Hey there guys, checked out the DeepFreeze site and wasn't sure the best way to add a contribution to consider for the site so I just thought I'd make a thread here about it.
So back in July, a reviewer for the gaming site Cheat Code Central named Sean Engemann posted a review for the game Divinity: Original Sin. As you can see from the attached picture, the review was full of plenty of inaccuracies, lies, gets basic info about the game such as its release date wrong, and an insulting attempt to get away with posting a review of an unfinished product acting like it's reviewing the release version of the game. Literally the entire comments section of the review called the reviewer out for their blatant dishonesty and how it was very disingenuous to post a review like that regardless of the review's score or how they rated the game. Another thing that pissed many off was the fact that Cheat Code Central's review counts toward the combined aggregate score of sites such as Metacritic and Gamerankings, therefore appearing like a dishonest and unethical review of the game was dragging down the game's overall score on sites like those.
Just as a reminder why something like that may be relevant aside from Cheat Code Central's reviews qualifying to count at those sites, remember when Obsidian missed out on a Metacritic bonus from their publisher because Fallout New Vegas missed the target score for their bonus by a single point. New Vegas scored an 84 on Metacritic, while the target goal for their bonus was an 85. Also whether we like it or not, combined scores on places like Metacritic or Gamerankings definitely help play a role in the purchasing decisions of more than a fair number of people, so not only was it disingenuous to host such a dishonest review in the first place, but it may have had an effect on the perception of a legitimately good game, potentially effecting the game's sales due to the review score being a good deal lower than the averages of scores it got elsewhere.
I posted a thread on the Kotaku in Action subreddit here, where you can read the comments section to also read about other issues of corruption and dishonesty with the Cheat Code Central site itself in the past.
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2ydjng/review_content_ethics_remember_cheat_code/
I also noticed that Cheat Code Central wasn't on the list of sites featured in the Outlets section for DeepFreeze. I'd recommend putting them on there and having them listed as Boycotted for allowing a review like Sean's to stay up, editing the review based on user comments to make it look like their tracks were covered (and not even acknowledging their mistakes made in the review), and also for all of their previously shady behavior as talked about in the linked Reddit thread.
tl;dr version: Reviewer from Cheat Code Central basically wrote a review of an old Alpha Version for Divinity: Original Sin, likely from a while back and decided to be lazy and dishonest by posting the review like he was reviewing the final product so the site he worked at could get on Metacritic sooner and get their site clicks faster. Commenters of the review weren't having any of the B.S. and tore him a new one, the reviewer having basically tainted the reputation of the entire site for anyone who didn't already know their shady history.
As a final note, I'm not quite sure if anything ever happened with people in the comments saying they reported the review to Metacritic. I don't know what authority it takes to have an individual review omitted from counting towards an aggregate score on a place like that, or what guidelines there are for what constitutes violating a rule of some sort for removal.