Lost Review(If it come from appreview.me etc)

unbeatenpixel

I saw forum discussion about developers suddenly lose reviews nowdays.I think apple seems to be cracking down on review manipulation.I'm waiting IAP fix after that,I want to use appreview.me but If apple figure out what is going on here,does this efect our dev account?

What do you think?

not: Apple is now removing reviews and sending devs notices to suspend account. Even reviews that you ask fellow devs, family, friends to do for you.

New category out of kontrol because of that; https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/t31.0-8/10273276_10152467602825948_3107160025000049800_o.jpg

screencast.com/t/XQfAB6ZStf

imGua

@onelasttime said:
not: Apple is now removing reviews and sending devs notices to suspend account. Even reviews that you ask fellow devs, family, friends to do for you.

RondoRocket

I sure hope it's true that Apple is cracking down on this stuff. I don't think appreview.me is the real issue. It's the people spending $20k to get their apps to the top of the charts. I actually don't think appreview.me is a bad idea but it just seems odd installing and reviewing apps u don't care anything about - but I like the idea of helping fellow indies.

CriticalGames

I just started using AppReviewMe in the week this happened. After using it for a few days, I found it pretty good. I would provide detailed and honest feedback to people whose apps I downloaded, and the reviews I got were generally of a high quality too. I think it's a brilliant idea, and was very disappointed to see Apple randomly taking them down (they took all of the reviews I received from AppReviewMe except for one, so I'm not sure what's up with that).

I definitely agree with RondoRocket about preventing scams (The fact that something like Red Ball could still exist was...disappointing), but I don't think these changes have anything to do with that. And after all, even if a scam like that hurts players and developers, Apple still make money from it all.

I spoke to some of the people that run AppReviewMe and was told that "we noticed that Apple has been tweaking their algorithm on reviews in the app store late last week in preparation for WWDC announcements. A lot of users have been reporting that their reviews are being removed, even within other communities not associated with AppReviewMe. This feels a lot like years past where dramatic changes occurred on the AppStore weeks before WWDC, which is June 2nd."

So I guess we'll find out what's going on come June 2nd.

Moik

@CriticalGames Do things go back to normal afterward? Or do you mean that it's likely the AppStore is going to work differently in the near future? I'm wondering if this may go hand-in-hand with the unresolved IAP-based submission rejection issue we're having.

CriticalGames

Hard to say, but I'd guess that Option 2 is more likely and things are going to change a bit. Good point! It very well could be related.

Apple really don't like communicating with devs, do they haha?

CriticalGames

Sorry to double-post, but I've been looking into this on some other corners of the internet. Looks like it was just a clean-up. No one knows if it's a glitch, or an intentional thing, but the same review wipe happened last year in June. Guess we won't be getting much info after all:

June 2013 Wipe - http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/114350-app-reviews-disappearing.html

May 2014 Wipe - http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/118746-apple-is-having-a-big-cleanup-by-removing-user-reviews.html

http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/118742-app-reviews-disappearing.html

No idea what this means for everyone, but given it happened last year, it doesn't sound like this is anything special.