Insane Bioware censorship (they have completely lost their marbles)

[TapewormJim (TJ)]

I posted the below on the Veilguard forums, and literally one minute later received a permanent ban. It's Bioware's devs/mods, for sure - they have permanently banned all of Asmongold's reddit followers as well apparently, because they are literally insane - gaga mental.

Posting it here as you can clearly see no Steam rules whatsoever were broken.

I'm not surprised they have such thin skin, however - nor am I surprised they are so triggered by the mere mention of Trump. Steam needs to stop giving activists/crazies the reigns on moderating the forums. People this unhinged and maladjusted to society and humour should not be allowed to cyber-shoot paying customers on the platform.

I've heard the 'their house, their rules' shtick before btw, so spare me that one, yeah? Because 'my keyboard, my post'. You know what I mean?

---

Apparently Avowed will release in Feb, only a few months away. Calling it now that that'll be the next Failguard. I guarantee it. It has the same toony, plastic look, with purple everywhere the eye can see. Is it a contrivance of theirs, or is it just some psychological thing to which they gravitate, unknowingly?

IMO, Veilguard is on the way out anyway judging by the declining CP stats, but it's going be a slow, dull death. I'm more interested in the aftermath - what happens to Bioware after all of this? It'll probably take another month before the sorry ending plays out.

I'm delighted Trump won btw - if he's serious about overhauling DEI agendas, as has been stated elsewhere, there's a mild possibility he might also play a part in dismantling what has happened within the industry.

[Realigo Actual]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/600768571255133891/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/600768571255030702/

This is totally fine.

This is completely acceptable.

Everything is completely fine.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Yskas:

This kind of stuff hurts Valve. This platform needs community notes. There's just too much straight up dodgy CM/PR/Marketing going around.

Littl secret. All marketing and PR is dodgy.

Originally posted by Yskas:

The more of these kind of incidents I see the less confidence I buy games with on Steam. Erosion of trust is the worst thing in the world to something like this platform, and Bioware/EA seems to have zero problem throwing Valve under the bus like this, there's likely many more publishers like these out there.

That's a you problem m8. I don't think most people buy games for the 'community' they buy games to play and have fuin. The majority of any game's ownerbase doesn't engage one the forums.. Only a minority do and of that minority there is a small minority who run afoul of the moderation. SO a minority of a minority.

Originally posted by Yskas:

There has to be a better way to do things. It might not be Valve who figures it out either. This is a gap. Open Source moderation is the future. Maybe Open Source, non-profit / non-markup decentralized games stores. Valve don't have to pay attention to this, but smart people will.

Ask linux how open source is doing.
Also by open source moderation you mean randos on the internet?
When has that ever improved anything m8. The problems on the forums are caused by randos.

Originally posted by Yskas:

I think Valve drops the ball here because of their obsession with Billion Dollar ideas, they should instead be morbidly afraid of those with zero Dollar ideas.

Mmmm-hmmm.
If the idea isn't worth a penny, then it's not worth the time.

Originally posted by Yskas:

There's enough cynicism going around with pseudo politicians heading community management that it might warrant making a collective talent driven zero profit effort to push ALL of this out of PC gaming, including these stores. I think it's greed that does this, so greed needs to be removed from the chain, somehow.

Fun fact. Zero-Profit doesn't mean zero-revenue. and whether or not there is a profit is a matter of accounting. After all if you raise your salary high enough there is no profit regardless of the revenue. :p

Originally posted by Realigo Actual:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/600768571255133891/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/600768571255030702/

This is totally fine.

This is completely acceptable.

Everything is completely fine.

Uup. Kinda makes you wonder why they just don't go to reddit or something if they want to be edgy.

[Soren]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Yskas:

This kind of stuff hurts Valve. This platform needs community notes. There's just too much straight up dodgy CM/PR/Marketing going around.

Littl secret. All marketing and PR is dodgy.

Valve already has enough issues keeping their service clean on this category. Forum moderators are a lesser concern.

Take for example a game I've played recently. Delta Force. People were pointing out there were a lot of bot reviews slowly built up for weeks. All with generic names, only one game on their account, and one review on their account (for delta force), generic 1 paragraph write ups about how the game is vaguely awesome, and all with very similar play times. Probably a good chunk of the bot work is done by AI now.

Valve needs to put more restrictions on which accounts can make product reviews. Paywall it to 5$ spent on steam before you can review F2P games. If bots start paying the 5$, increase the paywall to 10-20$. Keep increasing it until reviews on F2P games are too expensive to buy via throwaway bot accounts.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Realigo Actual:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/600768571255133891/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/600768571255030702/

This is totally fine.

This is completely acceptable.

Everything is completely fine.

Both can easily be considered spam comments, people just parroting 'Gut wouk gut brouk' like they were debating like Jordan Peterson dropping the mic brings nothing to a thread and only adds clutter.

I don't see wrong with mods dealing with those messages. Next time they post, at leat bring something relevant to the table other than.

The only thing I dislike is leaving the ban message empty. Which is an oversight Valve seems haven't fixed yet. It always should have been mandatory to leave a ban message.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Soren:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Littl secret. All marketing and PR is dodgy.

Valve already has enough issues keeping their service clean on this category. Forum moderators are a lesser concern.

Valve's actually doing a fair job of keeping things clean on that front.

Originally posted by Soren:

Take for example a game I've played recently. Delta Force. People were pointing out there were a lot of bot reviews slowly built up for weeks. All with generic names, only one game on their account, and one review on their account (for delta force), generic 1 paragraph write ups about how the game is vaguely awesome, and all with very similar play times. Probably a good chunk of the bot work is done by AI now.

And when you can actually provide evidence you can report those to Valve.

Originally posted by Soren:

Valve needs to put more restrictions on which accounts can make product reviews. Paywall it to 5$ spent on steam before you can review F2P games. If bots start paying the 5$, increase the paywall to 10-20$. Keep increasing it until reviews on F2P games are too expensive to buy via throwaway bot accounts.

Yeah that sounds like a good idea. But if you take a second minute to think about it you realizing your actually prevent the very target audience of the game from leaving a review.
See the problem there. These are customer reviews . Ergo all you have to be uis someone who played the game on steam.

[Soren]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Soren:

Take for example a game I've played recently. Delta Force. People were pointing out there were a lot of bot reviews slowly built up for weeks. All with generic names, only one game on their account, and one review on their account (for delta force), generic 1 paragraph write ups about how the game is vaguely awesome, and all with very similar play times. Probably a good chunk of the bot work is done by AI now.

And when you can actually provide evidence you can report those to Valve.

Valve doesn't exactly make it easy to sort through reviews. Especially the specific ones you want. People estimate there were about 10 a day. But when you click on a day you get a random spread of reviews loaded and not every single one on that day (steam only loads about 8-ish reviews at once). And only about 2-4 bot reviews are loaded among that spread. Then you have to consider there are about 100-300 bot reviews minimum over the month+ of them doing it spread over many days, buried among legit reviews, and finding them all and reporting each one will probably take you a couple hours. At that point, reporting becomes a free part time job.

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Yeah that sounds like a good idea. But if you take a second minute to think about it you realizing your actually prevent the very target audience of the game from leaving a review.
See the problem there. These are customer reviews . Ergo all you have to be uis someone who played the game on steam.

F2P customers having spent some money on Steam isn't a huge ask. I'm not talking about them having spent money on the game they want to review specifically, like Delta Force specifically. Just that they should have had to spent some money on anything or loaded their wallet so they're no longer a free account. That 5$ paywall already exists before you can use any forums (except these steam general/off topic ones). Heck, that 5$ paywall for the forums exists for F2P games as well afaik. I'm really just asking that free accounts have further restrictions than they already do. As in they can't review F2P games.

[Realigo Actual]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by Realigo Actual:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/600768571255133891/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1845910/discussions/0/600768571255030702/

This is totally fine.

This is completely acceptable.

Everything is completely fine.

Both can easily be considered spam comments, people just parroting 'Gut wouk gut brouk' like they were debating like Jordan Peterson dropping the mic brings nothing to a thread and only adds clutter.

I don't see wrong with mods dealing with those messages. Next time they post, at leat bring something relevant to the table other than.

The only thing I dislike is leaving the ban message empty. Which is an oversight Valve seems haven't fixed yet. It always should have been mandatory to leave a ban message.

You don't see a problem with a mod taking away someone's ability to interact with this game's presence on the community forever, including using Steam's screenshot system to take screenshots of the game for their personal profile as the play, for making one post, that was just quoting Jason Schreier?

[Crazy Tiger]

Permanently is overkill, yeah. But I don't see the issue with such posts being handled, no.

They bring nothing and are just there to bait.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Realigo Actual:

You don't see a problem with a mod taking away someone's ability to interact with this game's presence on the community forever, including using Steam's screenshot system to take screenshots of the game for their personal profile as the play, for making one post, that was just quoting Jason Schreier?

Can't tell about the length of the ban, since I don't know the whole context. I do agree with moderation taking action towards those kind of spammy comments.

[dragonball3166]

Never went to there site can’t comment steam, Reddit and Facebook is where I go for help .,

Twitter , YouTube , I go make helpful and some useless complaints posts on stuff

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Soren:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

And when you can actually provide evidence you can report those to Valve.

Valve doesn't exactly make it easy to sort through reviews. Especially the specific ones you want. People estimate there were about 10 a day.

Who are these people and by what method did they estimate such a figure?
Are you seeing the problem here?

Originally posted by Soren:

But when you click on a day you get a random spread of reviews loaded and not every single one on that day (steam only loads about 8-ish reviews at once). And only about 2-4 bot reviews are loaded among that spread. Then you have to consider there are about 100-300 bot reviews minimum over the month+ of them doing it spread over many days, buried among legit reviews, and finding them all and reporting each one will probably take you a couple hours. At that point, reporting becomes a free part time job.

Mmmm-Hmmm...

Originally posted by Soren:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Yeah that sounds like a good idea. But if you take a second minute to think about it you realizing your actually prevent the very target audience of the game from leaving a review.
See the problem there. These are customer reviews . Ergo all you have to be uis someone who played the game on steam.

F2P customers having spent some money on Steam isn't a huge ask.

Says you.
Kinda makes you wonder how any F2p games would get any reviews. Like their audience is leterally people who do not wish to spend money.

[Soren]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Soren:

Valve doesn't exactly make it easy to sort through reviews. Especially the specific ones you want. People estimate there were about 10 a day.

Who are these people and by what method did they estimate such a figure?
Are you seeing the problem here?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2507950/discussions/0/592886359937530719/?tscn=1737923487

Also, I like Delta Force. I'm not ragging on the game as a hater. I took a look at the reviews when people mentioned something. And they were indeed there and obvious bot reviews. Plenty of people posted in the thread. Some even mentioned reporting the bot reviews. But I don't know if the bot reviews reported are still up. One person in the thread seem to be suggesting many of the bot reviews still exist. Which suggests Valve isn't going to comb through all of them once a few are reported. Users will have to report each and every individual one to them instead. And that's assuming Valve cares and does anything. The reports might need to be large enough in numbers for them to care.

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Soren:

F2P customers having spent some money on Steam isn't a huge ask.

Says you.
Kinda makes you wonder how any F2p games would get any reviews. Like their audience is leterally people who do not wish to spend money.

Everyone on their sub-forums literally have to have spent money on Steam though? 5$ or they can't post on the forums. If this isn't a big deal. Then Valve should remove the 5$ paywall on posting in steam sub-forums so free accounts can post there. It feels like a contradiction either way.

I just mean lift the restriction for F2P game sub forums. Like if you have a free account that has spent literally 4.99 or less on Steam in your lifetime, you should still be able to post on the forums of F2P games if reviews are fair game.

[lx]

i know what you are talking about, jim. no marbles left. and its not just them.

see, there are some former(?) moderators here, stating their side of the story is the one and only - typical behavior of a 5 yeas old child, who knows nothing about anything.
there is a famous... thing, that humans use about 5% of their brain and its true in most cases. now imagine an artificial brain, created by a 5% brain, or a brainwashed brain, ... marbles get lost pretty fast.