After a handful of seemingly fake reviews were spotted on a game in the Oculus Store, the company says the offending reviews were removed, and further claims that fake reviews on the platform are few and far between.

Redditors ‘thekthepthe3‘ and ‘matt90410‘ recently pointed out some suspicious looking reviews of a Rift game on the Oculus Store. ‘Matt90410’ called out a few of the 5-star reviews that were especially short and riddled with odd and unspecific phrasing:

  • smart shooter! the gameplay is just a tower! developer of this miracle, I adore you! Marry me!
  • the game is just top! With this endless shooter, you’ll never get off the screen! I advise everyone to buy!
  • cool shooter, such a small. I advise everyone to play this wonderful game. unforgettable experiences
  • wow, the best shooter of its kind. yes even for such a penny! the game just surpasses all competitors in this genre! gorgeous!
  • wonderful game. this endless shooter does not let you get out of the game! developer of many thanks for such a great game for such little money!

The attention prompted action by Oculus, who today confirmed to Road to VR that some of the reviews on the game were indeed deemed fake and were removed. A spokesperson said the reviews stemmed from keys that were distributed by the game’s developer, not from people who had actually purchased the game.

Following the incident, Oculus said they pulled data to look for signs of fake reviews on other titles and found that fake reviews were rare. Though they had no specifics to share at this time, the company says they’re looking into ways to detect and prevent fake reviews going forward.

Breakdown of reviews on the Oculus Store

The Oculus Store uses a 5-star review system, and reviews can only be written by owners of each game (owners can be those who purchased the game, or those who redeemed the game with a key that originated from the developer). When browsing the store through the Oculus desktop app, there’s a hidden ‘Mark as Spam’ button for reporting individual reviews, but not on the web version.

Tools for potential buyers to assess reviews on the Oculus Store are unfortunately lacking. Reviews are listed in chronological order with only five reviews displayed per page before needing to click to a new section, and no way to sort by review rating or helpfulness (despite a button which allows reviews to be marked as helpful).

Breakdown of reviews on Steam, including sorting options (below)

The leading digital games storefront, Steam, sets a good model for making review data more accessible and useful. In addition to offering a quick look at the reviews in the last 30 days vs. reviews overall (useful to know if updates have changed the game for better or worse), there’s also a handful of sorting and filtering options, including an option to explicitly show only reviews from confirmed purchases of the game, while hiding reviews from keys acquired outside of Steam’s purchasing process.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • impurekind

    Insidious troll companies getting people to fake review their games really gets on my wick.

  • F1ForHelp

    Even though it was a simple fix to remove those reviews, it still feels real scummy of a publisher to do that. I would like more specifics on this. I’m assuming this is going to be an extremely one sided debate, but I’ll hold off on morally hating whoever does this until more information is revealed. That’s if there’s actually anything more to be revealed. I can also see this being a progressional dead end.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      You act like this is something unique to Oculus store, while Steam and many other digital stores also do this..

      • F1ForHelp

        I wasn’t meaning it was exclusive or anything. I was starting how I felt about it. Also, it’s not really Oculus or Steam being corrupt because it’s the game developer (I may have misused the word publisher, sorry) who’s taking advantage of product key exploits.

        I’ve also seen this happen to Steam as well. It’s actually worse on Steam because you can get things like trading cards that you can sell on the Steam community market. Developers can just generate Steam wallet funds by receiving the cards on fake accounts that were given the free game keys.

  • Luke

    gg

  • Trenix

    Facebook censoring again, no surprise.

    • Firestorm185

      censoring bull, but yes, true.

    • Ombra Alberto

      It is exaggerating Facebook. Not only does it force you to accept friendships you know. But he also wants to tell us what we have to say.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Uhm, valve also removes ‘fake’ reviews constantly, so does Google in their playstore, and Apple in their store. So it’s nothing new or special.

      • Trenix

        If anyone removes a honest review that any of the companies you listed above, deemed as fake, this is wrong and is considered censoring. Are there fake reviews? Of course, but I’m concerned with honest reviews being removed.

        There are ways to do this, it entirely depends on how these companies handle it. Hopefully it’s not just, “Oh that seems fake” and remove it, just like what facebook, google, and apple already do. So don’t be surprised why I don’t trust those companies, ESPECIALLY Facebook where fake to them means going against popular opinion.

  • HybridEnergy

    I give thi gam 10 of 10, i is in china and we know awesum when we seez it. Buy ours game …sory sory I mean buy their gam! u will not regret long time

  • Ragbone

    Outstanding review! Best review so far of its kind in this a reviewing! Please review this review of 5 stars for suberp and with the greatness experiences!! Please download and with this review!

  • Andrew McEvoy

    What the hell this is cowbum. I enjoy shooter max. I advise people dont believe this review. Good life ahead!

  • Ahahaha Marry me!

  • Rosko

    Loads of fake ass reviews of the store as well as fanboys that just give any old VR game a 5 because you know vr is always 5.