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.

[Ness_and_Sonic]

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

WHo gave it out, The publisher, the developer, or the store? Also yes to get a few maybes...and more importantly to get the atention of those who are more than maybes.

And in your case they'd have considered it a dud.

Not being a guarantee doesn't mean its entirely and unknown. They have ways of gauging whether or not a game will do well and how much they can expect to get back. AGain. This is something business people know about. You , clearly do not., that or you're just a fan of false equivoicacy.

No thats competition. Again. Whats being competed for is not gamers, they're competing for games that gamers want to buy. ANd encouraging developers to sign up with advances, payouts, etc...is no different than a company offering a signing bonus, or special perks.

Pretty sure if the publisher/developer didn't give permission for it to be given out, it would be copyright infringement instead of a promotion.

Pretty sure the creators of Payday 2 thought the same thing until last year.

Again, it's not a guarantee just a guess. They need the maybes, too.

Pretty sure if you're the only store selling mouse traps in town, that's not competition. Also, just because Epic is throwing money around doesn't make them a better store to sell games on. I've done calculations and estimate Steam's standing at about 200 million users right now. So what's Epic's user base numbers?

[Start_Running]

İlk olarak Ness_and_Sonic|Bye Reviews. tarafından gönderildi:

Pretty sure if the publisher/developer didn't give permission for it to be given out, it would be copyright infringement instead of a promotion.

No sweetie. That'd be a giveaway. The company doesn't really care what someone does with a key once its paid for. You can activate it yourself, or give it away on a youtube channel. Whatever, Though we can now add copyright to the list of things you don't understand. Given this statement.

Pretty sure the creators of Payday 2 thought the same thing until last year.

And until you buy a metrogame or buy something in a metro game, or even play a metro game. You'll be counted as a dud.

Again, it's not a guarantee just a guess. They need the maybes, too.

There's a difference between an estimate and a guss. Take a few diploma, courses in business and you'll understand it. They are not the same thing.

Pretty sure if you're the only store selling mouse traps in town, that's not competition.

It depends. Someone could always pop up and start selling mouse poison. Or Mouse repellant. YOu're thinking too much in terms of the product and not really about the need.

Also, just because Epic is throwing money around doesn't make them a better store to sell games on.

Tell that to the developers who are actually deciding to. Clearly they see a heck of a benefit., and I garner they know a bit more about what's good for them than you do.

I've done calculations and estimate Steam's standing at about 200 million users right now. So what's Epic's user base numbers?

Equal if you count the people playing fortnite.

[Crashed]

İlk olarak Ness_and_Sonic|Bye Reviews. tarafından gönderildi:

The sooner Sweeney goes broke, the better.

So basically when you don't like something you wish for bad things to happen?

[Ness_and_Sonic]

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Ness_and_Sonic|Bye Reviews. tarafından gönderildi:

Pretty sure if the publisher/developer didn't give permission for it to be given out, it would be copyright infringement instead of a promotion.

No sweetie. That'd be a giveaway. The company doesn't really care what someone does with a key once its paid for. You can activate it yourself, or give it away on a youtube channel. Whatever, Though we can now add copyright to the list of things you don't understand. Given this statement.

And until you buy a metrogame or buy something in a metro game, or even play a metro game. You'll be counted as a dud.

There's a difference between an estimate and a guss. Take a few diploma, courses in business and you'll understand it. They are not the same thing.

It depends. Someone could always pop up and start selling mouse poison. Or Mouse repellant. YOu're thinking too much in terms of the product and not really about the need.

Tell that to the developers who are actually deciding to. Clearly they see a heck of a benefit., and I garner they know a bit more about what's good for them than you do.

Equal if you count the people playing fortnite.

I'm not sure, but I believe you missed a key part. Permission is usually obtained in some way, Example, licensing.

You can claim that all you want, but here's the thing, appealing to those still on the fence about the game is still part of their goals. I might have already bought something had they not tempted fate with the stunt they pulled.

Are estimates always right? From what I understand, they're not.

Again, it's the only store that has that game right now. If was developed by Epic, at least they'd have some ground for an exclusivity. Thing is they didn't, they paid other developers to not sell in other stores. Again, not competition.

Shame people don't do the number crunching. I have.

Not counting Fortnite players on consoles as there's no way on earth Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft would allow it on Switch, PlayStations, and Xboxes. Also not counting iphones as Apple locks those things down. I'd like a source for your number by the way. I'd be happy to show how I got 200 million.
https://www.vg247.com/2015/02/24/steam-has-over-125-million-active-users-8-9m-concurrent-peak/
125 million at 2/24/15
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/valve-reveals-steams-monthly-active-user-count-game-sales-region/
1.5 million new users per month.
4 years * 12 months = 48 months +2 two months since February = 50 months
50 * 1.5 =75
125 million + 75 million = 200 million.

I believe Epic said 40 % of their players don't have Steam, I will use 60% of whatever number of players you can find provided you can provide a source for it. 120 * 88% = 105.6. 200 * 70% = 140. What Epic actually has to offer is likely less than that if I can find the exact number of players, though.

[Ness_and_Sonic]

İlk olarak Crashed tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Ness_and_Sonic|Bye Reviews. tarafından gönderildi:

The sooner Sweeney goes broke, the better.

So basically when you don't like something you wish for bad things to happen?

I didn't have any issue with Epic until they started throwing cash around to buy exclusivity deals. Them running out of cash would fix that pretty quickly.

[Start_Running]

Not even gonna bother at this point. COrrecting you on the same points over and over is getting quyite frankly boring now. You can only watch someone slip on the same banana peel so many times before it gets dull.

[Ness_and_Sonic]

Found Epic's userbase numbers from last month while looking for the source giving the 40% that don't use Steam. I was right. It is less.
https://www.pcgamer.com/40-percent-of-epic-games-store-users-say-they-dont-have-steam/
I'll even humor you and use the full number:
85 million * 88% = 74.8 million
However, since 40% don't have Steam...
My calculations for that would be...
85 million * 60% = 51 million * 88% = 44.88 Million.
And since my calculations were factoring in Steam's growth since the last number was revealed, I'll go ahead and do those calculations, too. 125 million * 70% = 87.5 million.
Not that I'm surprised, Steam offers more functionality, is one of the reasons people aren't too thrilled about these exclusivity deals.

[Nightlight]

Some People's Perception of the User Reviews Revisited Announcement.

I'll start off with saying that I'm not trying to start a debate over whether or not the User Reviews Revisited is bad. This post is simply about my confusion over how some people interpreted the User Reviews Revisited announcement, specifically about whether or not negative and positive off-topic review bombs will be treated the same and both targeted.

I've seen some people that seem to be under the impression that Valve isn't just targeting negative off-topic review bombs with this new way of doing things and that the positive ones will be targeted as well. This confuses me as no where in the User Reviews Revisited announcement do I see Valve stating that to be the case.

To illustrate my point of view, let's look at the User Review Revisited announcement and see what it says.
First off, what does Valve think a review bomb is?

a review bomb is where players post a large number of reviews in a short period of time, aimed at lowering the Review Score of a game.

OK, so Valve thinks a review bomb is when a large amount of negative reviews are posted in a short period of time. Review bombs are purely negative, according to them.

Next, how does the tool that notifies them to check out a game's reviews work?

a tool we've built that identifies any anomalous review activity on all games on Steam in as close to real-time as possible. It doesn't know why a given game is receiving anomalous review activity, and it doesn't even try to figure that out. Instead, it notifies a team of people at Valve, who'll then go and investigate.

They do not specify a type of "anomalous review activity" and do seem to imply that both negative and positive "anomalous review activities" will activate this system.

However:

Once our team has identified that the anomalous activity is an off-topic review bomb, we'll mark the time period it encompasses and notify the developer. The reviews within that time period will then be removed from the Review Score calculation.

That bit right there says that the Valve team will only mark reviews to be removed from the review score calculation if they find them to be an off-topic review bomb, keep in mind that Valve considers a review bomb to be "where players post a large number of reviews in a short period of time, aimed at lowering the Review Score of a game." A review bomb can only be negative. This, to me at least, strongly implies that Valve will only target off-topic negative review bombs and leave positive ones alone.

With all that said, I don't see where some people are getting the idea that Valve will target both negative and positive off-topic review bombs to be removed from the review score calculation. Is there something in the announcement that I'm missing? Are people getting that information from some place else? Or are people just assuming that Valve will treat both negative and positive off-topic review bombs the same? Again, I'm not trying to start something here, and I'm sorry if this post reads like I am, I'm just confused and would like an answer to this question.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

We have a thread... https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3398435622557304994/

[Jackie Daytona]

İlk olarak Lunacy tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak ♢♣ Jekyll Hyde ♣♢ tarafından gönderildi:

...and now Steam is hiding user reviews to protect huge gaming companies.

They aren't hiding any reviews, they're all there for you to view any time you want.
They just don't count toward the review score if they don't have anything to do with the game itself.

They are hidden by default. Under the guise of providing more "helpful" reviews. (And who wouldn't want their reviews to be more helpful?)

New users, those that don't pay attention to every Steam feature/announcement, and infrequent users will have no idea this is going on.

Also, Steam has been hiding reviews for a long time. Click the link below and attempt to find my review for that game. Scroll all you want. My review will either not appear, or will take a long time to do so.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/45760/reviews/?p=1&browsefilter=toprated

Here is my review below.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198042130595/recommended/45760/

At one point, you couldn't even find my review listed for the game. Now? It's buried. I got 20 "thumbs up". Yet I'm found underneath dozens of meme and low-quality reviews.

Certainly far from my best review, but way better than "fix the netcode!" or "best fighting game ever!" with one "thumbs up" each.

Lastly, Steam's policy on review bombing is 100% subjective and arbitrary. Anything at anytime can be considered "off-topic". There are no solidly defined rules for what is or isn't off-topic. It's simply whatever Valve decides at any given time.

[Jackie Daytona]

İlk olarak Ness_and_Sonic|Bye Reviews. tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

The casual steam suser isn't particularly interested in what the latest gamer rage of the week is.., They just want to nknow if the game itself is worth playing/buying.

I get this feeling the games that casuals tend to play aren't the ones getting review bombed. Then again, what do I know about casual gamers? I'm not one.

This whole thing is popping up in regards to the Borderlands series. I'd say that's a game for casuals.

In the last few years the things that get review-bombed, are usually those that are probably going to be popular. (Such as selling over 1 million copies.) Not necessarily "casual" games, but definitely games casual players are likely to play.

[Ness_and_Sonic]

İlk olarak ♢♣ Jekyll Hyde ♣♢ tarafından gönderildi:

This whole thing is popping up in regards to the Borderlands series. I'd say that's a game for casuals.

In the last few years the things that get review-bombed, are usually those that are probably going to be popular. (Such as selling over 1 million copies.) Not necessarily "casual" games, but definitely games casual players are likely to play.

Borderlands gave off hardcore vibes for my opinion. Casuals make me think of simpler games like Tetris, Klax, Sim City, Pac-man, Paper Boy, TTG's point and games. Granted, Tales from Borderlands might be one, but it's more of an exception than the norm.

Blame foolish companies that bite the hand that feeds them.

[Jackie Daytona]

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

The casual steam suser isn't particularly interested in what the latest gamer rage of the week is.., They just want to nknow if the game itself is worth playing/buying.

How do you know that for a fact?

How do you define a "casual steam user"?

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

The simple fact that there aren't enough people involved in these review brigades to keep the brigade up for even as long as w eek says that this is whole thing is the act of a vocal minority meant to target the attention of another minority. That minority is free to change the settings.

Now if you have some logical reasoning that would indicate otherwise do present it.. Keep in mind the only people I've seen complaining about the change seem to be the very people who are angry that their childish outbursts are being ignored and that they have been denied their precious precious instant gratification.

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak BasedBundles tarafından gönderildi:

So the norm is hiding certain information? Should the default not be to present all data with the option to hide some catagories

The norm is.. as i said, most gamers don't care what the current outrage of the week is. This is also evidenced by the fact that these aggressive review brigades never last very long. A week tops and seldom do those brigade bombs ever garnr much in the way of helpful votes.

Only because Steam is going out of it's way to hide these.

What exactly is your point anyway? You want to dismiss thousands of people's criticism as "just being angry". Then, when they shut up and leave... you complain they didn't stick around?

You sound like the kind of person that can never be satisfied.

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

Most people just want to know if the game if good, bad , or has certain features. They don't care whether or not the publisher or developer pours the tears of orphans on their ceral in the morning.

I think you are confusing your personal opinion for the general consensus. You are also lumping everyone outraged about every game into one group. Do you really believe it's some tiny section of people? That they are all just doing this as some massive trolling op?

You may not care about things that happen outside of games, but many do. It's no small number, either. I watch a number of YouTubers that cover gaming news. Mods will delete my post if I link to them, or even name them.

• Guy #1 - Averages over 100k views per video. Over 500k subscribers.
• Guy #2 - Averages 80k viewers per video. Over 200k subscribers.
• Guy #3 - Averages over 225k viewers per video. Over 850k subscribers.
• Guy #4 - Has videos going back years. Most of which have 200k - 350k views. Over 300k subscribers.

All of these people have covered Randy Pitchford's statements on Borderlands 3 and EGS. The vast majority of viewers for these YouTubers are interested in the actions/statements of developers and publishers. Things Steam is likely to consider "off-topic".

You are incorrect when you state these people are insignificant.

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

Again. during the whole review bomb debacle of the borderlands franchise the player count for those games went up, there were more people playing the games. SO again... the numbers paint a different picture.

I'm fairly certain that BL3 is releasing soon is the reason older Borderlands titles are seeing a surge. Would've happened regardless of this being talked about or not.

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

Evidence shows the minority to be more of a minority when you count the subset of that vocal minority that actually stick to their guns, trhe ones that actually walk the walk they talk about. Then you have to wonder how many of those were actually honestly going to buy the games.

I get what you are saying but... I think that people that own BL1&2 are likely to buy BL3.

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

Keep in mind its not like the BL games stopped getting positive reviews during the bombs either.

Only because Steam makes no effort to stop positive counter-bombing.

İlk olarak Start_Running tarafından gönderildi:

On which system did Sonic Mania sold best on? You'd think it would be PC because of the low system requirements and modding, but I get this feeling that wasn't the case.

Actually... I'd be surprised if it was PC, because if you will recall the sonic franchise has been primarily a console franchise. CHecking around the figures seam to be a bit all over the place. I'm gettin between 200K and 350K.

Still one of the best selling Sonic PC releases. So again...your desire to believe in the legendary power of kicking and screaming, isn't enough to make it true.

The fact that Sonic Mania sold copies is not proof that no potential buyer was ever turned off. As it's impossible to know how many people didn't buy the game.

[Jackie Daytona]

İlk olarak Ness_and_Sonic|Bye Reviews. tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak ♢♣ Jekyll Hyde ♣♢ tarafından gönderildi:

This whole thing is popping up in regards to the Borderlands series. I'd say that's a game for casuals.

In the last few years the things that get review-bombed, are usually those that are probably going to be popular. (Such as selling over 1 million copies.) Not necessarily "casual" games, but definitely games casual players are likely to play.

Borderlands gave off hardcore vibes for my opinion. Casuals make me think of simpler games like Tetris, Klax, Sim City, Pac-man, Paper Boy, TTG's point and games. Granted, Tales from Borderlands might be one, but it's more of an exception than the norm.

Blame foolish companies that bite the hand that feeds them.

In most shooters, your skill matters a great deal. Not so much in Borderlands. You can run around getting xp (and better weapons) to help you out-level problems you encounter. It's a lot more about how good your character is... As opposed to how good you are at playing them.

There are certainly difficult aspects. But I think in terms of comparing Borderlands against other shooters? It's one of the most casual.

[Crashed]

I notice some defend review bombings, but are middle finger "reviews" and even violent threats acceptable?