
Is there a big difference between "verfied reviews", meaning that the reviewed is guaranteed to have actually purchased the product and reviews which are unverfied? I compared reviews on the top 10 games on Amazon to see. I imagined the possibility that among the unverfied reviews would be a portion that were the work of paid or unpaid shills for the publisher. If this were the case then it would show up as a differential between the average star rating for the set of verified reviews vs. the unverfied. What I found was that is not the case generally. Except for IL-2, the verified reviews tracked or exceeded the average star rating of the unverified. In fact, in aggregate across all games, the difference beween the average star ratings of verfied and unverfied was about 1/100 of a star. This may not hold true for other categories, but seems to indicate that there isn't a lot of widespread shilling going on in the game reviews where a purchase can't be verfied.Read more