Confused about the terms and service in regards to reviewing games.

[Noroc]

Can someone help provide some clarification on why two of my 6 reviews have been banned due to violating the steam terms of service. They were both comprised of one word that was neither negative or positive. I did not enjoy the game and wanted to leave a thumbs down. Since I am not sure if the word I used is considered offensive to some groups the closest synonym that comes to mind is "not found" or "meh".

Extent of some of my reviews that are not banned

Company of Heros 2 - It's alright - November 22.
The Evil within - The story in this game is unbelievable bad - September 27.

If one word is to short to be a proper review then shouldn't the above reviews also be banned since they provide no specific details as to why the game is "alright" or the why the story is "bad"?

I can not find anywhere in the Steam Terms of Service that it says that one word is considered a ban offense for a review.

Thanks ahead of time for any information you guys can provide.

[999999999]

"N/A" is not a review.

But if you want to write a real review instead and appeal them, contact support.

[Hidden]

Originally posted by 999999999:

"N/A" is not a review.

But if you want to write a real review instead and appeal them, contact support.

haha.

[999999999]

I see a 3rd "N/A" review that you may want to change as well.

[Noroc]

Thanks for the reply

I changed the 3rd review to "I did not enjoy this game."

Though I still think its a bit overkill to ban a review for something so trivial.

[Zekiran]

Maybe if you said more detail as to WHY you didn't like a game, or why you believe it could be better. I understand the idea behind a "meh" but everyone's opinion differs, so ... be more verbose.

[Noroc]

That’s the thing though I don't see a even banning field.

Like I mentioned before the below reviews are not banned.

Company of Hero’s 2 - It's alright - November 22.
The Evil within - The story in this game is unbelievable bad - September 27.

In both cases it’s pretty non-descriptive. If these reviews were also banned then it would make sense to me as to the fact that I need to add more details.

Maybe they didn’t see these or maybe they were having a bad day when they saw the other reviews. I can only speculate.

The other thing is it said I violated the terms and conditions, which after reading it, I could not see where non-descriptive reviews falls into it.

In the end it doesn’t really matter but I just wanted to know.

[Noroc]

I opened a ticket with Steam and put down the exchange at the end of this post.

I could be wrong but from that reply it seems that the dev Creative Assembly banned my comment.

So can devs just ban and remove comments they disagree with making their games score higher then it should?




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Hi,

I noticed that two of my reviews are banned

Game - Review - Date

Total War Attila - N/A - September 25th 2018
Total War Shogun 2 - N/A - September 25th 2018

I am assuming its because they were not descriptive enough. May they get unbanned so that I can update them to something else?

Thanks
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They replied with


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Hello,

It is Steam support's policy not to remove reviews from Steam.

If your review has been flagged as abusive by the game's developer, you will need to contact their support team for any further information or assistance.

Steam Support

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[cinedine]

Well that's ...

if Steam insists on having that thumb up/down, they should either de-couple it from reviews or be consisten with the banning. You "review" is just as informative as "good game" with a thumb up or the opposite and certainly as informative as any of those wanna-be meme jokes.

And Steam support *is* the right address to get them unbanned. The game's support team can only flag them to be reviewed by Steam support. It's up to them to make a decission if and what action should be taken.

[Garou]

This kind of pointless review that has no informative significance and value should be banned every time. I wish they'd also ban meme checkbox reviews.

[wuddih]

This review has been banned by a Steam moderator for violating the Steam Terms of Service. It cannot be modified by the reviewer.

the support employee didn't even bother much looking at it, thats why the reply does not really fit.
they were reported/flagged and then banned by Steam support itself, that is what that message indicates. a flag by the dev results in an other text in the red box.

not that the bans are wrong but since it was across multiple games that looks like you had beef with someone and they reported this.

[Noroc]

It doesn't bother me that it was banned, I just want to know why it was banned.

If steam said this was banned because, you gave a poor description of why you did not enjoy the game.

I would agree with them; the description does not provide much relevance and should be removed.

Though I did not see anything in the terms of service that said I would get a review ban if I gave a poor description.

I would also then point to two of my other reviews that were equally just as bad that were not banned and ask why these two are treated differently.

If they then banned those as well and said something along the lines of, they didn’t see those due to the back log of comments.

I would just nod my head and be on my way.

Long and short of it is, I just want them to tell me what I did wrong and what to do to prevent this from happening in the future.

[8ullfrog]

Doesn't Creative Assembly have an active troll discouragement policy? Maybe they decided your input was unwanted.

[Noroc]

I received my answer and its time to be on my way.

Below is a section of information I received from steam.


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In this case, the reason that the reviews were banned was because they contained no information besides the Negative review. This is to prevent users from artificially lowering a game's average review without giving a reason for it.

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