Yes. Most of the major apps play this review game, and there's no way to compete if you don't play it too.
The major apps typically exploit selection bias to solicit 5-star reviews. They will wait until the user meets some criteria for "having a good experience" and show an app review prompt at that moment.
Then, having amassed thousands of 5-star reviews, they will turn up the threshold so that only a trickle of the most likely 5-star reviews keep on trickling in to negate any negative organic reviews.
There's a related practice of "pre-prompting" where the app first asks the user whether they are satisfied and only solicits a real app review from those who pass the screening question.
It's all quite shady and makes it hard to trust app reviews. But until the app stores solve this, app developers need to play the game.
The major apps typically exploit selection bias to solicit 5-star reviews. They will wait until the user meets some criteria for "having a good experience" and show an app review prompt at that moment.
Then, having amassed thousands of 5-star reviews, they will turn up the threshold so that only a trickle of the most likely 5-star reviews keep on trickling in to negate any negative organic reviews.
There's a related practice of "pre-prompting" where the app first asks the user whether they are satisfied and only solicits a real app review from those who pass the screening question.
It's all quite shady and makes it hard to trust app reviews. But until the app stores solve this, app developers need to play the game.