This latest SBI nonsense is a great reason to avoid steam

[ffrotty]

The review and curator systems are just fodder for sabotage and strongarming false impressions of a game. It isn't that expensive to astroturf a ton of accounts to leave parroting, pandering reviews or curate with dubious intentions/sources, as seen by this latest "controversy."

Likewise, allowing anyone who doesn't own a game to go into a forum and post is hilariously bad, all of the forums for the last dozen games I've played have been clogged with concern trolls.

Further, in all of this fake outrage that will easily die off and be forgotten, games that aren't on steam are basically shielded from this. Alan Wake 2 and GOW Ragnarok are SBI games, but hey, they aren't review bombed simply because they're not on steam.

The steam forums should separate those who own the game from those who don't. Let there be a default "non-owner" forum (I'd prefer that didn't exist) or a setting that hides any thread created by a non-owner and any replies by non-owners. That solves the forum spam.

For reviews, there is no good solution that maintains people being able to review besides giving more granular scoring. Even a -0+ system is better than what's there now. I don't think it's salvageable, just like other systems just had to get rid of it, because it is flat out exploitable and can absolutely interrupt games dev cycles. I've seen games that had potential get bombed and the devs gave up entirely, and didn't continue with the game that wasn't as bad as the reviews. And I've seen the opposite: games shilled early and hard that lured people into buying them.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by ffrotty:

This latest SBI nonsense is a great reason to avoid steam

The review and curator systems are just fodder for sabotage and strongarming false impressions of a game. It isn't that expensive to astroturf a ton of accounts to leave parroting, pandering reviews or curate with dubious intentions/sources, as seen by this latest "controversy."

Likewise, allowing anyone who doesn't own a game to go into a forum and post is hilariously bad, all of the forums for the last dozen games I've played have been clogged with concern trolls.

Further, in all of this fake outrage that will easily die off and be forgotten, games that aren't on steam are basically shielded from this. Alan Wake 2 and GOW Ragnarok are SBI games, but hey, they aren't review bombed simply because they're not on steam.

The steam forums should separate those who own the game from those who don't. Let there be a default "non-owner" forum (I'd prefer that didn't exist) or a setting that hides any thread created by a non-owner and any replies by non-owners. That solves the forum spam.

For reviews, there is no good solution that maintains people being able to review besides giving more granular scoring. Even a -0+ system is better than what's there now. I don't think it's salvageable, just like other systems just had to get rid of it, because it is flat out exploitable and can absolutely interrupt games dev cycles. I've seen games that had potential get bombed and the devs gave up entirely, and didn't continue with the game that wasn't as bad as the reviews. And I've seen the opposite: games shilled early and hard that lured people into buying them.

Game devs/mods can already set up their forums to owners only, leaving at least 1 sub-forum open to all users.

[ffrotty]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Game devs/mods can already set up their forums to owners only, leaving at least 1 sub-forum open to all users.

:winterbunny2023:

right, and that's pointless and just serves nothing. Most devs don't care / engage steam directly anyway. The only edgecase use is a dev who for some reason is actually using steam for their main support forum (bad idea).

So the default should be a diminished "Public freeforall" and every other forum like general discussion, bugs, events, support for purchasers only, that's it, since most forums don't bother changing the settings.

[Ethanol]

Avoid Steam, but here you are. So what happened?

[C²C^Guyver |NZB|]

19 years on Steam, telling others to avoid Steam.....

[MonkehMaster]

"fake outrage" is all i needed to see...

they made their beds, laying in it is their own fault

[crunchyfrog]

Why on earth do people who are customers behaving a certain way make you avoid the store?

it's not a physical store so you don't need to see them.

What on earth is this weird logic?

[Ganger]

That's on people to decide to believe some random person on the internet or not. I take what people say with a pinch of salt. Sadly, we have people who simply believe everything they hear or read, I class these type of people as followers.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Ganger:

That's on people to decide to believe some random person on the internet or not. I take what people say with a pinch of salt. Sadly, we have people who simply believe everything they hear or read, I class these type of people as followers.

Exactly.

I always work off strict evidence as best as I can. I wish people would do the same.

Just like whenever any of the "woke" scaremongering goes on, I immediately do a simple google search to find out what the REAL skinny is.

For example, when I heard about Sweet Baby I watched a couple of youtubers talk about it, and from what I gleaned was that they were a company that gave guidance of some kind to gaming companies about gender diversity and racial diversity and so on. And that they seemed to be run by a bunch of narcissists.

OK, let me google that then and see what ACTUAL evidence there is.

I quickly found out that this company gives guidance ONLY on scripts for video games. OK well that narrows it down.

So I then looked to see WHICH games they had actually advised on and while that was less exact I found a couple of majors and that was about it.

So in other words much ado about ♥♥♥♥ all.

But it is funny to sit back and watch the dishonest actors blame EVERYTHING they don't like on them like always.

[Ganger]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Exactly.

I always work off strict evidence as best as I can. I wish people would do the same.

Just like whenever any of the "woke" scaremongering goes on, I immediately do a simple google search to find out what the REAL skinny is.

For example, when I heard about Sweet Baby I watched a couple of youtubers talk about it, and from what I gleaned was that they were a company that gave guidance of some kind to gaming companies about gender diversity and racial diversity and so on. And that they seemed to be run by a bunch of narcissists.

OK, let me google that then and see what ACTUAL evidence there is.

I quickly found out that this company gives guidance ONLY on scripts for video games. OK well that narrows it down.

So I then looked to see WHICH games they had actually advised on and while that was less exact I found a couple of majors and that was about it.

So in other words much ado about ♥♥♥♥ all.

But it is funny to sit back and watch the dishonest actors blame EVERYTHING they don't like on them like always.

If me and you were real life friends, I believe we would get on like a house on fire with each other. We would argue and disagree on things but would still remain good mates

[C²C^Guyver |NZB|]

What I feel is hilariously bad, is allowing anyone to make the same topic over and over and over again. There's literally a topic about this at the top of this forum right now.... that isn't to say that there's only two threads either, there isn't. There's numerous threads about this.

..but, but, but, people think they're bringing something to the table that is new. (They aren't.)

Also quite ironic that OP is talking about cutting down on forum spam when this is literally the 5th or 6th thread about this.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Ganger:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Exactly.

I always work off strict evidence as best as I can. I wish people would do the same.

Just like whenever any of the "woke" scaremongering goes on, I immediately do a simple google search to find out what the REAL skinny is.

For example, when I heard about Sweet Baby I watched a couple of youtubers talk about it, and from what I gleaned was that they were a company that gave guidance of some kind to gaming companies about gender diversity and racial diversity and so on. And that they seemed to be run by a bunch of narcissists.

OK, let me google that then and see what ACTUAL evidence there is.

I quickly found out that this company gives guidance ONLY on scripts for video games. OK well that narrows it down.

So I then looked to see WHICH games they had actually advised on and while that was less exact I found a couple of majors and that was about it.

So in other words much ado about ♥♥♥♥ all.

But it is funny to sit back and watch the dishonest actors blame EVERYTHING they don't like on them like always.

If me and you were real life friends, I believe we would get on like a house on fire with each other. We would argue and disagree on things but would still remain good mates

That's precisely why I like talking to you on here.

You're always repsectful and bring up some bloody good points. Doesn't matter whether we agree or not, as long as we do stuff right :)

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by ragefifty50:

there are over 80 million listings for sbi detected....on google search...

does anyone know what this means...

Yes, it means there are 80 millions listings on Google. Nothing more.

Can you not evaluate things?

Whenever you have a hot button topic of course you're going to get lots of hits.

Try this - google "Johnny Somalia". Tell me how many hits you get. I bet it's quite a lot for someone who is a nobody who just streams rage bait.

The fact is it tells you not much. Only that there's a lot of people metnioning it and that's all.

This is the causal link I spoke of. You cannot make leaps of faith.

[Ganger]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

That's precisely why I like talking to you on here.

You're always repsectful and bring up some bloody good points. Doesn't matter whether we agree or not, as long as we do stuff right :)

I hate it when people go off on one by swearing and name calling, no reason too. Sometimes people will not see eye to eye no matter what but people should at least be civil.

Another reason, I cringe when I watch debates with emotional people, not only do they not want to listen to other views, they will scream, shout, put fingers in ears and call you all the names under the sun.

[[N]ebsun]

Originally posted by ffrotty:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Game devs/mods can already set up their forums to owners only, leaving at least 1 sub-forum open to all users.

:winterbunny2023:

right, and that's pointless and just serves nothing. Most devs don't care / engage steam directly anyway. The only edgecase use is a dev who for some reason is actually using steam for their main support forum (bad idea).

So the default should be a diminished "Public freeforall" and every other forum like general discussion, bugs, events, support for purchasers only, that's it, since most forums don't bother changing the settings.

The game dev needs to manually set up their Steam forum - a forum for the game doesn't just magically appear - the dev created it. If they don't care, then so be it - it's up to them what they decide for their game.

[AROCK!!!]

Originally posted by C²C^Guyver |NZB|:

19 years on Steam, telling others to avoid Steam.....

Completely irrelevant comment since for well more than a decade if you wanted to play on PC you had no choice other than to use STEAM.

I did not want to use STEAM, but I wanted to play HL2, so I had to make an account...an account I abandoned because HL2 was (is) a crap game that I had no desire to play more than once.
It wasn't until around 2010 I made this account, and only because it was all but impossible to find games that did not require STEAM.


You really need to take a moment to ponder upon your comments "before" making them.