Anyone encountered vicious reviews?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by free fish, Jul 1, 2010.

  1. free fish

    free fish Well-Known Member

    Aug 25, 2009
    326
    0
    0
    Nanjing, China
    #1 free fish, Jul 1, 2010
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2010
    Our ipad game 10-in-one spider solitaire once ranked the first in the category of card, and now we have updated it twice.
    However, we've received a lot of bad reviews, especially for the latest version 1.1.1.


    The problem is almost about crash, and someone even say the game cannot load on his ipad?!

    Now, guys you can see two bad reviews in iTunes. I doubt they are vicious reviews from the competitors because the IDs look weird and the two reviews are quite similar.


    Anyone encountered vicious reviews? What did you do to deal with it?

    To keep the sales, I have to figure out whether the problem mentioned by customers exists or not( we tested again and again, but found no such a problem).

    So would you please do me a favor to help me test the game?
    The following are the promo codes:

    NWYKX4X4PTJJ
    JFXAP44MMHKM
    TEWMX46AWWYA
    73JLNAT7NEHF
    XFNJ4X43E9E4
    W9RJYN9ATREP
    YP3MYNWF66Y3
    Y7P7JKK6XX4K
    K4JWXRYR3TJ6
    6YXPE73LAEY6

    If you find any problem or have some suggestions, please feel free to tell me.
    Thanks very much!
     
  2. Stroffolino

    Stroffolino Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    Apr 28, 2009
    1,100
    8
    38
    Software Engineer
    Pennsylvania
    First, I wouldn't assume that your drop in rank is because of a few bad reviews. Your peak ranking was surely in large part because Apple featured you, and it's normal for rank to slip after a featurette expires.

    My recommendation: Never assume users are lying, especially about crashes. Bullet proof your code as best you can to make it fail gracefully - sometimes an iDevice will have unusually low memory when booting up.

    Make it easy for users to contact you directly with buttons in the app. Legitimate bug reports in the form of user reviews are often vague and non-actionable.

    If you see user reviews complaining about missing features that are actually in your app, post an update making those features more obvious and accessible.

    If you see a user review that is damningly misleading, you can always ask a friend to post a follow-up clarification.

    Bad reviews are only deadly when your app is a newborn. Any app that's accumulated many reviews will get the occasional weird review - my favorites are 1 star reviews from players that have nothing but good things to say about the game. I've also seen users post reviews that were intended for a completely different game.

     
  3. free fish

    free fish Well-Known Member

    Aug 25, 2009
    326
    0
    0
    Nanjing, China
    Thanks for your attention and detailed analysis.
    I guess you are a veteran in app developing and your suggestion
    is quite a good idea that I appreciated very much.
     
  4. Marc Vaughan

    Marc Vaughan Well-Known Member

    Apr 15, 2010
    517
    0
    0
    First thing to check with regards to crashes is whether there are any logged in iConnect, thats been very useful to me in this regard for tracking obscure issues.

    The problems logged there come complete with a detailed call stack which often helps you work out whats going on.
     

Share This Page