What happens to reviews when you get a refund?

[CrashFu]

Has anyone found the answer to this yet? Surely, Valve had the foresight to prevent their refund system from being horribly abused by griefers...

IE Random Steam User has a political agenda against a game or a game's developer. They buy it, idle on the menu screen for a few minutes, go copy-paste someone else's bad review to hurt the game's reputation, and immediately get their free, automatic refund. Then they go on 4chan or whatever and get a bunch of their buddies to do the same and vote up each other's reviews and vote down everyone else's

Or conversely, Shady Developer X gets a bunch of interns or bots to buy their game, give it BS positive reviews and then refund it and mass upvote/downvote like above, and you get the same result going the opposite way.

In either case, now the game's review page is flooded with fraudulent reviews from people who have never even played it, drowning out the voices of legitimate reviewers. The game's overall positive/negative score no longer reflects the opinions of people who have legitimate opinions.

Aside from the obvious affront to gaming journalism, this would mean other consequences. Sure, if a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game gets a fraudulently inflated positive review count and people are duped into buying it, they can just get refunds via the new policy, but what about the good games that are hurt by people with petty political agendas? Steam will become an inhospitible place for struggling new developers and become a club for AAAs and popular Let's Play games only. Imagine a game being trashed by racists because the main character is black, or reviewed down by homophobes because it has a gay romance option or something. Taking a social stance or deviating from the popular and mainstream has no bearing on whether a game is worth buying, and griefers shouldn't be able to decide otherwise.


Oh and I know what someone is going to say: "But if the people who get refunds lose their reviews, the negative reviews will go away!"

1. Wow what a tragedy; the review pages will be overall more positive and less whiny. How will we ever live. Yeah, I think the risk of abuse here greatly outweighs that "loss".

2. Reviews from people who have barely played a game are worth about as much as a map of a building drawn by someone who just peeked through a window. IE worthless. We don't need them drowning out more educated reviews in the first place. Most <2 hour reviews amount to "my hardware can't run this game" (not relevant to other people usually) or "I didn't understand what kind of game it is" or "it's too hard for me" (that's your fault and has no bearing on other people) or "[sweeping dismissal about the entire game I couldn't possibly have known from just the first level" (BS). None of that should be cluttering up the review boards in the first place, so giving these people refunds and taking away their reviews is a Win-Win for ALL of us.

3. If you get your refund then no harm has been done to you, IE your primary purpose for complaining has been lost. Essentially you've just played a free demo. If you don't like it then don't buy / keep the game. You don't have to sit around and cry about something you didn't pay for or "warn people that the demo sucks", they can play it themselves and decide for themselves if they want to buy / keep it. You lost nothing except the < 2 hours you willingly chose to waste, so get on with your life.

3. negative reviews from people who have actually played a significant enough portion of a game to know what they are talking about are almost always the top-rated reviews anyways, so legitimate negative reviews will never be lost or silenced. Even if a game's score is mostly positive, people are going to read the top-rated reviews.

4. Suggestion: Add a separate tab on the review board (after top-rated, newest, positive only, negative only) for "refunded", and automatically send reviews there when their writers get a refund. Essentially, an archive for people who really want to know what unpaying, short-played users think.

[Oykenshui]

I think they should stay. Seeing as I had to refund 2 games because they ran horribly, even though I was way over the recommended specs. I should then leave a review about said problem. Otherwise, people are not going to know about these problems. Yes, with the refund system people can spam bad reviews, but they did it before the new refund policy. Besides, if Steam finds out they are abusing the refund system, no more refunds for them. I think it's working fine as it is right now.

[The doctor is in]

refunds are a new thing and as with all new things i bet it will get tweaked as needed to make them better

[Lenny the Bruce]

I figure the review system is already garbage.

Let the reviews stay. At least until they start removing the tens of thousands of joke reviews from all the amateur comedians on Steam.

[Dominus de Geth]

I asked for a refund for 2 games so far, 1 of which I gave a positive review, pointed out what I liked and what I disliked, it was a good game but that type of game wasn't for me and after an hour I knew I was never gonna launch it again. I gave the other a negative review because it looked and played like a game from the late 90s while it was supposed to be a modern game (but in it's defense, it was a port from smart phones but the devs should have at least tried to make it feel like a pc game, the screenhots looked way better than the maxed options in game)..
Reviews largely depend on the integrity of the person .. IMO reviews of refunded games should stay, people should know what drove some1 to request a refund of a game as much as they need to know why they should buy it and it's pretty easy to distinguish between actual reviews/opinions and griefing/trolling ones ..

[Black Blade]

Well i assume that if these is going to become a trend, Valve will just block all these users from getting any more refunds..
As they are abusing it

[J4MESOX4D]

People should be able to leave reviews for titles they've refunded. I can't see many users buying a game just to give it a bad review and then go through the refund process.

[On Vacation]

Well to answer your original question, nothing happens to them. As far as the review system it's garbage all around and that has little to do with the refund system. In regards to your argument, honestly you're all over the place.

Take how you use 'legitimate reviewers' or 'legitimate opinions', but follow with examples that have nothing to do with either. I'm not entirely sure what definition you are using, but justifying why you refunded something via review, is a legitimate opinion.

As far as your homophobic and racist example, these reviews can be reported to have them removed as they violate the rules for reviewss, which are subject to the same rules as the forums.

Your stance that one can not give an accurate review having played less than two hours, isn't inherently true either. While the case can be made for some titles, you can obviously tell a lot about a game within the first two hours depending upon it's genre. Graphic fidelity, menu options, amount of bugs encountered, repetitive gameplay etc. You do not have to understand every nuance about a game to review it. That being said, Steam reviews more often than not use crappy metrics and/or appeals to emotion, but again that's not related to refunds.

" If you get your refund then no harm has been done to you, IE your primary purpose for complaining has been lost." "You don't have to sit around and cry about something you didn't pay for or "warn people that the demo sucks" Reviews shouldn't be about harm and/or crying. But informing people on what to expect is one of the purposes of the review system, whether you paid for it or not isn't relevant to that point. You have some distorted view on what journalism is, if you can equate Steam's reviews to such, but yet, boil negative reviews down to these single points. If a game has a lot of refunds, why shouldn't they in turn inform the consumer why they pursued such refunds so they then can make an informed decision.

I'll be the first to say that Steam's reviews overall are of terrible quality and people use them essentially as a place to vent and/or promote their 'fanboy' views, rather than actually review a game, but your suggestions as you outline them, is less about abuse, and more about people who have refunded (or gotten for free) not being 'worthy' to review a title and that borders on elitism.

[CrashFu]

Originally posted by lilcoffeebean:

As far as your homophobic and racist example, these reviews can be reported to have them removed as they violate the rules for reviewss, which are subject to the same rules as the forums.

The problem is that they would have to be dumb enough to actually say something bigoted in the review, and most bigots are sneakier than that. More likely, they would just make up BS complaints or give incredibly vague ones, or just copy an existing bad review. Before anyone asks, I don't know of any specific case in which this has occurred (because again if it WAS someone's motive, they wouldn't express it out loud) ... I just wouldn't put it passed some people.

Your stance that one can not give an accurate review having played less than two hours, isn't inherently true either. While the case can be made for some titles, you can obviously tell a lot about a game within the first two hours depending upon it's genre. Graphic fidelity, menu options, amount of bugs encountered, repetitive gameplay etc. You do not have to understand every nuance about a game to review it. That being said, Steam reviews more often than not use crappy metrics and/or appeals to emotion, but again that's not related to refunds.

You're right, it does depend a lot on the game's genre. A fighting game, puzzle game, or simple arcade game is going to put everything it has right up front (although people with only an hour or so of experience will probably suck at the game and write it off as bad instead of striving to get better)

A story-based game or a strategy game, on the other hand... or even some hack-n-slash or action RPGs, those start slow. They intentionally stagger out the introduction of content so as not to overwhelm the player (and to give them things to look forward to). And yet in games of that genre you'll still see a lot of ~1 hour reviews saying that the game "didn't have enough content" so the reviewer didn't bother playing past the first level. Reviews like that based on impatience and ignorance really aren't going to help anyone make an informed decision on purchasing a game.

Reviews shouldn't be about harm and/or crying. But informing people on what to expect is one of the purposes of the review system, whether you paid for it or not isn't relevant to that point. You have some distorted view on what journalism is, if you can equate Steam's reviews to such, but yet, boil negative reviews down to these single points. If a game has a lot of refunds, why shouldn't they in turn inform the consumer why they pursued such refunds so they then can make an informed decision.

It isn't MY views that are distorted though, because I am 100% in agreement with you on what a review should be about. Telling people what the game is like, what it's strong points and flaws are, and helping them decide IF they will get enjoyment out of it.

Yet the majority of negative reviews I've read on steam are just people whining about their personal losses and expressing their long-term dislike of the developers (and I ask, why would those people continue buying their games, then, if they weren't intending to get it refunded from the start?).

The only time I see negative reviews that have reasonably made, objective criticisms they are from people who have played long enough to actually know what they are talking about, unbiased players who usually have as much good to say about the game as they do bad.

I respect those people a lot, even when they're downrating games I love.

your suggestions as you outline them, is less about abuse, and more about people who have refunded (or gotten for free) not being 'worthy' to review a title and that borders on elitism.

That's a fair accusation, I suppose. At the heart of it, I just find it really despicable for people to write reviews for things they aren't experienced with or qualified for.

Why should someone who sucks at a game be the loudest voice on how good it is? Why should someone who hasn't even played a game be the loudest voice on the content of it? Why should the opinion of someone who never wanted to like a game in the first place be counted at all when it is so biased?

But THOSE reviews SOMEHOW always get upvoted far above the actual sensible ones, positive or negative. It makes me really angry, because I have a lifelong passion for games and I hate to see peoples' pettiness and personal agendas get in the way of fair review.

[Dominus de Geth]

You know what kind of so called "reviews" I hate? the reviews like, "I launched the game, smoked a joint, got hit by a speeding bus in the middle of the forest, 11/10 will play again" and appearently this type of whatever you call it is all over steam reviews and they are always highly rated, wtf is wrong with people who upvote stuff like this? As some1 who likes to read what other experienced players are saying about a game I'm interesed it, this is a giant waste of time for me because it's hard to trust user reviews nowadays since so many of them are turning into paid journalists like Gamespot, IGN etc..

Another type I absolutely hate is reviews that only exist to express how angry the user is about the price of the game or other superficial stuff surrounding the game that doesn't actually have anything to do with what's in the game itself and they go on and on with the ranting.. What's wrong, don't like the price of the remaster? then have you maybe thought about, NOT FRACKING BUYING IT ?

[CrashFu]

Originally posted by Foaman:

You know what kind of so called "reviews" I hate? the reviews like, "I launched the game, smoked a joint, got hit by a speeding bus in the middle of the forest, 11/10 will play again" and appearently this type of whatever you call it is all over steam reviews and they are always highly rated, wtf is wrong with people who upvote stuff like this? As some1 who likes to read what other experienced players are saying about a game I'm interesed it, this is a giant waste of time for me because it's hard to trust user reviews nowadays since so many of them are turning into paid journalists like Gamespot, IGN etc..

Right? Like, they added the "Funny" rating to try and combat this but it didn't help because nobody ever rates just "funny" or "funny but not helpful" on a review. If someone finds a review funny they will almost ALWAYS also upvote it as helpful.

Another type I absolutely hate is reviews that only exist to express how angry the user is about the price of the game or other superficial stuff surrounding the game that doesn't actually have anything to do with what's in the game itself and they go on and on with the ranting.. What's wrong, don't like the price of the remaster? then have you maybe thought about, NOT FRACKING BUYING IT ?

Amen brother. I mean you can tack on a note about the value/cost at the end of a review or even just suggest waiting for a sale, but people don't seem to realize how subjective it is to just flat out say "this costs too much (for me) and that's my entire basis for not liking it".

You pay what you're WILLING TO for a game. Period. If you aren't absolutely sure a game will be worth your expense you should never spend money on it in the first place. Wait for a sale. Choose to not buy it! This goes double for everyone who uses kickstarter and then gripes that a game didn't meet their expectations even if it delivers everything the developers actually promised.

But hopefully with the new refund system we'll see less of THAT sort of review. If someone thinks they paid too much for a game they can just... get a refund? Buy it again later AFTER a sale, since the refund policies specifically state that IS NOT an abuse of the system??? We'll see.

[僕の名前 (仮)]

Why would anyone do that?

[Harichi]

Originally posted by CrashFu:

Or conversely, Shady Developer X gets a bunch of interns or bots to buy their game, give it BS positive reviews and then refund it and mass upvote/downvote like above, and you get the same result going the opposite way.

No point in refunding it, the developers that made the bots get the money anyway.

[klavier285]

I think once a game is refunded that persons review should be removed. I don't think it's fair to stroll in, bash the game then take your money and run. Nothing more annoying than reading a review from someone with 0.1 hours on record and say what garbage the game is and to avoid at all costs. Too many whiny gamers now a days and people can be absolutely brutal to devs.