Hello, I am working on an game that we hope to release in about a month. It seems from some of the post of the other devs that getting reviews in exchange for free game codes is a problem. Many just take the code, play the game, and never write a review. I was wondering what the other devs thought about starting a consortium where we would keep 2 lists: A) users who followed through and wrote a review when they received a promo code and B) users who did not. It is not fool-proof but would help filter out the scammers somewhat. Basically if you see someone on list A, they have done another dev justice and more than likely safe to give a code to. It would encourage people here to give thoughtful reviews as they would want to get on and stay on List A or conversely stay off List B. Thoughts?
When I recently updated Slope Rider I offered promo codes only to users who could email me with their iTunes review username and examples of games they had reviewed. The result was some great reviews from some great users. I think I had two requests from people without providing those details, I politely requested the details again and never heard back. So I found that to be quite enough to sort the genuine reviewers from the others.
Well that appears to suffer from the same problems that some experience here, namely it is pure random chance you will get a review. From their website: @monteboyd I am glad you had success. However, was it clear that the same person who wrote the review was the person you sent the promocode to (i.e. they didn't just pick an iTunes name of somebody else that wrote a lot of reviews)?
...and it's broken right now PD makes you type in a review ON THEIR SITE to get another code, but that doesn't necessarily generate reviews in iTunes (or good reviews...) Doesn't keep me from watching PD, but like I said, it's currently broken and most of the codes left are for kiddie apps... (not that there's anything wrong with kiddie apps...)
Save your codes for review sites, or give them away for free to people as a gift, but don't expect reviews. Plus, the reviews will probably not be very honest anyway (i.e. overly positive as a "thank you"), so what's the point?
Well that will never be sure. But the people who emailed me told me their iTunes reviewer username, then the reviews showed up with those names, so I'm hopeful that they were.
