Harmonix Employees Caught Posting Positive Reviews on Amazon

Ruh roh. Looks like Harmonix got caught with their hand in the biscuit jar.

Rock Band 4 was recently released, and the reviews are mixed, leaning towards positive. However, that might be an incredibly dishonest leaning, as it turns out--some keen-eyed Redditors have been watching the Amazon reviews like a hawk (for… some reason. It’s Reddit, it’s what they do) and have noticed something strange--some of the most glowing user reviews happen to stem from Harmonix itself. This claim was started by Reddit User Documental38, who posted:
 

Harmonix employees seem to have taken to Amazon to post their own favorable reviews of the game. At first I thought it was a rogue employee or two but then I dug around for about a half hour and found 7 of them and so it appears to be more of an initiative. I'm sure there's more than that.

 
This was later followed up on then confirmed by Destructoid, who did a little bit of digging and even contacted Harmonix about it. Harmonix, either looking to cover its tracks, save face, or out of a genuine concern for a break in their internal ethics, replied with the following:
 

“Harmonix has clarified its internal policy about posting reviews of our own products on retail sites, and we've asked that existing reviews be edited to identify Harmonix employees or be removed entirely. While we believe the reviews posted by a few employees were sincere and without ill intentions, as a studio we don’t believe these are appropriate actions. We appreciate the feedback from the community, and take our relationship with our fans seriously.”

 
Now, I’m all for pinning big companies against the wall and calling them out on their bull, but in this case, I’m tempted to believe Harmonix when they say it was just a misunderstanding. It was only seven reviews, it wasn’t well disguised, and yeah--developers get really passionate about their work, it makes sense they would want to hype it up. That doesn’t make it okay, mind, but since Harmonix has, indeed, fixed the problem… well, at least they’re more responsive than some game companies as of late, eh?

Still. It happened.