EA filtering out less than 5-star reviews of Dungeon Keeper on Android

As noted by our own Rob Fahey, EA's recently released Dungeon Keeper is not a great experience, and the Metacritic numbers have reflected that. Strangely, on the Google Play store, the game is actually showing an average review (as of this writing) of 4.2 out of 5 stars. As it turns out, this discrepancy can be explained by a somewhat questionable filtering process EA has implemented.

As spotted by PocketGamer (via Eurogamer), after playing Dungeon Keeper for a time, players don't get to tap any star rating they wish - instead, they are presented with a question, asking them if they believe the game deserves "1-4 stars" or "5 stars" and if you select the 5-star option, then you're automatically taken to the Play Store to rate it, but anything less and you're brought to a new "feedback" prompt, which asks, "What would it take to make Dungeon Keeper a 5-star game?" From here you can choose "email us" or "not now."

So in practice, the only way to rate Dungeon Keeper other than 5 stars is to effectively lie and say you'll award it 5 stars, which takes you to the Play Store, and then you can actually rate it less when on that page. Needless to say, it feels a bit deceptive.

When asked by Eurogamer, EA Mobile defended the filtering system, saying the practice was designed to make feedback easier to give. "We're always looking at new ways to gather player feedback so that we can continue to improve our games. The 'rate this app' feature in the Google Play version of Dungeon Keeper was designed to help us collect valuable feedback from players who don't feel the game is worth a top rating. We wanted to make it easier for more players to send us feedback directly from the game if they weren't having the best experience. Players can always continue to leave any rating they want on the Google Play Store," the spokesperson said.