Canada's Globe and Mail has taken
notice of Nvidia's seemingly inappropriate relationship with members of gaming forum communities. The way it works
is: Nvidia gets all Angela Lansbury, playing the Queen of Hearts, recruiting forums members for their stature; they lay
dormant, and are later activated to promote Nvidia's products. Penny-Arcade's Tycho addressed the problem on one side of the internet while, on the other side, The Consumerist was exposing the Nvidia situation directly. Popular weblog BoingBoing has a lengthy post as well, documenting the misdeeds, adding to the cacophony of criticism Nvidia is facing. Penny-Arcade had addressed the problem before, and we've chastised undisclosed shilling as well, but this latest confluence of events indicates it is an increasingly rampant and underexposed tactic.
In one of several posts on the topic, The Consumerist got a rather flippant response from Nvidia's Derek Perez: "They act as our ‘voice’ if you will." He also acknowledged the "Manchurian fans" are reimbursed with free hardware--and some of that Nvidia hardware don't come cheap! "We sometimes give them hardware…but we give out lots of hardware." Soooo, it's not a problem then?
We like to think we counter the soul-crushing spin this industry thrives on with a healthy dosage of skepticism, but how far does this rabbit-hole go? If the real people who you've established real relationships with could just as soon be a plant, or an actor, who can you trust on the wild, wild web? Will Nvidia be able to ride this PR nightmare out, or are these deceptions enough to really upset gamers?
[Update: read this post for more information regarding the nature of Nvidia's program.]
