So Epic Games, the company that brought you Fortnite dances your kids won't stop doing and a storefront that somehow still can't figure out a shopping cart, is in hot water again.
Turns out they were allegedly dropping cash on five-star reviews for their games on the Google Play Store.
Like a guy who thinks Venmo is a personality.
For those of you living under a rock that isn't even a good rock, Epic has been feuding with Google and Apple for years over app store fees.
They got Tim Sweeney out here giving speeches like he's the Steve Jobs of complaining about 30 percent.
And after all that righteous crusading about fairness and the little guy, they reportedly just... bought their own hype.
Truly the "we're the good guys" arc nobody asked for.
They could've just made a decent game and let the internet do what the internet does, which is either worship you or drag you within an inch of your life.
Instead someone in a meeting said "hey, what if we paid for fake praise" and enough people nodded that it actually happened.
The top comments were basically "AITA for thinking a billion-dollar company paying for reviews is bad?" followed by 4,000 people saying "NTA, obviously." Someone pointed out the irony of a company that screams about monopolies getting caught rigging the one thing that's supposed to be consumer-driven.
Another user noted this is the same energy as leaving your own business a Yelp review under a fake name like "DefinitelyRealCustomer42." We've all seen it.
Now, Epic will probably issue a statement.
It'll be the standard corporate word salad: "We take these allegations seriously," "we are committed to transparency," "these were isolated incidents by third-party partners." Translation: somebody's getting thrown under the bus, and it won't be anyone with a corner office.
A mid-level marketing guy will update his LinkedIn.
The real lesson here is simpler and dumber than any of us want to admit.
You can rent one for a while, but the internet has the memory of an elephant and the pettiness of a scorned ex.
Every fake review is a receipt, and receipts have a way of ending up on the front page of Reddit at 2 a.m. with 40,000 upvotes. **The Take:** Epic spent years telling us they were the plucky underdog fighting for gamers, then allegedly pulled the exact move every sketchy local business does when it's desperate.
Final Thoughts
If you have to buy your stars, you never earned them.