So, I caught someone praising their own game and refuting my criticism - which was intended to be helpful criticism.

They were doing it on an alternate account, acting as if they were someone entirely different that just had the opinion that everything that I said about grammar was wrong, even though I minored in English.

I find this extremely shady, and it happens on Amazon.com all the time. Authors vote down criticism and even make fake accounts to promote their story with fake reviews and while pretending to be a supporter and satisfied customer of a product.

How do I know? ---- They used their real name (name in the game's author byline) in the fake account's yahoo email address that the person probably made just for this whole facade.

Is this allowed? Should it be allowed?

I can't say I approve of that type of action... Was this done here on the forums?

It was in the game's reviews.
It does look like that's what happened, and it wasn't a noobie, either. The guy has four games out already.

Hey guys,

Yeah I didn't want to directly throw a name out or post the link - in case I was wrong, but I was 95% sure. I'm sure a quick look at the two user's IP addresses in the system might help (although that doesn't necessarily prove it wasn't a person's spouse, or prove that it wasn't a person making one account at work and one at home).

It just bugged me, because I've seen this several times before, and once before on this website. I can show the most blatant example, as I find it. But it was in a sandpile game where no one else replied, so I didn't complain because it didn't end up hurting anyone.

http://www.textadventures.co.uk/review/726/

This was the original instance that I saw. You can see that the author and one-and-only comment are the same person. She uses her exact first initial and last name in her email for the alternate account.

This one, since it was in the sandpit and had no other comments, I felt wasn't worth getting in a tizzy about. I'm just sensative to this when I think someone is doing this because I have seen many examples of this on Amazon.com - and it gets to me (and I feel like it should - I don't regret getting upset when people do this).

Hmm, I saw one but (a little) justice was given to that. Alex deleted all alternate account reviews in that. But I think Alexshould have completely removed that game and temporarily banned the user and accounts.