Another exposure of the nasty business practices running around the mobile industry. Arjan from MobileGamesBlog published an email from an executive in Glu to one of the game reviewers on an undisclosed site. In the email, the Glu representative demands to see the reviews before they go online and clearly state they will not allow reviews with ranks lower than 8/10 to be posted:

Ahoj xxxx,

I’m territory manager for XXX at Glu Mobile and YYY is Marketing Manager for the same region. We will be happy to support you with Race Driver Grid and all other hits we have, however I need to admit we need to accept any reviews you made. I mean we will not review every word or give you any advise what to write, but we will not allow publishing these reviews with low points given to our titles (for example less than 8/10).

Hope you are fine with this only one restriction and can understand it. Anyway just let us know which materials you need exactly and we will provide you with it (phone model for testing games, screens, promo text?).

Many greetings,
XXX
territory manager XXX
glu mobile
mob: XXX

http://www.glu.com
get glu’d to mobile entertainment

Of course, Glu (and other companies such as Gameloft, EA Mobile and others) presents these scores to the press and business partners without disclosing these deals with the review sites, which might count as misleading information.

It’s needless to say many of these review sites live from advertising money of the big publishers, so there is always a hidden threat of cutting campaigns money.

Update: Nicole Kennedy, senior director of global public relations, responds for Glu:

“It is not Glu’s practice to manipulate review scores of our games. We respect the editorial integrity of the media, and we value the objectivity they bring to the industry and our games.”