Eidos votes for Soul Bubbles in open ballot, Internet complains.
There really are worse things to hate Eidos for. That whole Jeff Gerstmann thing is one, and that whole supposed, alleged Tomb Raider thing is another. However, complaining when the company try and give one of their best games of 2008 some plaudits in an online vote is not really something that deserves the usual abhorrence.
However, this is what has happened when a Eidos employee signed up to the official forum of a Aussie games magazine to vote for Soul Bubbles in their Game of the Year voting. Apparently the employee voted Soul Bubble the top game in Best Graphics category, Best Game of the Year category, Best DS Game category, Best Innovation category, Best Gameplay category, and Best Art Direction category.
This lead the forum moderator, also the magazines Deputy Editor, to complain and ask for “Honest votes only, please” after he found out all the votes came from a user with an “@eidos.co.uk” email address.
We wonder why the votes for Soul Bubbles was deemed unfair though. Just because someone worked on a game does not mean they can’t legitimately like the game, and think it deserves praise.
In other news, we placed the game in 15th place in out Top 20 games of 2008, and gave it a solid 7 in our review. Eidos never even gave us anything in return, nothing at all, not even a free pen. We are far too honest – I really could have used that pen.
5 comments ↓
Allyn
January 6th, 2009
You seriously don’t see the problem with someone from Eidos voting for an Eidos game? Really?
In the grand scheme of things it’s rather irrelevant – I’ve never even heard of the website before, as it happens – but come on, you’ve never heard the phrase conflict of interest before?
Ben
January 6th, 2009
If I made a game I’d vote for it. Unless it was rubbish.
Realistically one person shouldn’t be able to skew the results too much.
Eidos are lucky Soul Bubbles is a good game, otherwise I’d probably me more angry.
Seth
January 6th, 2009
I agree that people should be allowed to vote for their own games. After all we allow politicians to vote for themselves. As Ben says it won’t have any drastic affect on the overall results.
If they were doing mutiple votes to deliberately try and affect the outcome then that would be a different matter.
Still, it’s one more piece of negative press for Eidos, who quickly seem to be turning into the sinister corporation that uses bribes and threats to get what it wants.
Sean
January 6th, 2009
Sorry, since when did Eidos *develop* Soul Bubbles? And have you all noticed that the guy registered on the forum just to vote for Soul Bubbles, with the game’s title in BOLD and a little bit of text ostensibly justifying the vote, things which nobody else in the thread did?
Sorry, but the guy’s clearly a fucking shill, and Eidos deserve all the negative press they’re getting from this.
Lloytron
January 6th, 2009
I don’t see the big deal at all. I’ve done the same in the past, pretty much any developer that cared about their game would do the same – and they do, in more ‘important’ polls. I put important in quotes, because its just about awards, not about saving the world or anything.
Any awards system in the world where the public votes has a large number of biased votes where people vote dishonestly. Case in point, John Sargeant.
BTW Sean, if Eidos publish a game then they do have guys internal working on it. If he was a shill then he’d be pushing something a bit bigger. I’d just chalk him down as one of the Eidos production team that worked on the game, nothing more.