EA Caught Using Automated Bots to Support Their Game's Boycott Campaign

http://www.msxbox-world.com/news/article/18910/ea-caught-using-automated-bots-to-support-their-games-boycott-campaign.html

Electronic Arts has seemingly been caught utilizing automated bots in order to support a boycott campaign pertaining to one of their titles.

The campaign against EA is due to the company approving a same-sex romance story in BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. A Reddit user managed to view the support it was receiving and it seems the publisher and BioWare's parent company are taking the matter into their own hands.

Likely for media attention... lol

This is funny because not a month ago they were caught hiring people to troll videogame forums.

EA will do anything, ANYTHING

im not even surprised at all, worst kind of bs business practices in gaming industry ever.

like a comment in your link asks: "Can someone explain to me what evidence there is to support the claim that it's EA using automated bots?". they are not the only ones with a motive or opportunity to do this.

same goes for the trolling of video game forums. as far as i know there was one forum post on a board that is not very well known for even being serious about much of anything, that claimed EA hires peoples to do this. haven't seen any proof or even a name of the one who claimed this.

not buying into these unsubstantiated "facts" and not replicating them is the best way to deal with stuff like this as far as i'm concerned.

I'm pretty sure that most if not all companies do it. Funny when they get caught though.

OH NOES!

funny thing is this probably happens a lot more than we think but EA are just stupid enough to get caught

I'm pretty sure that most if not all companies do it. Funny when they get caught though.

Ilovegames1992

I have to be honest here...I don't see what the issue with automated bots is. Is there something I am missing here?Articuno76

Where is the proof that EA did this?

I certainly wouldn't put this past EA.

Oh EA, you're so silly :D

Where is the proof that EA did this?

Phantom_Leo

I knew there couldn't be that many people just tickled pink about on disc DLC and online passes...and a possible download only future, and who think EA has done anything with Madden in 6 years.

Is there any concrete proof that they were behind this, or is it all just conjecture? I've heard about this before, but I don't think there was anything to suggest they were behind it.

Now it is true that we can't prove it's EA behind the petition and bots, but putting together a botnet and a fake, well made petition with writing that sounds like it's straight out of the EA marketing department would be an insane amount of effort for some random guy (or group) to do just to troll EA. gameguy6700

It would, but that isn't out of the ordinary on the Web. Massive troll campaigns are quite common.

And for what it's worth, someone recently asked on a tech forum why their Origin client was sending traffic to the very gay advocacy website the petition is located at, complete with logs and program analysis as proof.gameguy6700

Oh? Got a link?

EA's marketing never ceases to amaze me.

Is there any concrete proof that they were behind this, or is it all just conjecture? I've heard about this before, but I don't think there was anything to suggest they were behind it.

[QUOTE="gameguy6700"]Now it is true that we can't prove it's EA behind the petition and bots, but putting together a botnet and a fake, well made petition with writing that sounds like it's straight out of the EA marketing department would be an insane amount of effort for some random guy (or group) to do just to troll EA. c_rake

It would, but that isn't out of the ordinary on the Web. Massive troll campaigns are quite common.

And for what it's worth, someone recently asked on a tech forum why their Origin client was sending traffic to the very gay advocacy website the petition is located at, complete with logs and program analysis as proof.gameguy6700

Oh? Got a link?

Here you go: http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showtopic=233354gameguy6700

Hm... Wonder if Origin's tracking software had anything to do with that. Might be that someone else visited that petition through that computer causing the client to establish a connection of sorts with it. I'm not tech-savvy enough to know if that's possible, though.

Interesting that the client would do that, either way.