strange ratings on appstore

[Breakdown Studios]

I have just noticed something strange happening on the Star ratings of the appstore, and I would like to know if anybody else experienced something similar.

I was checking all the ratings around the world today, when I came across Russia, where we have received 17 ratings for our full version application, then I asked myself, 17 ratings? This is strange I don´t think we sold any copy in Russia actually. So I checked and in fact we sold only 1 copy there.

Now the first thing that came to my mind was, Russia = lot of pirate versions and by thinking that I came to the conclusion that possibly people with pirate version can actually vote on appstore! Does anybody can confirm this? If this is possible it would be very unprofessional from apple and could lead to more false ratings then we can already see.

[sam the lion]

As far as I know, you can't vote a game unless you purchased it and it is registered in your iTunes account. It would be strange if pirates could make iTunes think that pirated apps are legit purchases - and going all this trouble just to rate apps? Sounds unlikely to me.

[Alienmario]

it may be possible

[Breakdown Studios]

Originally Posted by sam the lion

As far as I know, you can't vote a game unless you purchased it and it is registered in your iTunes account. It would be strange if pirates could make iTunes think that pirated apps are legit purchases - and going all this trouble just to rate apps? Sounds unlikely to me.

This is exactly what I was thinking as well, but I can´t really explain the extra 17 ratings we have otherwise.