User Reviews Revisited

[morriskend]

Hello, I just wanted to say that your new review system seems to be very anti-consumer & pro-developer. I do hope that you will revisit your new procedures as this is one of the few things that really made you stand out from Epic ," who curates their products much more than Steam does."
Please, also keep in mind that some of your games also early access and unfinished products and sudden change in the product which can certainly cause a sudden shift in reviews. I can also think of at least one example ,"total miner" where the majority of the reviews on your site are for the Xbox version which has a lot more content than Steam does.

I've shopped with you for years because of the fact that we have peer reviews. I do hope you'll reverse your decision but, in the mean time I'll just make price and ease of access my total standard going forward.

Very disappointed.

[Morphic]

Eisberg の投稿を引用：

Steam needs to go several steps forward. They need to remove these things from the score:
- Reviews that were obvisiously created to get tech support
- Reviews made during Early access when the games leaves Early access.
- Remove the overall score and only have reviews count that were made since the last patch was released. Or have the overall score only be since the last patch was released, and keep the last 30 days score as is.

I can agree to the first two but I'm on the fence for the last one. While I agree in sentiment, what about games like Path of Exile or Grim Dawn? One Patch could remove a Set/Mechanic/Boss and thus players are upset by the content change, then the next Patch comes down and still has those things removed. To have those Reviews suddenly stricken "from the record" is unfair IMO since new Players wouldn't know the Devs have removed core content before.

[Cablenexus]

Morphic の投稿を引用：

Eisberg の投稿を引用：

Steam needs to go several steps forward. They need to remove these things from the score:
- Reviews that were obvisiously created to get tech support
- Reviews made during Early access when the games leaves Early access.
- Remove the overall score and only have reviews count that were made since the last patch was released. Or have the overall score only be since the last patch was released, and keep the last 30 days score as is.

I can agree to the first two but I'm on the fence for the last one. While I agree in sentiment, what about games like Path of Exile or Grim Dawn? One Patch could remove a Set/Mechanic/Boss and thus players are upset by the content change, then the next Patch comes down and still has those things removed. To have those Reviews suddenly stricken "from the record" is unfair IMO since new Players wouldn't know the Devs have removed core content before.

Some indie games doesn't even reach the 30 reviews in total nowadays.
Some indie games get updates/patches daily.

All the filtering is regulation and to make the complete system fits every different game.

That's wrong about it. Not a single game is the same. They should remove all those filters and present us unfiltered whatever players state about any game.

Players are smarter then every system manipulating them anyway and filters only pave the way to circle around the conditions. There is no need for it. A good dev is a good dev and not depend on Steam reviews alone.

[Cablenexus]

Eisberg の投稿を引用：

Steam needs to go several steps forward. They need to remove these things from the score:
- Reviews that were obvisiously created to get tech support
- Reviews made during Early access when the games leaves Early access.
- Remove the overall score and only have reviews count that were made since the last patch was released. Or have the overall score only be since the last patch was released, and keep the last 30 days score as is.

Steam decided to set all written reviews automatically to NO comments allowed. Loads of players don't know they have to click a checkbox to get any answer on their question.
I encounter it daily from friends when I asked them why they prevent players commenting on their reviews.

So that reviews are used to ask for technical support wasn't an issue. But it is now.

[Pendy]

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

-FF- Pendragon の投稿を引用：

If it's not upfront and the consumer is never told about it, then it comes across as a ♥♥♥♥ move. For example, I believe Sonic Mania never told people about the denuvo until 2 weeks after release. Until then, you couldn't find anything about it on the front page. I don't know if that was a glitch or intentional, but people were rightfully unhappy that they had a face full of DRM without being warned beforehand.

Again though that has no impact on the consumer. You not liking it has nothing to do with the game quality.

It's a crucial piece of information that people should still be told about. If you want to play the game offline, for example, that will negatively impact your GAME experience. And playing it offline shouldn't be a hard thing with a singleplayer game.

[Cablenexus]

-FF- Pendragon の投稿を引用：

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

Again though that has no impact on the consumer. You not liking it has nothing to do with the game quality.

It's a crucial piece of information that people should still be told about. If you want to play the game offline, for example, that will negatively impact your GAME experience. And playing it offline shouldn't be a hard thing with a singleplayer game.

No, it does not effect YOUR game experience!

But you are not the one who decides that. lol

[Cablenexus]

What about this game?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/583950/Artifact/

It's review bombed only once at day of release with 4141 different negative reviews conatining various content.

Good luck oprative!

[Chirs]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

The only time one experiences DRM is generally when you're trying to do something you shouldn't.

Like what? Playing it on another computer? Or... God forbid... playing it OFFLINE?! You'd have to be a total anarchist to do something that crazy!

[Cablenexus]

JKGames の投稿を引用：

Cablenexus の投稿を引用：

Games aren't the same for me as apiece of hardware or a car. It's not the same as those products for me personally. It's a work of art for me and I will even buy a game with 99% negative review score if I think it's worth it.

It only cost me more time to see all reviews when so much get filtered, censored and automatically disabled. But it will not change how many and which games I buy.

So just to clarify when going through a Steam Sale with thousands of games:
- You objectively weigh a negative reviewed game the same as a positive game when looking into it
- You are psychologically as likely to buy the negative reviewed game as the positive game (and I really want you to be honest on this point)
- You never use the sort feature to return positively reviewed games

If you answered no to any of the above, this should be enough to show you why reviews matter. If its yes to all the above, you have to realize that you are in the very small minority of people who aren't influenced by reviews in general, in which case, why is any of this an issue since you don't care what most players say about the game and you don't care about the review score? I mean, the standard practice with games is to look at the review score, check out the top reviews (positive and negative if you want it), and then maybe a page or two of recent reviews. And if all you want to read are objective reviews, then the average review bomb is what will clog them up since they aren't objective in general.

I read a few game magazines, I build a list of favorites from known devs/publishers in my browser, I subscribed to many newsletters, I'm member of various Steam groups, I daily check ALL new releases (which is a struggle also caused by filtering since they only show you the most popular at default). Then there is PCGamer, Explorminate, RPS, many other gaming sites, Twitch, Youtube best of lists, FB and Twitter.

As in any of those information providers I find anything to my liking I search for more info on dev site, publisher site or Steam forums. I might watch some gameplay footage and try to Google info about the game.

If I'm still interested I look at the reviews. I start to sort all reviews since I think key reviews are as important as Steam reviews (which is also not set to default for me). Those can be backers, early users even testers of the game.

I first check the positive reviews. If they say the game is really great I also take into account playtime and what other games the reviewer plays or reviewed already.

Last step is to check some of the negative ones to see if there is any repeating complain I might find important for me to choose to buy the game.

This is also how the majority of my friends use Steam. Not Steam alone, but as a tool next to many other tools.

I hope that answered your question.

[Plaid]

Seems like a better system than any other company would have come up with.
It takes into account the needs of the consumer and the seller.

[Start_Running]

Cablenexus の投稿を引用：

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

You er... don't seem to have a handle on what forms a part of a game experience and what doesn't.

ok :isurrender:
so it's better we let all the reviews to you since you know it all?

Goodnight.

Hey. No need to be huffy. I just calls it like I sees it. Your line of statements leaves one to wonder why you'd think some of those things would be 'not okay'? The Thing about a DRM is that 90% the time they have no effect on the actual gameplay. In the 10% of cases where they do actually impact gameplay... you can talk about those effects. That's the beauty about keeping to what you observe. You can say. 'That trees on fire!" or "This burger is delish!". without needing to infer or speculate as to how the fire was started, or what's in the burger to make it delish (Human Flesh).

Take that approach and mentioning the DRM is irrelevant.

Plaid の投稿を引用：

Seems like a better system than any other company would have come up with.
It takes into account the needs of the consumer and the seller.

It can be seen that way. On the one hand it does help the customer filter out the white-noise.. On the other hand the fact that if you happen to post a review a legit review during one of this bombing runs your legit review gets culled with the rest of them. Sooo still keeping an eye to see how that will play out...


As for the developer. Well look at the review bombing CHuchel got...all of that had nothing to do with the actrual gameplay but rather just the fact that the develeoper changed the colour of the mc. Its true that bombs and boosting don't last and in my experience they never really have anby long term effect, but keeping the review on topic.. ie about the game and not about the politics or whatevcer tangental fluff is floating around. is a good thing.

[PocketYoda]

Of course it is they want to stifle what we say for profits..

[Start_Running]

Cablenexus の投稿を引用：

If I'm still interested I look at the reviews. I start to sort all reviews since I think key reviews are as important as Steam reviews (which is also not set to default for me). Those can be backers, early users even testers of the game.

I tend to weigh the steam reviews more since keys can also be the devs giving it to review groups to mass vote up the game. Or the game could have been one of 10 games in some $2 bundle. At least with the Steam purchase I have more certain that the game was a deliberate purchase and that they paid a given amount for it..

Almost never a good sign when the keyh reviews outnumber the steam purchase reviews.

[PocketYoda]

C00568 の投稿を引用：

I would agree if this was brought about by some huge gigantic billion dollar game getting review bombed, kind of like the Captain Marvel user review score changes on Rotten Tomatoes. That was clearly a "business" move. Either Disney strong-armed them into it or they're just corporate shills at heart.

But I think this was inspired by the Red Candle Games situation. I think you should read about that when you have time. A portion of the gaming population in China wants to see those developers fail, as payback for to an insult to the president of China in their new game, Devotion. The game actually got removed from Steam, so those people are now review-bombing their old games instead. Red Candle Games is just a small Taiwanese indie games studio. So I don't think it's necessarily anti-consumer to throw them a bone.

They did Skyrim and Fallout 4 got bombed when the creation club got added and rightly so. That was an abomination and destroyed a lot of modding and the games became advertising space for paid mods.

I for one have not bought or played a Bethesda game since thanks to those reviews

[Cablenexus]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Hey. No need to be huffy.

I suggest Steam let you curate every review at forehand. So you keep an eye on the reviewers if they really write what they observe.

But on a more serious note:

In the case of blackmailing a company because it choose another platform to release their game on should be banned because of blackmailing (Metro case)

Racist comments should be banned because of being racist comments (Your case).

[PocketYoda]

Cablenexus の投稿を引用：

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Hey. No need to be huffy.

I suggest Steam let you curate every review at forehand. So you keep an eye on the reviewers if they really write what they observe.

But on a more serious note:

In the case of blackmailing a company because it choose another platform to release their game on should be banned because of blackmailing (Metro case)

Racist comments should be banned because of being racist comments (Your case).

Whats funny is steam still tries to sell me the latest Metro in my game discovery queue why is it still in circulation if i cannot buy it..

Again that game deserves the review bombs