Robert Boyd, developer of the Xbox Live Indie Games Cthulhu Saves The World and Breath Of Death VII: The Beginning, says that he is delighted by Microsoft's decision to fix the ratings system for XBIG, but is disappointed that it won't turn back the clock a little. Boyd says that Microsoft's failure to remove suspicious votes from the system is “highly disappointing” and that affected games will never recover from being "completely buried" by illegal voting.
"Microsoft doing nothing to fix the fake ratings that have already been given is highly disappointing," Boyd tells Edge. He points to research done by XNA community developer Michael C. Neel, which shows that ratings abuse was far more widespread than anyone had thought.
"At the end of February, there were nearly 100 games that had four-star ratings or higher, and a dozen that had 4.5 or higher on the US marketplace," Boyd says. "Just a month and a half later, these figures had both dropped dramatically – 51 games at or above four stars, and a mere three games at or above 4.5 stars. Games that were targeted have fallen off the lists and games that were not have taken their place."
Boyd goes on to say that his game sales have been affected by his games being pushed down the charts. Still, Boyd welcomes whatever small measures Microsoft has taken, and also took the time to apologize to the developer of College Lacrosse, whom he accused of (at one time) vote rigging.
"I’d like to publicly apologize for accusing Lacrosse fans for being responsible for the manipulation. Although the circumstances were indeed suspect, it was wrong of me to target accusations without more conclusive evidence."
Source: Edge
