Microsoft takes countermeasures against Indie Games rating manipulations

A couple of days ago, we reported on a development firm hiring freelancers to create 5,000 Xbox Live accounts and suspected them of creating those accounts to manipulate ratings on Indie Games, Microsoft has now confirmed the act is true and has taken precautions.

Microsoft announcement on the XNA Game Studio blog specifically addressed to the Indie Games community.

“By implementing this change, we believe our customers will experience more consistent ratings and a significantly reduced potential for abuse across the entire Xbox catalog,” said the statement. “We have also investigated rolling back suspect votes, however, we determined it will not be possible to do this.”

Several weeks ago, developers of some of the top-rated Indie Games suspected foul play when their games began to slide down the Top Rated listing after receiving, by one developer’s count, “hundreds of 1 star ratings” in a single week. While the XNA Team conceded that it would be unable to take away such seemingly unwarranted ratings, it did add that “we are investigating users who may have violated their user agreement during this series of events.”

“Violating user agreements may result in actions up to and including banning from Xbox Live, removal of currently posted games, and loss of ability to post games in the future,” the statement continued.

A few Indie developers have expressed gratitude and although it is not the perfect solution, it should slowly swing the ratings back to norm.

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