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Joystiq

Big surprise: Eidos caught fixing Game of the Year poll

by Chris Greenhough on Jan 6th 2009 3:30PM

Oh, Eidos. Not content with turning Jeff Gerstmann into some kind of martyr or trying to fiddle Tomb Raider: Underworld scores, the morally dubious publisher has now been caught red-handed trying to vote for its own game in a Game of the Year poll. Palm, meet forehead.

The poll in question was being run by Aussie magazine Hyper, whose staff spotted a user with an "@eidos.co.uk" e-mail address voting for Soul Bubbles across several categories. The saddest part of this episode? We suspect some of the negative reaction generated by this could deflect onto Soul Bubbles itself, which happens to be an excellent, fun game in its own right. What a shame the company publishing it are a bunch of nitwits.

[Via Kotaku]

Source

Tags: controversy, eidos, mekensleep, platform, puzzle, soul-bubbles

Reader Comments (30)

Eidos really needs to figure out that the media has little impact on sales if the game itself can stand on its own, especially on Nintendo platforms

One vote? How is that a fix? I find it pretty funny that they voted for their own game, personally.

scum. i'm gonna pirate the game from piratebay, just to spite them

Unbelievable...

Pathetic much Eidos? Really are these the lengths that they go to just to get some recognition?

Dang, they really need to get some morals. Really, if a game sucks, it sucks. If it's good, it's good. Unfortunately, a good game will not necessarily sell well (Second Sight syndrome) and a bad game will sell well if it has enough hype and a large budget (Halo 2 syndrome).
I'd be much more inclined to buy Eidos games if they were an honest company who put enough work into their games to garner high scores.

I don't get what the big deal is. Why can't they vote for their own game? I'm sure Obama voted for himself when he cast his ballot. It's not mass voting by reps at edios right? I didn't know workig fr a company disqualified you from enjoying your own product.

Yeah, I feel the same way. It was probably just some regular employee who wanted to upvote the game his salary partly depends on.

Just one guy, no big deal.

Hell, I upvote my own comments here sometimes, whether it actually does anything or not. :)

Haha, the posts they made are so transparent. I remember here on DS fanboy there was a comment in one of the Word Jong related pages that was so obviously written by someone advertising the game.

That's a shame. Soul Bubbles is one of the best games I played last year. Incredible productions all across the board: design, gameplay mechanism, artwork--even the credits are fun.

DONSSWORD EIDOS EMPLOYEE CONFIRMED!!

;)

No, but you're right -- it rocks.

DON AND CHRIS SHARE AN OFFICE!!!

I think I know what's going on here. Eidos keeps pulling these shady moves and being really blatant about it. I think Eidos WANTS to get in trouble. Maybe Eidos's brother is in prison; a prison that Eidos just happened to design. And now Eidos is trying to get sent to prison itself to help bust its brother out.

No wait. That's something else. Maybe they're just dumb.

lol prison break

You know who else cast one vote for themselves? Barack Obama and John McCain. FOR SHAME!!!!!

McCain voted for Nader.

I don't see what the big deal here is...
Also, that is a very misleading title.

This is a nontroversy in it's purest form.

It's the same as saying that Sega can't say Virtua Fighter is better than Tekken or Namco saying the opposite.

Either this post or the Kotaku story is inaccurate and needs fixing. This post says that a staff member voted for their own game - which is practically standard practice in the industry and not shocking at all. The Kotaku story says that a staff member *continually* submitted votes for their own game... that is, spammed the poll. Which is *definitely* underhanded and inappropriate.

If Kotaku's version is right, please adjust your text? :)

Actually that's not right, Kataku says he voted for it once per catagory of award which I'm guessing is how the poll is supposed to work.

Er, I mean Kotaku is not right. The page that 'source' links to is what I was referring to.

um...so? That's like saying "The presidential candidate voted for himself, I hope that doesn't harm his reputation!"

how do we know this wasn't some employee that REALLY thought that soul bubbles deserved those awards! I can understand if they were voting for it under things like "best FPS" or "best graphics" but you gave NO REASON why this is wrong! wtf ds fanboy?

Eidos, please make another Gex game.

That is all.

Eidos: Please hire a VP of Common Sense.

I'm available, will only demand a high five figures (in Euros) and supply my own whip.

This game's art style is one of the best on the DS, besides, the game is much fun itself, but in a relaxing way. Somehow like Electroplankton with a purpose. I still don't know what to do in oyoruba though

EVERYBODY CALM DOWN! what if this guy was just someone who genuinely loved this game? its only one voter. im sure we all participate in polls and have our own opinions. now this poor jerk is probably gonna get fired over this. we need more proof than just one guy in order to conclude that eidos has some sort of underground conspiracy to sabotage polls. this was most likely the case of the village idiot who works at the office and innocently made his whole company look bad. oh and if EIDOS is reading this, i dont know if you still have the rights, but remake the first two THIEF games.

Damn. If your gonna do that, create a not so obvious email account.

I agree with the folk that are saying that this post is making a mountain out of a mole hill. People in the gaming industry are mostly gamers also. Let the man vote on the game that they like.

What's the problem here? Even the president of the U.S. votes for himself. Is a man not allowed to vote for his own game?

Personally I wouldn't now trust that when I enter a poll or competition run by this magazine, my personal data is safe. Disclosing who has voted is a breach of trust and possibly data protection laws.

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Big surprise: Eidos caught fixing Game of the Year poll

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Posted: Jan 6th 2009 4:37PM Mr Khan said

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