I came across a few ratings and they seem fishy. I might be wrong, but just wanted to draw attention. One of the entry had 43 ratings on itch.io, however in the spinoff app, there are only 19 plays so far. So how come those other 24 people rated it without even playing? Same happened with a few more entries.

It is the case with the following games

1. Who is the murderer
2. Lost
3. Kitty over the Rainbow
4. Island Escape
5. Turtle Dove
6. A shift in the night

If this goes on, it will be injustice to genuine reviews.

Sample screenshots attached

Hi cristanzackry,

First of all, thank you for giving us the heads up. There seems to be a bit of misunderstanding, though, due to how we calculate the play counts. Before we go any further, we are to blame for the confusion, and we apologize for this.

We calculate the play counts using a set of rules. Currently, these rules are on the very conservative side. For example, until last week, if a person played a game multiple times, it counted it only once, on the first play. I was told that this was to prevent spamming. However, as you can imagine, this caused confusion. Since then, we have been making modifications for a more relaxing play count algorithm.

However, the most significant cause for the discrepancy in the numbers is that we are not including the play counts from the game sessions played on the itch.io web page. Our original sharing methods did not include the HTML export. We added it as a beta feature at the very last minute, without the play count built-in.

It was an oversight, and I apologize for the confusion. I hope the above can clarify the issues, though. I still believe the play count algorithm is a bit too conservative. We will make updates to make it more reliable.

Again, thank you for letting us all know of the issue and providing the opportunity for clarification. If you find anything else unusual or have any suggestions or feedback, please let us know anytime.

Thank you!

First of all, hello, I'm really glad that you showed my game as an example.  I have a lot of friends because of where I live and because of my job.  I thought the same as you about this, so I emailed Spinoff Support.  The information I got from them is that voters are not required to have a Spinoff account.  If you wish, I can share my itchio data with you :) Also, thank you for the nice explanation of Spinoff.

Thanks Spinoff for explaining. Thanks dgdfurkan for clarification.

It just happened that I came across your game, and took screenshots, and realized there are 6  games which follow the pattern.

My main point is that everyone of the participants need to make sure, if they give the URL to people who don't have spinoff app, then at least those friends should play it before submitting the review. As spinoff explained, they are not counting those, so I got alerted.

Usually, the people who are not gamers (friends and relatives) tend to give reviews with bias, which messes up the actual rating.

But in good faith, I hope you have taken care of that.

All the best. And by the way dgdfurkan, I do like your game and will rate you.

Thank you