also, allowing employees to keep their reviews is not really professional or ethical as those reviews would still affect the game's average customer reviews score and users wouldn't be able to notice or measure that effect.
