Misleading Store "Bundles"

[RockSlimePlays]

I'm sure it's been stated elsewhere, but today I searched through the store and found a large number of 2- or 3-game bundles with "Positive" to "Very Positive" games (with a large number of reviews) included with "Negative" to "Mostly Negative" games (with a small number of reviews) to result in an overall positive rating for the bundle. These bundles often have misleading titles that make them look like individual games rather than bundles.

Why even have a "sort by user review" option if you just create dozens of bundles to bypass the sort? The exclusion tags on the search were already terrible enough. Now, the drop-down sorting options are even worse.

Valve: Why not require developers and publishers to have feature-complete, quality games on the store? Instead, you allow an "early access" tag or you bundle shovelware together with well-received games. Not all games that get a bad review or don't sell well do so because of review-bombing.

I'd even be happy if a weighted average resulted in a (properly annotated) bundle's review score. But that would require three extra lines of code, or so. I know, I know.Too much work. It's easier just to inveigle, obfuscate, etc, etc.

[rawWwRrr]

Messaggio originale di Rock Slime Play's:

Valve: [...] you bundle shovelware together with well-received games. Not all games that get a bad review or don't sell well do so because of review-bombing.

Valve isn't creating the bundles.

[RockSlimePlays]

Messaggio originale di rawWwRrr:

Valve isn't creating the bundles.

So, somehow two separate publishers in multiple cases are working together to link a well-received game with a terrible one? I have my doubts.

[breadman]

Messaggio originale di Rock Slime Play's:

Messaggio originale di rawWwRrr:

Valve isn't creating the bundles.

So, somehow two separate publishers in multiple cases are working together to link a well-received game with a terrible one? I have my doubts.

uh yea, seen it lots of times like project zomboid and dying light bundle

[RockSlimePlays]

Messaggio originale di breadman:

Messaggio originale di Rock Slime Play's:

So, somehow two separate publishers in multiple cases are working together to link a well-received game with a terrible one? I have my doubts.

uh yea, seen it lots of times like project zomboid and dying light bundle

I fail to see how the DL/PZ bundle that is listed as a bundle and includes two well-reviewed games/franchises is comparable to what I am describing in my post.

[breadman]

doesn't matter, they're two different games by two different pubs/devs

valve doesn't create bundles, pubs/devs do and sometimes they cooperate with other pubs/devs and make joint bundles

[rawWwRrr]

Messaggio originale di Rock Slime Play's:

Messaggio originale di rawWwRrr:

Valve isn't creating the bundles.

So, somehow two separate publishers in multiple cases are working together to link a well-received game with a terrible one? I have my doubts.

That's fine. Yotur wrong, but you're free to doubt it

[RockSlimePlays]

Messaggio originale di breadman:

doesn't matter, they're two different games by two different pubs/devs

point is steam doesn't create bundles, pubs/devs do

Fair enough. Valve might not create those specific bundles. Just like they don't create discount bundles for a game and it's DLC. They do, however, create the "sort by: User Review" function upon which sales of shovelware occur.

My issue is with allowing the linking of a positively reviewed game with a negatively reviewed game in order to create what are effectively re-branded and/or false or misleading advertisements on the Steam Page. That Valve doesn't create the advertisements doesn't mean they are not responsible for them.

If the Steam Store Page doesn't count as a series of advertisements, I don't know what it would be. I'm not sure how effective Steam would be if it were simply a digital distribution service. Maybe all of the issues with Steam result from Valve's "boss-less workplace" thing. At least they don't have to turn in those lousy TPS reports.

[ReBoot]

Please name an example of such a misleading bundle name.

[RockSlimePlays]

Type "steal the anvil" into the store search page and look at the name of the "bundle", the blue thumbs up, and then hover over the thumbs up. The "bundle" has (at the time of writing this) a Very Positive rating with 87% positive reviews of 21,284 reviews. Unless you click on it and look at the individual game reviews, you won't notice anything. It's made up of Thief Simulator which has 87% positive reviews of 21,121 reviews and Ironsmith Medieval Simulator with a Mostly Negative rating with 43% positive reviews of 174 reviews. That's one example, but there were many. I only remembered the name because Steal the Anvil doesn't make much sense.

[RockSlimePlays]

Edit to the above: I had the reviews for Ironsmith Medieval Simulator filtered to only show English language reviews. It actually has 31% positive reviews.

[KalGimpa]

so, i see those as no different then the humble bundles, and the like

i have gotten quite a few that had a game i wanted at a great price in itself, and had a bunch of trash with it

it was easy enough to click the games and see what the reviews were

i guess it would not hurt post each games, maybe with a hover for large bundles

but i do not see it as that big a thing

[ReBoot]

Messaggio originale di Rock Slime Play's:

Type "steal the anvil" into the store search page and look at the name of the "bundle", the blue thumbs up, and then hover over the thumbs up. The "bundle" has (at the time of writing this) a Very Positive rating with 87% positive reviews of 21,284 reviews. Unless you click on it and look at the individual game reviews, you won't notice anything. It's made up of Thief Simulator which has 87% positive reviews of 21,121 reviews and Ironsmith Medieval Simulator with a Mostly Negative rating with 43% positive reviews of 174 reviews. That's one example, but there were many. I only remembered the name because Steal the Anvil doesn't make much sense.

I just did and got a bundle.

How in the ♥♥♥♥ is that misleading though? The search makes it abundantly clear that this is a bundle. The store page makes it abundantly clear that this is a bundle. The store page DOES NOT EVEN MENTION ANY RATINGS! The store page doesn't say something like "The games in this bundle got an average positive rating" or something. It really just lists those 2 games and you can check those right on the spot.

Nothing misleading here, you get clearly told what you're in for. I personally consider this bundle some BS because the games got jack ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ to do with each other, but that's my personal opinion. Whether it's misleading, is an objective classification and this is not.

[Johnny Stokino]

To be honest, I have never seen any other service as nice about bundles than steam.

They always display the bundles in the game page even when they make less money if you take it.

They let you buy and benefit from the bundle discount even if you already have parts of it without paying for the whole bundle.

Going to the individual games pages to read their review seems a small price to pay and really I would do that anyway.

Cheers

[SLG]

Messaggio originale di Kitty Pryde:

They let you buy and benefit from the bundle discount even if you already have parts of it without paying for the whole bundle.

That is only for certain types of bundles.

[RockSlimePlays]

How in the ♥♥♥♥ is that misleading though?

You clearly didn't follow the instructions in my post. The way I initially found it was by selecting a few tags/filters and seeing what appeared to be a whole bunch of recently added "games" to find out they are some re-branded bundles ONLY AFTER "sort by User Reviews" was selected and I saw an 87% positive rating listed after 21,000+ reviews for what appears on the store front in the same way as a single game. Unless you can read the tiny print "bundle" below the title in the image, you have to click on what appears in the Title to be an individual game on the store page, making it misleading.

It is designed to pull you in with a user rating (and blue thumbs up) unrelated to 50% of the purchased products. It's called a bait and switch and in brick and mortar stores that can get a company sued. It's like an ad that says buy one iPad get one free and when you drive to the store (or click on the link in the Steam Store) and expect to get 2 iPads (or 1 quality game you've never heard of) for the price of one, they say it meant one free iPud, the knockoff iPad produced by itinerant hardware developers in China.

That's not fair, though. The iPud would still probably get better than 31% positive reviews.