Chapter 276: The Perfectly Blended-In Internet Paid Reviewers
Chapter 276: The Perfectly Blended-In Internet Paid Reviewers
“So how are we rating this? I’m thinking of just giving it one star.”
“I think it’s fine, honestly. Those two monsters at the start just hit a bit too hard, but once you dodge properly, they’re easy to kill. You’re really gonna give it one star just for that? Maybe reflect on your own clumsy hands first?”
“?”
“What’s that question mark for, huh? We may be paid reviewers, but we still have principles. We’re getting paid by the boss, you know? You think you can just half-ass it like that?”
“Damn, you’re so full of righteousness—what the hell are you doing being a paid reviewer then? You think you’re some emperor reviewing memorials to the throne, you broke keyboard warrior?”
“Oh, and you’re not a broke keyboard warrior yourself?”
“If you’re so great, why don’t you go be a justice warrior instead of doing this paid reviewer gig?”
“What’s wrong with me doing a little side job for pocket money? How do you know I don’t play keyboard hero in my spare time?”
Seeing the two of them about to have a “civilized” brawl, Hu Xiao quickly stepped in.
“Alright, that’s enough!”
“Both of you—one-hour mute penalty!”
“We’re professionals here. Control your temper, understood?”
“Don’t bring emotions into your work. Be calm—like me, got it?”
Hu Xiao sighed helplessly.
Honestly, this kind of thing was pretty normal. Even though all these paid reviewers were in the same chat group, they were just paid workers. With hundreds of people in one group, it’s not like everyone actually knew each other.
Besides, most of these so-called internet paid reviewers were people who didn’t have much money, weren’t doing too great in life, and loved tapping away online pretending to be experts about everything. Naturally, many of them were the “civilized and polite” type—the kind who’d start cursing out your entire family at the slightest disagreement.
So seeing them fight over something like this wasn’t exactly surprising.
But now Hu Xiao was starting to realize something—this Hardcore Review job request wasn’t as simple as it looked.
There was a catch.
If the boss had just given them a clear goal—like “trash the game to death” or “praise it to the heavens”—the paid reviewers would’ve done exactly that, no questions asked.
Nobody would’ve started arguing, because paid reviewers did have professional standards.
But this time, the boss didn’t specify how they should rate the game.
So as they discussed in the group chat, people’s opinions clashed—and soon, an all-out civil war broke out.
The admin had to step in, mute several people, and warn everyone that if anyone acted “civilized” like that again, they’d be kicked out of the group and never hired for paid reviewer work again. Only then did the chaos die down.
Hu Xiao took a look through everyone’s comments and noticed that most people were giving the game bad reviews.
A lot of them had weak computer setups—the game ran terribly, stuttered constantly, and the poor performance ruined their first impression.
Then there were people like Hu Xiao, whose computers ran fine—but they got absolutely wrecked by low-level monsters right away, which didn’t exactly make them fond of the game either.
But there was a small group that actually liked the game.
They thought the visuals were great, the animations smooth, and the combat satisfying. Sure, the monsters could one-shot you, but as long as you stayed careful and avoided getting hit, you could win.
Those players had a good first impression—and their opinions completely contradicted the rest.
That was normal, though. In any group, there’ll always be a few people who enjoy a challenge.
Plenty of the paid reviewers were internet café regulars—hardcore gamers with lots of experience. So when faced with a tough game, their first reaction wasn’t to rage and smash their keyboard, but to feel excited by the difficulty.
They were the minority, sure, but they represented a different voice.
Hu Xiao thought about it for a bit. Trying to get everyone on the same page was impossible—and unnecessary.
After all, the boss only asked them to rate the game based on their first impressions.
He never said it had to be good or bad.
Since that’s the case, might as well let everyone do their thing!
Hu Xiao typed: “Alright, enough arguing. Time to get to work. If you want to rate it one star, give it one star. If you want to give it five stars, give it five stars.”
“We’re professionals when it comes to steering public opinion. If you’ve got personal beef with someone, take it to the forums and settle it with your keyboards there. Typing on the forums gets you paid; typing here in the group only gets you muted.”
Everyone in the chat thought about it and realized he was right.
Why waste time arguing here? Let’s get to work!
Those who had a terrible first impression of the game immediately went to drop one-star reviews, writing short comments like “disappointed,” “bad experience,” or “not recommended,” before refunding and uninstalling the game.
Meanwhile, the ones who actually liked the game went straight for five-star reviews, racking their brains to come up with all kinds of reasons to praise it.
After all, when it came to blind hype or blind hate, these people were absolute pros.
They were born to manipulate online sentiment—ask them to write a normal, neutral comment and they’d struggle to do it.
And leaving a single review wasn’t the end of the job, either.
Each person was getting around three to four hundred yuan for this campaign—no way that kind of money came from posting just one comment.
Everyone had a full workload: post reviews on the official site, Weibo, and various forums, make new threads, reply under trending posts, upvote each other’s comments, boost retweets—the whole PR package.
The client had paid big money for this, so every part of the operation had to be done properly.
So the paid reviewers who had already posted began sharing their links in the group chat:
“Help me out with some likes on this comment, brothers.”
“Here’s my review—feel free to copy it if you need a template.”
“This Weibo post’s mine, give it a few retweets, guys.”
“Someone on Aili Island just uploaded a rant video trashing the game—negative team, hurry and like it, get it trending!”
“There’s a post praising the game—positive team, go boost it a bit!”
The paid reviewer group kicked into high gear, tirelessly spreading links across every platform about Turn Back Before It’s Too Late.
One faction was spamming negative reviews, the other was flooding in glowing praise.
Both sides, as if by unspoken agreement, avoided fighting in the group chat—instead, they took their endless debating energy to the internet, clashing fiercely across forums and comment sections.
Watching all this unfold, Hu Xiao couldn’t help but facepalm. Something about this felt… off.
“I swear, this is the first time I’ve seen something like this. It’s like two different clients hired the same paid reviewer group to fight each other…”
“Oh well, whatever. I did what the client asked.”
“But man, the reviews for this game are all over the place. Totally polarized.”
Out of curiosity, Hu Xiao decided to browse through the public reviews for Turn Back Before It’s Too Late himself.
Sure enough, it was pure chaos—tons of one-star and five-star ratings!
Of course, the paid reviewers were part of that mess, but even ignoring their influence, real players were still split right down the middle.
The main complaints were predictable: the game demanded high-end hardware and was way too hard.
One player even made a forum post saying they’d already died more than ten times just to basic monsters—claiming the game’s balancing was completely broken!
Some cursed the programmers, others cursed the designers—overall, most players agreed that someone on the dev team must’ve accidentally added an extra zero somewhere in the game’s stats.
“I can’t take it anymore, this game is way too hard! It’s completely unplayable! Can someone tell me if they’re going to fix the numbers later? If they do, I won’t refund it.”
Comments like that were everywhere.
Despite the polarized opinions, the overall mood among players wasn’t too toxic yet.
After all, the game could be refunded within five hours.
And since the game had just launched, everyone still had time left before the refund window closed. After trying it out, most agreed that the game’s quality itself was pretty solid—great visuals, fluid animations, satisfying combat, and excellent art design.
The high system requirements? Annoying, but solvable.
The overtuned difficulty? Well, people were just hoping the devs would patch that soon.
Many assumed the overpowered enemies were just a severe bug, so they didn’t rush to refund. Instead, they waited for an official response.
If the developers fixed that “instant-death small monster” issue quickly, the game might still be worth playing.
But before long, the official Weibo account made an announcement:
“Dear players: The current difficulty balance is the optimal difficulty level as adjusted by our developers. It is not a bug, and no future adjustments to difficulty will be made. This is to ensure the best possible experience for all players.”
Within minutes, that post was shared across every forum and player group imaginable, and the comment section exploded.
“?”
“Is the dev team trolling us? This difficulty is the ‘optimal balance’?”
“To ensure every player’s experience… (sarcastic emoji)”
“Hey, can someone explain what ‘epitaph’ means?”
“No future adjustments? Really? Fine, I’ll screenshot this for when sales tank. We’ll see how long that confidence lasts.”
“LOL watching a bunch of noobs cry about difficulty sure is fun. ‘I can’t beat the monsters! It must be the devs’ fault!’ Sure, buddy, it definitely has nothing to do with your lack of skill.”
“And people wonder why gamers here only play mindless clicker games. Slightly raise the difficulty and everyone loses it. Want them to make every attack deal 999 damage for you?”
“Slightly raise the difficulty? Are you kidding me?”
“If you’re too brain-dead to play, go get help instead of whining here.”
“I @#￥%*—”
Soon, the Weibo comment section was completely engulfed in chaos.
Hu Xiao could vaguely recognize traces of his fellow paid reviewers among the replies—though he couldn’t be sure.
He knew for a fact that some of the comments with hundreds of likes had to be from people in his group.
But which ones exactly? That was hard to tell.
Because the thing was—everyone else’s comments sounded exactly like paid reviewer comments too…
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