Ubisoft accused of buying bots to promote Assassin's Creed Shadows

Thousands of gamers have called out Ubisoft for allegedly purchasing bots to comment on and like the Assassin's Creed Shadows: World trailer.

Gamers are flocking to the Assassin's Creed Shadows World trailer to call out Ubisoft for allegedly purchasing bots to write positive comments about the upcoming game. The allegations began flying on September 14 when gamers started noticing accounts with similar naming structures (first name, last name, followed by four numbers) gaining a similar number of likes on their positive comments.

Additionally, large portions of these accounts were allegedly created relatively recently, and the likes on their comments all averaged between 3,400 and 5,100. Furthermore, all of these popular positive comments were posted approximately within four hours of each other. What is also pointed out is that each of these comments brought into question are unique comments, meaning a human wrote them and then used bots to drive the number of likes up on that comment.

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What is likely the biggest piece of evidence that these accounts were bots is now the comments have disappeared from the Assassin's Creed Shadows World trailer, presumably deleted by either YouTube or Ubisoft. The main question now is whether Ubisoft paid for these comments to be botted. Or is the company even aware of the situation?

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What is known is that it is within Ubisoft's best interest to have as much positive engagement as it possibly can on a trailer for an upcoming title, especially when that title is already experiencing a tremendous amount of controversy for its price, setting, and choppy animations.

• Read more: Assassin's Creed Shadows PS5 trailer hit with backlash after showing unfinished animations