[SCAM] Games buying reviews- why doesn't Steam do anything? Is it fraud?

[Rain :)]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1144200/Ready_or_Not/

Go here, and ctrl+f for "show graph"

Click on that, and look at the reviews recently. Doesn't that look blatantly suspicious to anyone? Mind you, I know they're not genuine because the game is objectively ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. This was one of the games that's a recruitment campaign in disguise, meant to drive people into understaffed police departments, hence why Steam even allows a game of that quality on their page at the price it's listed at.

I could get into the plethora of reasons why it's terrible, but so much of it is a janky mess it'd actually be easier to list the small amount of redeeming qualities it has.

Anyways, is botting for fake reviews fraud? Would steam take legal action- or would they continue taking money from the gov that's pushing it as a recruitment tool?

[someone]

idk

[Swarmfly]

How is this accomplished exactly? I don't see the option to buy any.

[Rain :)]

Just a quick example of a blatant bot/bought review:

This "user's" review: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Liberteen90/recommended/1144200/

Now let's dissect what they say and when the review was left.

If you are the type of player that enjoys tactical shooters, this game is for you.

I've played Ready or Not in its early days and it's safe to say that the game has come a long way since then.

It's quite fun to team up with your friends and play together.

You can't go wrong with Ready or Not. It's a solid 8.5/10 to me.

Okay. They apparently played it in the old days- they only have 9.2 hours on record. Posted on the 28th of November; they haven't played the game in the last 2 weeks.

Now it gets stranger. Look at their acheivements.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/Liberteen90/stats/1144200/?tab=achievements

They have none. It should be noted that one achievement is unlocked by arresting a civilian- something that has to be done in the very first mission, and that achievement was present in "the old days"

this is very clearly bot/bought reviews... will Steam do anything?

[Rain :)]

Originally posted by Swarmfly:

How is this accomplished exactly? I don't see the option to buy any.

Instagram doesn't give you the option to buy likes, either. Don't be naive. These things exist- of course they're not Valve sponsored botnets, just as Instagram doesn't have Meta sponsored botnets for likes.

[Swarmfly]

Originally posted by Rain :):

Originally posted by Swarmfly:

How is this accomplished exactly? I don't see the option to buy any.

Instagram doesn't give you the option to buy likes, either. Don't be naive. These things exist- of course they're not Valve sponsored botnets, just as Instagram doesn't have Meta sponsored botnets for likes.

Would be really nice if I could buy a review or two -- lucrative means of earning awards indeed.

[Rain :)]

Originally posted by Midori:

Most of the reviews around that time frame (if you click on the graph) don't seem too suspicious to me and I dunno if an already-successful game would buy them.

Paid reviews do exist though, primarily for scam games.

G2A and other grey market sites offer "10 Premium steam keys!" whose prerequisites are "The game is over £30" and "The total review score is over 70%"

So they make a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ throwaway game, such as the now-deleted https://steamcommunity.com/app/2715630/ 💀 and then overprice it and buy enough positive reviews so the total review score reaches 70%, so it meets the terms for these key bundles.

You don't find it weird that the negative reviews didn't scale like the positive reviews did, despite the game not receiving an update?

[Rain :)]

Originally posted by Midori:

Originally posted by Rain :):

You don't find it weird that the negative reviews didn't scale like the positive reviews did, despite the game not receiving an update?

Well it's on sale right now so idk

That wouldn't change the proportion of positive and negative reviews

[Crazy Tiger]

"a game I don't like is getting reviews I don't like", the thread...

[Rain :)]

Originally posted by Midori:

Originally posted by Rain :):

That wouldn't change the proportion of positive and negative reviews

Probably would, I've seen many people negative rate because they didn't think it was worth the retail price

On the 26th of November, the game had 59 reviews that day. 51:8 Positive:Negative

The very next day, 1,091 | 1,072:19

That's an increase 1,749% in total reviews. The positive reviews increased 2,002.0%, while the negative barely doubled. This is hardly a matter of opinion.

Then the next day, 1,830 reviews. 1,796:34. An increase of 67% in both positive reviews and total reviews from the last day. From the day before that, an increase of 3,001% in total reviews. 3,421% in positive reviews

This is very clearly the product of bot reviews.

[Nuheni]

Every major tv, movie, music and game company have done it for years.
Amazon deleted all of the negative reviews for almost 3 weeks after launch of The rings of power on their own company IMDB before they let some of them trough to make it seem more accurate.
House of dragons had a ton of positive reviews on accounts that where created the same day, had only one review and shared the same ip before they got rewritten to name a couple.

Which is part of the reason i skim the positive ones and only read the negatives properly.

[Chimaera]

They played the supporter edition which was removed when the official version was released

[Rain :)]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

"a game I don't like is getting reviews I don't like", the thread...

If you want to view it that way, but the math says you're wrong. Either way, the game is objectively a scam. The AI, both friendly and enemy, BARELY functions- oftentimes the friendly AI will get themselves killed by doing things that are so indescribably stupid, costing you the mission. A prominent example is trying to arrest people while turning their backs to a doorway to a room which hasn't been cleared, with absolutely no way to stop them from restraining whoever it is they're going to arrest. No button, no stop, no freeze, no redirect- nothing. They just go and get themselves killed. That's game-breaking. They don't know how to reload shotguns- they need to be told what to do multiple times when doing an entry on doors- sometimes they just freeze on a joint entry and let one team push alone while they stare at a door. The game is a broken mess of jank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcA7Nwa1L9I

Here's what's not in the game from what they showed:

Team size limited to 5
No FPV in the APC, or dismounting the APC
No PvP multiplayer at all
No server browser
No dedicated servers
No cohesive singleplayer story- only a progressive level selector with no story elements, choices, characters, etc.
No peeking doors to lob a grenade in
No drones
No sniper unit
No 9 bangs
No cutting the power to make NVG's useful
All enemies see perfectly in the dark anyways
No tactical ladders
No running with your gun readied
No incrementally changing speed
There's no velocity simulation- bullets have a pen number, and the environment has a pen number. If the bullet's pen number is bigger than the environments, it'll continue pen until it hits something that stops it- meaning nothing slows the bullets down.

Mathematically, there's actually more things that aren't in the game which they talked about, relative to things that are

[Rain :)]

Originally posted by Chimaera:

They played the supporter edition which was removed when the official version was released

Even if, you don't find it weird that they're reviewing a game that they don't have any achievements in, and haven't played a single time within the last two weeks? Really? That doesn't set off any alarm bells for you?

[Chimaera]

Originally posted by Rain :):

Originally posted by Chimaera:

They played the supporter edition which was removed when the official version was released

Even if, you don't find it weird that they're reviewing a game that they don't have any achievements in, and haven't played a single time within the last two weeks? Really? That doesn't set off any alarm bells for you?

Not really just means they idled the game for trading cards then nominated the game for steam awards because it's a good game and they reviewed it for the badge

[Rain :)]

Originally posted by Midori:

Originally posted by Rain :):

On the 26th of November, the game had 59 reviews that day. 51:8 Positive:Negative

The very next day, 1,091 | 1,072:19

That's an increase 1,749% in total reviews. The positive reviews increased 2,002.0%, while the negative barely doubled. This is hardly a matter of opinion.

Then the next day, 1,830 reviews. 1,796:34. An increase of 67% in both positive reviews and total reviews from the last day. From the day before that, an increase of 3,001% in total reviews. 3,421% in positive reviews

This is very clearly the product of bot reviews.

Could you point me to some more dubious bot reviews? They're usually pretty easy to spot but I can't see any.

The example you showed comes from an account with 500+ games (filled with good ones, not just shovelware) and a very full active screenshot section implying they are not a "user' but a user.

Don't underestimate the tech we have today

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh1850

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimulator

That Reddit is comprised entirely of bots emulating users. If you had no idea, you wouldn't think twice

Odds are, if the accounts are genuine, it's people being paid or incentivized to loan their accounts for the review, or maybe even given keys for games in return for a positive review. Obviously I can't post links to these places, as it'll get the post flagged and censored, but you can easily search for these. Similar to the GTA website where the T isn't for theft

tbh after skimming through the pre-order trailer, I couldn't be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to now go skim more comments, but you can feel free to. Just go to the graph, and click on the day where it spiked massively. Go look at the comments, and start opening reviews in new tabs, then go to their profiles and look for both hours played and achievements unlocked if you're really curious. It should be apparent.

Again, either way, the math doesn't support the proportional shift all of a sudden- it's incredibly bizarre, and imo, irrefutably indicative of nefarious bot use