Problems With The Tools Against Review Bombing

[Arjen]

Recently, the developers of Skullgirls censored and removed some content from their game, which includes crowdfunded content. The audience responded to this anti-consumer update by negatively reviewing the game based on its changes in content, but now all those reviews have been marked as "irrelevant" and are no longer included.

I think it's vital for Steam to distinguish between an actual review bombing (ie, some developer posts an opinion on Twitter separate from the game, and irate fans try to hurt the dev by proxy) and a genuine audience response (thousands of negative reviews about an actual update that affects the actual content of the game).I don't think these reviews should be marked as irrelevant while hilarious positive reviews with comments like "boobs" or "i found this game through porn" are apparently relevant enough to keep up.

So my suggestion is, please allow discussion and argument about whether or not a flood of negative reviews is "irrelevant" or not before just throwing thousands of reviews in the bin. In this case, it's a justified response to an update that goes against the tone of the game and the wishes of people who crowdfunded this game to begin with.

I understand not everyone may agree with the fans, but the fact is that these are genuine frustrations from the actual audience, not a hate campaign of irrelevant comments. Valve, please acknowledge the difference.

(Changed the title from 'Abusing the Tools' to 'Problems with the Tools,' so as to not insinuate it was the developers censoring the criticism)

[Tito Shivan]

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

- Nah, it's not really relevant what content was removed

Nah, It absolutely is.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

- The supposed Nazi-esque (I like how we've downgraded from Nazi to Nazi-esque, maybe you can start calling it just "authoritarian" next) imagery is literally a red umbrella.

It's also a dogwhistle. Something the devs are not comfortable having in this day and age.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

- Do you know what 'dogwhistling' actually means? You're insinuating that the devs who included the armband were secretly signalling that they agree with or sympathize with Nazis

The fact they've removed them tells they don't want to be taken as such.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

- You keep saying you've owned and played the game since release, but it doesn't really add any credibility to your point of view. Also, you were okay playing this game for TEN YEARS when it had the "little girl panties" and "Nazi dogwhistling"? It doesn't really reflect well on you in that case.

I can enjoy a game and its mechanics over the little cringy edgy things it has.
I've also played KoF for longer and believe its breast physics is a cringy part of the game I woudn't mind gone.

[Arjen]

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

Nah, It absolutely is.

And why is that? You've made no compelling argument for it.

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

It's also a dogwhistle. Something the devs are not comfortable having in this day and age.

Again, that is not what a dogwhistle is. A dogwhistle is called a dogwhistle because it's a secret symbol, gesture or phrase between people of a given ideology that seems completely harmless to outside observers. It's named after, well, dogwhistles - whistles that create a sound of a high pitch that humans cannot hear, but dogs can. This, on the other hand, is an explicit parody. It's making a joke of the subject. It couldn't possibly be any LESS of a dogwhistle because everyone already knew what it's a parody of.

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

The fact they've removed them tells they don't want to be taken as such.

This is circular reasoning. This argument boils down to "them taking it down proves that it was bad." In their own words, they just don't want the association. No one actually thought they were promoting Nazism, the only people suggesting this are people like you who are reaching for any reason to dismiss the critique.

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

I can enjoy a game and its mechanics over the little cringy edgy things it has.
I've also played KoF for longer and believe its breast physics is a cringy part of the game I woudn't mind gone.

I wonder if you're noticing what you've done here? When people complain about the removals, they're some kind of chuds who just want "little girl panties" and "Nazi imagery," but when you defend your own playing the game for 10 years, suddenly they're just "little cringy edgy things." If they're just "little cringy edgy things," then why not let people enjoy them and not want them removed after 10 years?

Tito, I really want to give your point of view the time of day, but now you're doing what Tanoomba is doing and denying the basic definitions of words (ie dogwhistle), depending on character attacks and so on. Similar to Tanoomba, unless you can bring real arguments to the table, this will be my last response to you. Hope you have a good day though!

[CiccioCc]

Watch out cause this suggestion has been derailed, from these regulars, because of what type of content was removed from the game. No, it's not the point. Can you confirm the main reason for reviewing it, was that? No. Can you confirm all the reviews automatically hidden by default have been written specifically because of that? No.

Someone's reviewing activity was punished because it ended, casually, in that time period.
That is what is this suggestion about. Treat all the individual reviews as a single block of venting users.

[QUAKETALLICA]

Review Bombing doesn't exist. It's a made up term to censor voices. Steam doesn't care about real reviews. They care about as many positive "Likes" as possible to inflate the ratings and trick unsuspecting consumers into thinking people have a higher opinion of it than actually do. Doesn't matter if you write a thoughtful essay or a one word meme. As long as it helps them make money, they don't care.

[Arjen]

CiccioCc님이 먼저 게시:

Watch out cause this suggestion has been derailed, from these regulars, because of what type of content was removed from the game. No, it's not the point. Can you confirm the main reason for reviewing it, was that? No. Can you confirm all the reviews automatically hidden by default have been written specifically because of that? No.

Someone's reviewing activity was punished because it ended, casually, in that time period.
That is what is this suggestion about. Treat all the individual reviews as a single block of venting users.

Yeah. I do think it's important to emphasize that while there has been a lot of discussion about the content that was removed, the following points have not successfully been disputed:

- The negative reviews are a response to an actual update of actual content in the game.
- Thus, the reviews are relevant and ought not be removed from default view. I consider this a false positive in the system.
- As it is, the system will hide reviews to undesired changes and removals made by developers after release. Thus, it needs to be altered or refined.

[Arjen]

QUAKETALLICA님이 먼저 게시:

Review Bombing doesn't exist. It's a made up term to censor voices. Steam doesn't care about real reviews. They care about as many positive "Likes" as possible to inflate the ratings and trick unsuspecting consumers into thinking people have a higher opinion of it than actually do. Doesn't matter if you write a thoughtful essay or a one word meme. As long as it helps them make money, they don't care.

I sympathize with your frustration, but I don't think this is a helpful attitude. I contacted Steam Support and they were polite and even suggested that I should post a thread raising the issue here, so I did. They could've easily ignored me if they didn't care at all.

[QUAKETALLICA]

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

QUAKETALLICA님이 먼저 게시:

Review Bombing doesn't exist. It's a made up term to censor voices. Steam doesn't care about real reviews. They care about as many positive "Likes" as possible to inflate the ratings and trick unsuspecting consumers into thinking people have a higher opinion of it than actually do. Doesn't matter if you write a thoughtful essay or a one word meme. As long as it helps them make money, they don't care.

I sympathize with your frustration, but I don't think this is a helpful attitude. I contacted Steam Support and they were polite and even suggested that I should post a thread raising the issue here, so I did. They could've easily ignored me if they didn't care at all.

I'm not talking about your customer service support agent. You can look at how Valve has programmed Steam. I don't know if you've noticed but ever since two major updates ago they started adding pop-ups in every game in your library asking you to leave a review. It only appears if you haven't done it, or if you left a negative review. They won't stop annoying you until you give it a positive review. Shortly after, actual reviews became harder to find under gibberish "reviews" people leave just to get the pop-ups to go away.

[Arjen]

QUAKETALLICA님이 먼저 게시:

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

I sympathize with your frustration, but I don't think this is a helpful attitude. I contacted Steam Support and they were polite and even suggested that I should post a thread raising the issue here, so I did. They could've easily ignored me if they didn't care at all.

I'm not talking about your customer service support agent. You can look at how Valve has programmed Steam. I don't know if you've noticed but ever since two major updates ago they started adding pop-ups in every game in your library asking you to leave a review. It only appears if you haven't done it, or if you left a negative review. They won't stop annoying you until you give it a positive review. Shortly after, actual reviews became harder to find under gibberish "reviews" people leave just to get the pop-ups to go away.

It's true that Steam thrives on reviews, and positive reviews help sell games. Regardless, I think we can have a conversation about this specific system that's now removing reviews that are actually responding to very real content changes and removals. If we take an absolutely cynical attitude towards Steam, then what's the point of asking for change and discussing it?

[Loot Hunter]

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

nazi dogwhistling while in game.

Ah, so THAT was the reason why Germany allowing an uncensored version of Wolfenstein-3D was celebrated?

[Loot Hunter]

QUAKETALLICA님이 먼저 게시:

Review Bombing doesn't exist.

To be fair, initially, Review Bombing was a term used for negative reviews that were
made for a reason not related to the game itself. Like, when people made negative reviews for Crusader Kings when Paradox did some things to Stellaris, or when a developer was fired from a team that made Subnautica and people downvoted Subnautica game for what devs did.

But yeah, today people just call every negative reviewing in masse a "review bombing", especially when they don't agree with the reason for those negative reviews. And they don't care if that reason is related to the game or not.

[Sasori Kigaru]

Loot Hunter님이 먼저 게시:

QUAKETALLICA님이 먼저 게시:

Review Bombing doesn't exist.

To be fair, initially, Review Bombing was a term used for negative reviews that were
made for a reason not related to the game itself. Like, when people made negative reviews for Crusader Kings when Paradox did some things to Stellaris, or when a developer was fired from a team that made Subnautica and people downvoted Subnautica game for what devs did.

But yeah, today people just call every negative reviewing in masse a "review bombing", especially when they don't agree with the reason for those negative reviews. And they don't care if that reason is related to the game or not.

If I recall correctly, steam implemented off topic reviews when people massively review bombed Borderlands 1&2 because of a decision made with the third game that couldn't even be accessed on steam at the time due to the Epic Exclusivity deal.

[Start_Running]

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

Crazy Tiger님이 먼저 게시:

The reviews aren't thrown in the bin. They're still there, ready for everybody to read. They only stop counting for the average rating, but that's a setting that can easily be disabled.

Whether the action of Valve is justified or not is subjective anyway.

They're hidden by default and no longer count towards the overall score. It can be disabled but most people won't look beyond the initial page. It's not a desirable outcome for the people who wrote those reviews.

Because most people don't give a flying fig about the latest drama of the week. They just want to know if the game is fun.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

Also, no, it's not subjective. The reviews are objectively not irrelevant.

Then you don't know what objective and sibjective mean. I can objectively state that complaints about the lack of fan-service in a fighting game are quite irrelevant to me.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

They are about an actual update of the actual game that removes actual paid content. It couldn't be more relevant. Plenty of the reviews still up are also definitely not relevant either (again, some of the most "helpful" positive reviews just talk about boobs or porn).

The only thing that was removed was jiggle physics and panty-shots.

[Tanoomba]

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

you just want to attack people's motivation, rather than their actual position.

Their "position" exists because of and in support of their motivation. They're upset that they can't see underage panties any more, so they've decided to dress that up in a misguided and misinformed crusade about "censorship" and "content removal".

And let's be clear here, their motivation is not being addressed instead of their position. Their position is wrong, both factually and conceptually, as has been shown. But it's definitely worth pointing out that the underlying reason why this position is so weak is because it's being presented in bad faith to try to add legitimacy to wanting underage panty shots.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

The fact is that a lot of content was altered or removed.

No, not a lot. The game is fundamentally the same it has always been. In fact, I'd bet the majority of Skullgirls players wouldn't notice anything's changed at all.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

If it was in the game, it was part of the game and people paid for it, then it is their right to be frustrated when it's removed.

No, that's not how it works. When you buy a game, you don't buy every individual feature, graphic or sound that the game contains. Nobody paid for underage panty shots. Everybody agreed to the licensing agreement that explains that the game is subject to change. It's pretty telling that you haven't acknowledged that everyone already agreed to exactly what's happening in favor of pushing this false "but they PAID for the panty shots" narrative.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

As for panty shots, Skullgirls is a very fanservicey game and always has been.

And still is!

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

There's no point scrubbing parts of the fanservice for arbitrary reasons.

They're "arbitrary" to YOU. But see, it wasn't your decision to make and you are not owed only reasons you approve of.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

I think everyone is perfectly aware of the reasons. They're just not very good reasons.

... To YOU. They're perfectly reasonable to me.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

Yeah. I do think it's important to emphasize that while there has been a lot of discussion about the content that was removed, the following points have not successfully been disputed:

- The negative reviews are a response to an actual update of actual content in the game.

It's a little hypocritical for you to say this. The "content" in question (at least what's gotten people the most riled up) is underage panty shots. And you literally just finished ranting about how it's not about the content at all, that it's really about principle and being anti-censorship. So which is it? Is it about missing panty shots (which is about the game, but not relevant to the average user), or is it about taking a stand against censorship and demanding "paid for" content be left untouched (which is not about the game and therefore irrelevant to the average user)?

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

- Thus, the reviews are relevant and ought not be removed from default view. I consider this a false positive in the system.

It's not. It's yet another in a long line of entitled tantrums that gamers often throw when they want a bad guy to rally against. I've seen the reviews (they're all still there). They are not hiding that they want to see the devs punished.

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

- As it is, the system will hide reviews to undesired changes and removals made by developers after release. Thus, it needs to be altered or refined.

System's fine and working as intended. Again, because I can't stress this enough: The game's fundamentally the same as it's always been. The changes made are negligible and don't affect the gameplay at all. The game did not become worse due to these changes, and a plummeting aggregate would actually be misleading, giving the impression that the game is no longer fun any more or has changed in fundamental ways that made it harder to enjoy.

You say these points have not "successfully been disputed", but that's because there is no counter-point you would consider adequate. You want to believe you've been wronged, so anything that suggest otherwise will be dismissed as invalid by default.

[Tanoomba]

QUAKETALLICA님이 먼저 게시:

Review Bombing doesn't exist. It's a made up term to censor voices.

No, it absolutely exists. And nobody's voices are being censored. Their reviews are all still there, and they can all still be read. They're just not going to affect the game's aggregate by default because they aren't relevant to the average user wanting to know if a game will appeal to them or not.

QUAKETALLICA님이 먼저 게시:

Steam doesn't care about real reviews. They care about as many positive "Likes" as possible to inflate the ratings and trick unsuspecting consumers into thinking people have a higher opinion of it than actually do.

If that were true, they wouldn't have changed the system so reviews for games received through keys no longer count towards the aggregate. They wouldn't have punished (and in some cases, outright banned) developers who abused the system to inflate their positive reviews.

Also, it's worth noting that there exist games that cover the entire spectrum of player reception, from "Overwhelmingly negative" to "Overwhelmingly positive" and everything in between. Steam understands that, in order to be useful, a review system needs to reflect the actual opinions of the player base and be relevant and useful to potential buyers. The review bomb filter HELPS that be the case, it doesn't hinder it.

[Start_Running]

Tanoomba님이 먼저 게시:

Arjen님이 먼저 게시:

you just want to attack people's motivation, rather than their actual position.

Their "position" exists because of and in support of their motivation. They're upset that they can't see underage panties any more, so they've decided to dress that up in a misguided and misinformed crusade about "censorship" and "content removal".

To be fair the game was originally and strongly marketed on its fan service so it'is understandable. I mean it; like if they removes jiggle-physics in the DOA games.

I'm not too happy about the change myself but I can see the reasoning behind it and all I can say is the devs should have at least created a DLC pack that allows us to dd the fanservice back in.

But I do not fret since I'm quite sure we'll see fan patches.