False Tags need to be handled

[shadow_otm]

So apparently I can't vote on reviews for a month because some review I voted on had a user get deleted. This is really a weird way of addressing possible review issues, shotgunning your users because they maybe upvoted a funny review, and yet it seems the issue of false tags on games has been ignored for over 5 years or more.

So false tagging actually has been an issue since probably Gone Home with a lot of people feeling tricked given it had been given a "horror" tag. Since then a common abused tag is "sexual content" being used to any or no reason at all. Like really, check any game remotely anime in your library and you will likely find "sexual content" attached for the crime of if not just being anime style then having female characters that aren't in burkas. This has bled over into ever random game too it seems and Steam seemingly has not made a solution for it. At best all we can do is flag a bad tag and hope that maybe at some point enough people will do the same... but the system threshold is just too high to reach for most games not to mention most users are not likely to care enough to check their back catalog or even look at tags unless they're looking for something specific.

So what -could- Steam do to at least help?
First off I would say allow owners of a game to contest at least certain tags. Though this is unlikely to help many older games, newer releases on Steam can try to clean out bad tags early on.
Consider lowering the threshold for a review of a tag especially on older games that see less traffic on the store.
Attempt to identify accounts that are abusing the system and suspend of ban them from participating in tags. As you apparently have something to do this with reviews it doesn't seem a stretch to do. Potentially you need to flag an review when an account has near exclusively used one or a few tags exclusively especially taking care to identify specific tags that could be considered damaging to a game or limiting it's audience such as "sexual content." You may also need to check for potential bot accounts that have few if any purchases but tag and upvote tags with lightning speed.

Okay, there is my suggestion. Might just be yelling into the wind but wanted to put it out there.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

The upvote ban is from when users were spreading malicious links in reviews and gullible/troll users were upvoting them in droves.

As for incorrectly applied tags, report them and Valve will get around to removing them. They do it all the time for Visual Novel and Anime users troll on store pages.

[K13Cove]

Giving users agency over something they have no business in having agency over like tags wasn't the most shrewd decision. Just have developers set the tags instead. There's room for the developers tagging incorrectly too, but considerably less than that of random users.

I'm aware developers can already add/remove tags at their discretion, but adding a mostly detrimental variable in regular user tagging for them to moderate does no one any favours.

[Seraphita]

This is funny and all that until it affects your searches for when you need a game. Searching for an adult game is usually worse because you get all of these weird games that people tagged for the lols. The opposite is also true if people didn't tag safe games correctly.

Not even sure if it's possible to report a tag. Reporting a store page is not a good idea.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Seraphita:

This is funny and all that until it affects your searches for when you need a game. Searching for an adult game is usually worse because you get all of these weird games that people tagged for the lols. The opposite is also true if people didn't tag safe games correctly.

Not even sure if it's possible to report a tag. Reporting a store page is not a good idea.

You can report the tags. There is a flag button on them.

[kitt]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

The upvote ban is from when users were spreading malicious links in reviews and gullible/troll users were upvoting them in droves.

As for incorrectly applied tags, report them and Valve will get around to removing them. They do it all the time for Visual Novel and Anime users troll on store pages.

:qr:

yet reviews can be edited after the fact..

just another case that shows how lazy Valve is since they can literally see the changes etc and if a scam link or whatever was inserted later on (or racist remarks or whatever floats your boat).

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by kitt:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

The upvote ban is from when users were spreading malicious links in reviews and gullible/troll users were upvoting them in droves.

As for incorrectly applied tags, report them and Valve will get around to removing them. They do it all the time for Visual Novel and Anime users troll on store pages.

yet reviews can be edited after the fact..

just another case that shows how lazy Valve is since they can literally see the changes etc and if a scam link or whatever was inserted later on (or racist remarks or whatever floats your boat).

I posted why it was initially added. I never said anything otherwise.

[null]

Originally posted by C10 Revamp:

Just have developers set the tags instead. There's room for the developers tagging incorrectly too, but considerably less than that of random users.

Devs often don't know all the best tags to expose the game correctly. New tags might emerge years after devs stop supporting a game. Like I was thinking of a good tag to represent "summoner"/"pet-master"/"minion-master" focused (not just summon and forget) gameplay. I still don't know what to call it.

Also, consider less obviously wrong tags.
I've been seeing "Souls-like" next to pretty much every difficult game released in past few years . Ender Lillies or Remanant from ashes share a slow dodge and few other similarities in smaller ways, but both of these games don't have the tight dodge windows and the need to learn every enemy to win. Hollow knight (also has that tag) is not even remotely similar to souls-likes.

On one hand, if people see similarities, other people looking for souls-likes might find it and enjoy those similarities (so the tag works right to expose the game). On the other hand it's an inaccurate tag that deters people who dislike particular aspects of souls-likes that are not present in the other 2 games.

[K13Cove]

Originally posted by null:

Devs often don't know all the best tags to expose the game correctly. New tags might emerge years after devs stop supporting a game. Like I was thinking of a good tag to represent "summoner"/"pet-master"/"minion-master" focused (not just summon and forget) gameplay. I still don't know what to call it.

Also, consider less obviously wrong tags.
I've been seeing "Souls-like" next to pretty much every difficult game released in past few years . Ender Lillies or Remanant from ashes share a slow dodge and few other similarities in smaller ways, but both of these games don't have the tight dodge windows and the need to learn every enemy to win. Hollow knight (also has that tag) is not even remotely similar to souls-likes.

On one hand, if people see similarities, other people looking for souls-likes might find it and enjoy those similarities (so the tag works right to expose the game). On the other hand it's an inaccurate tag that deters people who dislike particular aspects of souls-likes that are not present in the other 2 games.

Evidently, neither do the users. It's not so much about exposure, more about just tagging games correctly. Developers may not use every applicable tag at their disposal, but they can certainly get the basics down. They aren't likely to go around tagging their racing and sports games as "memes", "dating sim", "survival horror" and "comedy".

Besides, when every game has every tag, none of them have tags. I think an ocean of incorrect tags generates more distrust than games potentially not having more obscure and advanced tags.

Hollow Knight has the "souls-like" tag because it shares some minor aesthetic and mechanical aspects with the Souls series. If the tagging is wrong in that instance, then I can at least tell that it was added with genuine reasoning, rather than in jest.

[stmpunk]

Originally posted by DUOSiov:

Giving users agency over something they have no business in having agency over like tags wasn't the most shrewd decision. Just have developers set the tags instead. There's room for the developers tagging incorrectly too, but considerably less than that of random users.

I'm aware developers can already add/remove tags at their discretion, but adding a mostly detrimental variable in regular user tagging for them to moderate does no one any favours.

the issue isn't on the user pool but rather developers who use false-tags and false-genre classifications for games that aren't even remotely fitting for said genre.
The salt on injury that destroyed my new-game discovery browsing was the spam of "RPG" on basically every single effing game on earth.
RPGs haven't been a reality in over a decade for Triple A devs, yet a massive roster of their games soldiers on falsely listed as RPGs while access media shills keep calling them RPGs when they are not. - It's basically a conspiracy that started once several publishers realized how successful digital RPGs used to be - Spans from old TES to several now defunct franchises like KOTOR & Vampire The Masquerade. These games had a reverese success ratio where the initial releases due to several factors didn't sell well while they picked up "late-bloom" sale bombs over the years (because these games were actually good, and ppl started discovering RPGs).

Today, we have the market flooded with pseudo-RPGs and "fake-RPGs" made by triple As Devs & Publishers, of which the vast majority (numerically) would be easily ranked "flaming garbage" by RPG standards (ignoring the other elements). There's a reason several formerly RPG franchises used to switch from RPG into "ARPG" once they moved away from the OG design required for them to be classified as such focusing more on the Action. Today it's a hot mess because not even the gaming pseudo-critics can actually put in words what defines a RPG properly, and such ignorance has been abused by Publishers who still believe shoehorning their crap games into RPG category makes them sell more - maybe it's in part a truth considering the wide-spread bad taste on most game buyers, but that still annoys the hell outta me

To give a few examples, TW3 is a ARPG, very distant from the RPG game design required for it to be an actual RPG, stuff like CK3, which was never in the entire life-span of the franchise a RPG, or the old RTS Arthurian title of which I can't remember the name, which was also never a RPG under any way shape or form. Yet they are there, listed, ignored, since forever... All in all, it's like searching for unclassified / unnamed-genres in music - you'll never find tunes that resonate with it because it's impossible to list them.

When this started happening I was in Uni (Game Dev degree), I did an entire paper explaining methodologically what makes a video-game into a RPG, and the gist / sum of it's quite simple honestly: If it could be replicated on a Table Top enviroment = RPG - if not IT'S NOT AN EFFING RPG.

This is a uneducated report of this phenomenom over a decade late:
https://bossrush.net/2023/01/14/role-playing-game-is-no-longer-a-genre/

[Wren]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.