Next to the astroturf marketers who have accounts on this very forum its pretty much harmless. All they are trying to do is bulld up buzz for their game. Its definately not as bad as say EA staging a fake protest, its a silly internet poll which noone takes seriously.

Wait , from the same developers that claimed Forza was pushing the genre forward and GT wasn't . Bribery is for the lowest of the low , they weren't even being indirect about it.

@Squilliam while marketing and fixing poll results aim at the same purpose , they are indeed very different things.

You mean like the really stupid number of hits that many PS3 games had on this site so they had to reset the counters?

The intention and character are still the same and negative. Although the scope and magnitude of the action's result is different, their moral disregard, and belief that it's ok to bribe are dispecable, and the act of bribing is unambiguously immoral/despicable.

I can understand if you're arguing that not all murders/killings are the same, I don't see any difference between all briberies. All briberies are dishonest, immoral, and are a pretty shitty behavior.

it was one person who spammed one game. and someone did the exact same thing for halo 3.

Apple paid actors to form lines outside of stores for the Iphone. Thats pretty dishonest, but I wouldn't call that bribery. I would probably call it dishonest marketing more than anything else, or at least call it unethical. Bribery is when people of power are paid to do things which may be in conflict with the interests of many people.

The act of using 'bull-shots' to release to the media is also pretty dishonest and in this case not admitted. I don't have any problem with calling this dishonest/unethical and if you want, bribery. I do have problems with this being called out ahead of some bigger unethical behaviour like the above bullshots.

CNET is BS konfirmed.

There is no way F3 could beat GT5 in a legit vote.

here is from Sony Gran Turismo forum

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=granturismo&thread.id=406159

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=granturismo&thread.id=406239

imo this isn't really bribery. After all, the post was made on the official forza forums where everyone is likely to have played forza 1 or 2 and also likely to be a huge fan of the forza franchise. So even with or without the incentive provided by the turn 10 community manager, i'm sure all or most of users on the forum would have voted for forza 3.

But what's in question is not whether or not the bribery was necessary/effective or not, but the fact that Turn 10 did turn to bribery, and what that means for their character/moral code. The fact that the bribery wasn't necessary/effective doesn't change in anyway, the fact that Turn 10 was willing to turn to it, and disregard moral priniciples.