Why do games with mostly negative reviews remain on Steam?

[Allie Rin]

Just wondering, if a game is garbage, why keep it? Is it contract based or what, talking to a friend about it and it got me wondering.

[Emilio]

Because regardless of people liking it or not, aslong as the game itself doesn't break any actual rules nothing needs to be done about it.

[cinedine]

One man's trash is another man's treasure. There are whole youtube channel that soley exist for playing awful games for example.

You also don't want you game removed just because some holier-than-thou-morale-crusade review bombed it to the ground.

[Tito Shivan]

Not like 'If we don't get the game updated our way we'll review it off the store' is a thing that would never happen.

[Siluva]

I feel more concerned about memes / jokes games (that can be barely considered as "games") and who yet got positives reviews (who are also, jokes / memes) and are still on Steam.

[[NL]Ben]

Bad idea. E.g. if that were to happen, several still-popular games would've been forced off Steam quite a time ago the second an major update broke the game.

Also, special snowflakes like Kotaku, ResetEra and their like would probably have tried to get readers to reviewbomb games that hurt their feelings.... So yeah... Worst idea of all time?

I agree *some* games should be removed, but those generally are already being removed by Valve/Steam because they assetflip or do other stuff. Valve's TOS is stringent enough in that regard, and games which just are blatantly bad (amateur-level programming and overall ♥♥♥♥ quality) generally won't get hits on the algorithm anyway. If people like that kind of games, it's their choice.

[nullable]

Sometimes games with bad review scores turn things around. No Man's Sky anyone?

[Gus the Crocodile]

Negative reviews don’t mean “the game is garbage”. They mean “some random strangers don’t like this game”. Who cares what those people think? They’re allowed to not like it, but it doesn’t mean others can’t or won’t. It certainly shouldn’t restrict the developer from being allowed to sell their product.

[Allie Rin]

Originally posted by Gus the Crocodile:

Negative reviews don’t mean “the game is garbage”. They mean “some random strangers don’t like this game”. Who cares what those people think? They’re allowed to not like it, but it doesn’t mean others can’t or won’t. It certainly shouldn’t restrict the developer from being allowed to sell their product.

Do you really believe a game with mostly negative reviews, is the equivalent of a few strangers?

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Aerekplus:

Originally posted by Gus the Crocodile:

Negative reviews don’t mean “the game is garbage”. They mean “some random strangers don’t like this game”. Who cares what those people think? They’re allowed to not like it, but it doesn’t mean others can’t or won’t. It certainly shouldn’t restrict the developer from being allowed to sell their product.

Do you really believe a game with mostly negative reviews, is the equivalent of a few strangers?

When it comes to whether or not *you* like it, yes. (Also there are games with less than a dozen reviews, so, yeah, a few is fitting.)

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

There is at least one game -- Inescapable -- which has a Mostly Negative review score but which I definitely enjoyed and recommend.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Originally posted by Aerekplus:

Do you really believe a game with mostly negative reviews, is the equivalent of a few strangers?

I didn't say anything about anything being 'the equivalent of a few strangers'.

The point is that liking something that the mainstream dislike isn't a problem, or even remotely unusual. Lots of, say, the music I like probably bores loads of other people to tears. That's okay, they can choose not to listen to it; it shouldn't mean I don't get to or that the artist has their tracks taken down.

[Crazy Tiger]

Because they still have the right to be sold.

Just because a bunch of people think something isn't ok about a game, doesn't mean everybody will. "Garbage" is subjective anyway.

[~ Fabulous ~]

some game with negative review are actually good....you should get angry at games that cant even start that are still being sold at steam...now that is the true garbage, they are not game they are but a bloatware

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by Aerekplus:

Just wondering, if a game is garbage, why keep it? Is it contract based or what,

Yes. Developers/publishers have paid for their product to be on the platform so Valve have to sell it. In the SteamWorks contract, nowhere does it say a game has to be of a certain quality based on Steam reviews to maintain its on-sale position. If a game or its publisher doesn't violate the publication contract in any which way then Valve don't have a right to remove it.

Some negative games have sold in excess of 1m units whereas some glowing positive ones have only shipped a few thousand. Valve don't have any quality control conditions either.

[Kargor]

Originally posted by Aerekplus:

Just wondering, if a game is garbage, why keep it? Is it contract based or what, talking to a friend about it and it got me wondering.

It's because of how Steam works: they have NO quality requirements for games on the store.

Any discussion of why negatively-reviewed games should or should not remain on the platform is rather pointless because Steam hasn't even asked the question, and they decide what's on the store.

Steam DOES seem to take reviews into account when doing their automated recommendation stuff. Also, reviews are shown on search results. Both of these are likely to divert attention away from the negatively reviewed games.

Also, do keep in mind that Steam is NOT a traditional store where shelf-space is limited and every centimeter taken by a bad game is a centimeter not available for a good game.
As such, keeping the stuff in the store but trying to divert attention towards the positively reviewed games is fine.

It also makes it easier for me to just answer the question that Steam asks on the reviews: "Do you recommend this game?". I don't have to decide whether I'd kick it out of the store, I just have to think about whether I'd recommend it. This can be quite different; I can see how people like games I have thumbed down; I'm just not in that group.