What is with people storming onto here who don;t even own the game?

[Albino]

Been scrolling on the forums and i noticed a few characters on here having the worse takes on this platform who don't even own the game. Is there way to just not allow people on the discussion forums if they dont own the game. I know it's gatekeeping but why even allow even into the space if they came into this community just to stir drama?

[GUMBO COLUMBO]

no sex causes anger

[WonderSparks]

Trolls will be trolls, after all
They have literally nothing else to do with their miserable lives, so they just spout bile because they can't stand the thought of someone else having fun

[Rithoo]

The issue with taking this stance with many games on steam froums, is that steam will show that you don't own the game if it has been refunded. Many people also come to the forums to discuss titles if they played it on game pass, or bought it on another website like GoG, sense steam seems to usually have decently active forums.

As far as I'm aware though, Atlyss is only on steam and an older version is on itchio, so for Atlyss, it's a bit easier to actually guess if someone owns it or not, unless they refunded it.

All of that aside, if forum use was restricted to people who own the game, this would meen that people who do not would be unable to come in to ask about the game if they are interested in it, or have questions.

Steam discussion forums should be open to discussion for both newcomers and fans alike. They are not meant to be fanhubs. It's up to the forum community to have the awareness and maturity needed to ignore bad faith acters. Trolls will eventually give up if they are not given attention.

Even this thread will likely just act as encouragement. Every reply to them, and every thread made in response to their actions, serves to clutter the forum and accomplish what they wanted.

For an answer to your question, apperently game devs can choose to make the majority of the forum restricted to only users who own the game, but that's up to each individual game dev. Valve also requires at least one public thread to be open to all users, so that doesn't fully negate the issue with trolls. It would just push the users who don't own the game into one thread.

[Ikoian]

The consequences of the Steam points reward system.

[Daku]

Same reason pretty much any major game anymore has people writing in big blue text under every update or announcement's thread to "Add/Not Add LGBTQ+ content"... Sometimes one person will even say both variations in the same topic or between different updates.

Steam points.

[Blk_Mage_Ctype]

Because remarkably foolish people feed trolls by rewarding them for their disruptive antics.

Seriously, all it takes is for a few dimwits to pass out a few Jester Awards, then all the vermin come crawling in because they know that they can easily farm Jester Awards just by posting inflammatory nonsense.

[KarinFysh]

I'm more concerned about these losers going around and crashing multiplayer servers lately

[ishmaelreynauldbright]

It's not even more than one group of people, tops; either they're coordinating it, or, more likely, it's one troll with like six? maybe seven different alt accounts that they're swapping between? I think one of them reported me for calling them all one guy's alts (or for digging through their post histories for dirt which is understandable honestly), but since the post that got me tempbanned was using muppet fisting as a metaphor i'm honestly not even mad about it because that's a really funny post to get tempbanned for
(i'm just mad about all the other nonsense/jackassery they were pulling, that's all)

Anyway, the best course of action is to report the ones who sound vaguely like they're part of a hive mind and hope a member of steam support staff chooses to lock their other thread and that makes them lose interest and ♥♥♥♥ off, since the same bunch is pulling this ♥♥♥♥ on the Webfishing forums, too, at minimum

[Herb]

Originally posted by Rithoo:

All of that aside, if forum use was restricted to people who own the game, this would meen that people who do not would be unable to come in to ask about the game if they are interested in it, or have questions.

While unlikely THAT relevant for this game's forum I 100% would think it would clean up forum behaviour by a ton. All these brigades to games that did some unthinkable crimes like pronoun options getting trolled/spammed 24/7 with nigh 0 moderation makes the forums unusable trite. If Valve doesn't do anything to combat this it's going to be worse and worse, really. So I'd gladly revoke my posting ability to games I don't own if it meant that the forums themselves would actually be about the game rather than crying bloody murder over non-issues. And like Blk_Mage_Cypte mentions, awards themselves promote this behaviour even further.

[Blix]

It's one person puppetting multiple accounts and making it painfully obvious that it's the same person by writing the same, going to the same game discussion pages, and using the same mannerisms when someone dares to point it out or oppose them. It's not even multiple people.

[Rithoo]

Originally posted by Herb:

Originally posted by Rithoo:

All of that aside, if forum use was restricted to people who own the game, this would meen that people who do not would be unable to come in to ask about the game if they are interested in it, or have questions.

While unlikely THAT relevant for this game's forum I 100% would think it would clean up forum behaviour by a ton. All these brigades to games that did some unthinkable crimes like pronoun options getting trolled/spammed 24/7 with nigh 0 moderation makes the forums unusable trite. If Valve doesn't do anything to combat this it's going to be worse and worse, really. So I'd gladly revoke my posting ability to games I don't own if it meant that the forums themselves would actually be about the game rather than crying bloody murder over non-issues. And like Blk_Mage_Cypte mentions, awards themselves promote this behaviour even further.

It certainly would make things easier in some cases. It feels like every few games I look into recently end up having some sort of 'woke' arguments in the threads. At this point in my life I've learned not to let myself get annoyed by that sort of thing, but it also tends to clutter the thread.

I still recall one game I tried looking into where there was discussion over the localization being poorly handled, and I wanted to know if this was actually the case. Unfortunently the localization drama came with a lot of 'woke' claims. I ended up having to wait months for the forum to settle down before I could find any actual constructive information because early on, the forums were riddled with false claims, trolls, and rabid defenders that were praticaly just as bad, throwing any constructive criticism under the bus.

I've been dealing with a similer issue when looking into Stalker 2 recently. The game has some drama around launch bugs and lack of certain features people expected. I've tried keeping up on the game to see when early issues are polished out, but following the forums there is still pretty rough. Actual discusion is often buried under trolls and people throwing anything constructive under the bus because of the trolls.

[Flint]

They're just here for clowns, if they didn't reward points then nobody would bother with the ♥♥♥♥ posting.

[Snepderg]

Originally posted by Albino:

Been scrolling on the forums and i noticed a few characters on here having the worse takes on this platform who don't even own the game. Is there way to just not allow people on the discussion forums if they dont own the game. I know it's gatekeeping but why even allow even into the space if they came into this community just to stir drama?

Redditification of the Steam Forums.

[Nitro Toxico]

Well the game came from Itch.io, so its possible that people are here because the comment section is taken down so they going to the other platform the game is on.

[NeloDante]

It's from an obvious troll that even made a thread on valve suggestions asking to remove the icon to tell others if they own the game or not so he can continue doing this kind of stuff.

What can YOU do to fix this? Very simple, do NOT reply, do NOT award jester, report posts - do not engage in any other way. Eventually such trolls get banned again and again, which is not a big deal for these trolls, but when you add the ban + lack of attention which is what they want then they need to wait days for them to try again. Eventually they get bored and move onto another random game to do the same.

It's pointless to think that "what a sad life" or pointing it to them, they already know their life is awful and the only way they can get any sort of enjoyment from life is by being slightly annoying online. So be a dear and make their life worse by denying their only enjoyment.