Do You Trust Sites That Demand Payment for App Reviews?

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Wired recently published a good article covering iPhone app review sites that request, and in some cases demand, money to review an app, or to deliver an ‘expedited’ review.

Several websites dedicated to iPhone app reviews are requesting payments from developers in exchange for writeups of their apps, Wired.com has learned. Those payments are not always clearly disclosed to readers, and the practice hasn’t received much discussion outside of gaming blogs.

This is a subject that I feel very strongly about.  Accepting or demanding money for reviews is something we have never done and something we are dead set against. So I’d like to talk about this site’s stance on this, my thoughts on the arguments that the pay to play sites use to defend their policies, and what your thoughts are on all of this.

Here’s a further slice from the Wired piece:

Soliciting money in exchange for a product review is not illegal, but the practice should raise questions about the credibility and independence of the review sites, critics say.

The two sites that were most frequently mentioned by programmers who contacted Wired.com were TheiPhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com. Both sites appear in the top four Google search results for the search term “iPhone app review.”

I can tell you that as the owner of a site that strives to provide good, thorough, and fair app reviews it is demoralizing to see sites with these dubious ethics scoring so high in search rankings, and being perceived as ‘major’ sites.

For those of you who have never looked at our About page, here is our stance on reviews and how we choose which apps to cover here:

We do not request or accept any sort of payment – ever – for mentioning an iPhone app, covering an app, or reviewing an app.

The above policy applies to any app that is advertised on this site as well.  Apps / apps publishers who advertise here are treated 100% the same as those who don’t.  No guaranteed mentions or reviews because of an ad placement.  All potential new advertisers are told these things right up front.

Here is how we choose to mention an app on this site:
One of us finds it interesting

Here is how we choose to review an app on this site:
One of us finds it interesting and / or useful enough to want to review it

Accessory reviews are treated similarly to app reviews. We will specify in the review whether the item was purchased by the author or provided by a company for site review.

We try our best to produce thorough and fair reviews.  Hopefully we manage this most of the time.  One thing we can guarantee though – all of the time – is that our posts and reviews are *not* paid for.  If you see an app or accessory covered here, it’s because we thought enough of it to want to cover it.

In every app review and posts where we express views about an app, we include a clear disclosure line at the bottom of the post – indicating whether the app was purchased independently by the author or whether a promo code was provided by the developer.  This never influences our reviews, as you can plainly see by the number of negative reviews for apps we have received for free and positive reviews for apps we have paid for, but we include it anyway.

We are also proud members of the OATS – Organization for App Testing Standards – group of sites.  Here is a brief description of the mission of OATS:

O.A.T.S. is a group of sites that were brought together with the goal of improving the editorial ethics and standards in the emerging world if iPhone application and game review sites.

So that’s our stance. 

In the comments on the Wired article the owner of one of the two sites called out (Shaun Campbell from The iPhone App Review) and another pay for play site owner defend their practices and lash out at the ’so called ethical sites’ in various ways. Here’s some of what they had to say in the article and the comments, and my reactions:

Campbell said that his site’s policy is to offer expedited service in exchange for a fee because with the gigantic number of apps in the App Store, it would be an “impossible task to review all the apps we receive, paid or unpaid.”

Wow – then don’t try to review them all.  Also, nobody is going to manage that anyway with the sheer volume of apps there are, and there are certainly enough useless, dross apps out there that nobody will be crying our for reviews on. 

Again from Shaun Campbell:

The so-called “ethical” sites ONLY review popular apps – as these apps drive traffic. Start-ups and Mom & Pop developers do NOT get a look in. We provide coverage to these guys for a very small fee …

Bullshit.  Plain and simple.  We are one of the so-called ethical sites and we love to cover smaller, indie developers and have done so from the very beginning.  I know that most or all of the OATS sites do so as well.  Giving ‘mom and pop’ developers a PAID look in hardly seems a Robin Hood sort of approach to brag about.

Mike from the Crazy Mike Apps site lashes out at those ‘who tout their ethics’ and questions the acceptance of promo codes:

How about promo codes, do they pay for $9.99 promo codes, no they get them for FREE, which is also some form of gratuity per the FCC.

A couple points here.  Firstly, my understanding is that Apple created promo codes exactly for this purpose – for them to be handed out to reviewers and beta testers.  Secondly, all of the OATS sites and many other ethical sites have solid disclosure policies – that make it very clear to readers how and when promo codes have been used.  This is something the pay to play sites do NOT do with their paid for reviews.  There is no disclosure line alongside a review to indicate it was paid for, which for many folks makes it the equivalent of an advertisement.

Another disturbing practice that some of these sites use is that when a developer pays for a review they agree to contact them prior to publishing if the review is looking less than favorable.  The defense of this I’ve seen put forward is something along the lines of ‘our readers don’t want to see negative reviews, they want to discover only the best apps‘.

I think that’s nonsense.  Being warned about poor apps is an important part of being able to discover all the best apps.  My impression is that readers do value negative reviews.  And that they value fair, unbiased reviews.  Reviews that are not bought.

I really hope I’m not being too optimistic in believing that – and I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Do you trust sites that accept and demand payment for app reviews?  Do you even care about how sites handle this issue?

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