Paradise Island's Developer Accused Of Bribing Reviewers

Paradise Island is a small, $0.99 VR MMO that was released on Steam at the beginning of last month by Woodle Tree Adventures developers Chubby Pixel. Its MMO status is debatable, as players simply walk around a shared space and view others as blue orbs. Interaction beyond that seems to be nonexistent.

Today, a negative review of dubious quality was updated to accuse the developer of bribing him to change his review to positive. We've all seen the Steam community's unique way of reviewing games they've bought and we're all familiar with reviews that have such little playtime that it seems the player never left the menu. What we don't often see is a developer attempting to bribe these reviewers into leaving a positive review.

In this image, you can see the developer—whose identity is confirmed by the official developer response on the review in question—giving the reviewer several Steam keys and then asking "Can you give paradise island a positive review ? : ) would help us with updates." You can then seen in this image where the reviewer claims he's changed it and the developer offers him keys to their unreleased game, Woodle Tree Adventures 2.

Responses to a thread on Reddit about the attempted bribe have debated whether or not this should, in fact, be considered a bribe. It seems that, despite the development team's less-than-favorable manner of garnering positive reviews, some users believe that bribes can only occur with real cash changing hands. Regardless of how you view a bribe, the effect is one we should all be wary of. If users are consistently "encouraged" to change their reviews to be more positive about the games in question, then Steam reviews will become even less trustworthy than they are now.