In reply to Danny Brown.

I've dug into this a bit (because ratings make a difference to our bottom line) and it seems that the repo mods have given a lot of time to making sure that if the reviews system is abused, there are checks in place to notice irregular patterns and take the appropriate action.

I'm sure it's a cat and mouse game and that there are people still gaming it all the time in low-level ways. There are not any written policies surrounding the reviews system so I don't doubt that most of the abuse is just a marketplace at work....business doing what business does. The repo and reviews system weren't designed taking into account commercial and upselling plugins. All of this will probably need some attention sometime soon.