Michael Murdock did not like Conduit 2 and waded in on the gaming blog Joystiq, giving the Wii shooter one star out of five. Murdock has penned a book called Dragon Ruby and for some reason several negative reviews suddenly appeared on the Amazon.com. Some of the reviews have since been deleted, which must have meant they were abusive, as Amazon often lets reviews attacking the author stand even when the person admits to not reading the book.
However according to Wired an internal High Voltage e-mail, written by Conduit 2 art director Matt Corso suggests that the studio might be involved in a retaliatory campaign. Corso said that Michael was kind enough to recently provide us with a Conduit 2 review, and so in turn you all should feel at liberty to return the favour by writing a reader review for Michael’s book for him.
Wired.com spoke to High Voltage Chief Creative Officer Eric Nofsinger, who confirmed the e-mail’s validity but said he doubted that any of the studio’s employees followed up on it. It was not just staff who were miffed. There were several message board posts that suggested bombarding Murdock’s Amazon page with bad reviews penned by fans of the game.
More here.