The Hive developers are aggressively banning reviews and Steam is supporting them.

[Amok Runner]

TL;DR - have you seen devs commenting on negative reviews and/or getting reviews banned often?

I left a negative review for 'The Hive'. Game feels like an alpha build. I wasn't particularly nice in the review, but it was a short and honest review - the game is unplayably glitched, I had to restart both the first and second missions multiple times to progress and ended up getting fully stuck in the second mission.

Had a dev friend me and chat about it, ok cool. Great to see involved devs. I gave the person some feedback, mainly about the glitches. I described a few. The dev spends some time telling me they're not glitches and the game works fine. This person actually gets snappy with me, going way overboard to defend their game, chastising me for not sending a bug report and I end up blocking him after trying to say goodbye a few times.

Then my review gets marked abusive. Ok, whatever. It was still up, anybody who cares to read honest experiences can do so. Then, a couple weeks later, Steam actually bans the review and closes it; I can't comment back, it no longer shows on the game's store page. This is the first time I've had a review fully banned by a Steam moderator. Steam stated my review went against the Terms of Service, I'm guessing because it referred to the devs as 'neanderthals' - ok, in that light, I don't even care that the review got altogether banned. I've always liked how raw and direct of a resource Steam reviews are, though. For this game, the reviews are clearly being abusively manipulated by the dev. How many negative reviews has the dev gotten banned - is there some threshold where Steam moderators start looking at the dev critically? How many negative reviews has this aggressive dev gotten banned on some technicality?

The game has an overall 'mostly positive' rating and the first few positive reviews I see either say "the game has potential" or "I was given a key for this game to review it". From what is actually said in the reviews, this should not be in the 'mostly positive' range. No way. As I look through the reviews I see others with developer comments, too. Making the dev appear supportive and involved (there have been updates to the game, so I'm not saying that they aren't supportive and involved, but their manipulation of reviews falsely inflates it).

Dev comments like: "Hey I sent you a friend request, if you could provide a bit more details on the issues you encountered. So we could take a look at them for next update. Thanks!"

Like, no, dude. I did some of my own troubleshooting and the game turned out to have a lot of problems. If I submit bug reports for you, I'm doing the work of testing that you should have done initially - bug reporting is a courtesy that users give to devs, it's never ok for devs to expect this, especially with a deeply flawed hunk like this.

I hope this shows on The Hive's discussion board, to give more perspective for what 'mostly positive' means in this case (aggressive developers who fight the community to prove their game's quality). I would love to hear of similar stories, I've always had good feels for Steam reviews - this isn't it. Does this happen a lot?

Here's another dev comment and some customer responses.
Dev: "Our game has automated saved after each level is completed. We are currently working on "save/load" anywhere feature that community has requested :) All the best"

Customer 1: "I have just clicked continue after completing 3 first levels - and I'm back to level 1"
Customer 2: "That also happened to me. I played story until I actually got above ground but the auto-save started me back at level 1"

Then there are some dozen dev comments ambiguously informing reviewers of updates, it looks like a copy'n'paste comment. Basically trying to invalidate the whole negative review and everything said therein behind a "we fixed it" statement.

Edit: I just realized how to post this directly to The Hive's discussion board. I don't see a way to move it there, now that I've posted it. I'm tempted to duplicate my post there, but that seems overbearing.

[Xite >X< 👁️👁 🇦🇺]

Abusive reviews get banned, don't call people names. Play the ball not the man.

P.S. Remove what you called them.

[ShelLuser]

So I read your review and quite frankly I can't disagree with the moderators over this. You literally insulted the developers over it: "It was made by <self-censored> who just discovered language" which isn't exactly friendly.

Simple rule of trade: insult the product not the people behind it!

Don't make it personal and you're home free. But always do make sure to keep things civil.

[Amok Runner]

Sure, I get that. I'm cool with the review being banned. I took care to be clear about the insult when I wrote the OP. Beyond my review, the devs are all over the reviews on this game. There's a point where it goes beyond seeking feedback from the community to a place of coercion. Especially given how the chat session went.

That you found my review makes me feel a bit better about the whole thing. Steam's verbiage made it seem as though the review was gone and I couldn't find it without going through my profile.

I'm also hearing that banned reviews aren't really a thing - for the previous point and that you guys have nothing to say about similar experiences. This reinforces my sense of Steam as an open consumer-focused platform.

[Rens Agatha ⁧【レンス】]

I made review positive and negative depend with the game, I have negative review but it never get banned. Looks like your review is not frendly. Well i know what you mean with the "greedy dev" But if you violate the steam rule you lose the game with them thats how dev playing with review.

Tbh i dont know is my review rude or not but i wouldnt give them rude review if they still trying to fix their game or they didnt do anything wrong which in my point of view like dev who steal or plagiatrism i can give them a fair review and tell the truth about their product not insult the dev too much if they really not wrong once again.

I've also see your review which is a kind of review i dont like because you mention about game price which is childish and looks like a beginner who going to gaming world and you told a bug on review before asking in community forum which that why steam give us "Game forum". and that weird since you said "This reinforces my sense of Steam as an open consumer-focused platform.".

I would give you example i have a negative review on feudual life game which i already make experiment and asking people about the game on forum and see how people behaviour and i use it for my review because i have proove and i know some poeple know about it but for you, you may want to develop your review first or do more research with the game.

Also its 2019 i see lots of people who trying to get more review vote by making rude review same like people who being racist and think he cool if he do it.
and yes im not a pro with review which is if i get bannd i can learn from my mistake and i would fix my review and do more research.

Please read more about Rules and Guidelines and Steam review.

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[Zefar]

Developers can't ban reviews. It's only Global Moderators, Valve Employees and the hired Moderator staff that can ban a review.

Valve takes reviews rather seriously so they don't want developers messing with them.

In your review you insulted the devs which is most likely the reason it got banned.