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I hope you guys do try using reCAPTCHA method! Not only would that make it harder for people to make accounts to commit fraud, wouldn't that also reduce the amount of accounts made just to spam the forums as well?
Years ago we had a CAPTCHA system and it wasn't good (was botted, harmed registration rates) so we removed it. Recent developments though have made it more effective and less painful for legitimate people so it's something we're reevaluating.
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Very interesting article, thank you, it explains a lot. I had proposed in the forum to check the IP of the voters, now I see why it wouldn't work.
And I also understand you don't want to publicly shame the developers that were facilitated by this, especially since that could hurt some innocent gamedevs.
But I think you should warn them privately. Something like "your game has benefited from fraudolent voting. We're letting you go this time but if it happens again you're out".
In my opinion a bit of rigidity is required. Afterall, we're practically talking about "people stealing money". It could get much more serious than a simple ban from Kongregate.
That said, I'm very grateful for your hard work and I'm sorry Kong even lost some money because of this
Thanks for the comments! At this point we are explaining to developers what happened if their ranking changed but haven't been proactively reaching out to those affected by fraud. Perhaps we'll start doing that, but right now controlling the core problem has been the focus.
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Reddit has a similar solution for its voting. They fuzz their results. A thread might have a +10 karma rating, but when displayed to the end-user it could say any number between 8 and 12. Additionally refreshing the page will refuzz the result. The full details on this algorithm is kept under lock and key, but you should get the gist of it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15niyg/eli5_whats_the_purpose_of_vote_obfuscation_on/