Next step: Fuck'em, you gotta pay us some extra to review!
Seriously, what a weird step to take...
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Cause some "devs" buy "promotion" gifts and give them for positive reviews 😮
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Well that sounds stupid but... why not ban them and remove their games from steam instead of changing the entire system?
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They do ban developers & publishers who are found doing this. The issue is that it's often quite hard to prove. Not defending the new change, mind you.
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Cause that costs manpower.
Valve rather likes crappy automated systems (support bots, mobile authenticator, blanketsweeping all keyactivations away) that save them having to do actual work.
Cause it's better to just shit on your customers than actually HIRE support personal.
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Well, it kinda becomes ludicrous watching Valve rather trying to save that extra buck by implementing such idiotic stuff than hiring some real support staff... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Some "devs" give keys if you buy their game in steam store, write positive review and make refund 😮
So next step i think:
Review don't count if u make a refund
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In that case the logic step would be Valve contacting the dev to see why their game has so high refund rate (and from people who left a positive review.... nothing suspicious there..)
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Review don't count if u make a refund
Except that these are potentially valuable reviews. If someone hated a game enough to refund it, then they probably have some good information to give out in a review.
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agree. So maybe
"Positive review don't count if u make a refund"
😊
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To some degree that makes sense, however some games are short and people refund it, but enjoyed the game itself (Refunct for example). Also in some cases you may be able to recommend the game but not like the genre or whatever yourself. For example: if I tried out Stardew Valley and felt that the game was of high quality and many customers would enjoy their purchase, but the genre was something I did not like myself, I could give it a positive review noting that it was not my cup of tea.
Also have a bit of a problem with quickly deleting a game if there are fake reviews instead of DELETING THE REVIEWS THEMSELVES. It would not be hard to have a report feature for troll reviews instead which would be moderated by a sort of community support, which they could apply for the position and be able to keep it if they continue to show they aren't abusing the power. This would fix the problem without additional support in Valve.
Also would prevent the potential issue I've known about for a while: You could get a game to be taken down for fake reviews if you create a bunch of steam accounts under a different IP address than your main account, buy a copy for each, then refund. Poof, you've screwed over another human being.
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Of course some people hate a game enough without even playing it to buy, run 5m, trash, then refund. Very prominent actually. Or they complain about tech-issues (no place in review) without even spending 5m in the forums to find the very obvious answer to their issue (older games have this a lot).
I usually find people who refunded and reviewed the least useful.
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" Review don't count if u make a refund "
That would be a step that actually MAKES sense for a change. Considering the often abused refund-trolling going about that's far more prominent than devs giving keys for positive reviews.
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OMG, my cat would go crazy for something like that...if I had a cat, that is. :(
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Now you made me a teeny, tiny bit sad that you don't have a cat.
Somehow I always assumed all you people with cat avatars either are or own support cats.
I know that theory makes no sense whatsoever since I do have a dog avatar and I don't have a dog myself (beside our family dog who lives with my parents) I might be one though for all that you know ^^ but that's still how I perceived it :D
Edit: I would rather use some piece of wood or something like that to poke out of the holes though instead of my finger. Don't won't kitty to get too excited from playing and use her claws :D
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Somehow I always assumed all you people with cat avatars either are or
ownsupport cats.
Your assumption is correct, but I don't own/support a cat. Do the math. :p
Seriously, though, my wife is allergic...so no cats for me. :(
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Can I do a spoiler quote ? I guess I'll just do it. YOLO
Seriously, though, my wife is allergic...so no cats for me. :(
So am I although they have to get really close for me to notice. Luckily it's only cats for me because from what I've heard cat and dog hair allergy usually go together which would suck in my case because my family had dogs all my life :)
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all you people with cat avatars either are or own support cats.
Seems feasible. After all, I either am or support skeletons.
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But that One Piece douche couldn't hold a candle to Skeletor :D
And before the blacklists start rolling in: I stopped watching One Piece before they reach the Zombie Island so I actually can't tell :P
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I've never watched One Piece (of crap) because it's so appropriately named.
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Well, I used to watch stuff like Dragonball Z or One Piece when I was younger but at some point I became bored with over the top Anime shows where the hero just has to think a single thought to destroy a whole galaxy.
Same goes for "You have never fought a boss that big" video games like Asura's Wrath.
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If you liked Dragonball Z, do NOT watch Dragonball Super. It's extremely painful to see the characters act like idiotic weaklings.
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I'm a DBZ fan. DB super is bad but still has it's good moments. I'm watching Naruto now Episode 208 (Naruto is just amazing). One punch man Season 1 finished 2 days ago. :)
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I did not intent to. I had already noticed when GT came out that it wasn't the same for me anymore and nowadays it would probably drive me crazy that they take 4 episodes to power up for a simple Kamehameha :D
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GT wasn't made by the creator of Dragonball, thus it isn't canon (as far as we know).
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Brook after time skip is badass, he went one on one against big mom, you need serious balls to do that, oh wait he has no balls, skull joke! ^^
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I'll have to trust you on that ;) I stopped watching pretty much after they recruit Franky or rather when Nico Robbin leaves the crew (temporarily I assume) so I don't think Big Mom has been introduced yet.
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You stopped just before one of the most epic arcs of one piece :(
Marine ford and Enies lobies arcs are one of the most epic ones, where enies lobies is the earlier one but still considerd the best by most. Very much emotional stuff and epicness going on there. Its the place where many of the crew show there new trump cards!
One other epic thing recently revealed is why Sanji called himself mister prince during the dendenmushi call with crocodile during the allabasta arc ^^ (15 years appart!)
I would say, its worth to take it back up again :)
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I might give it another go... Guess there was too much emotional stuff for me (or rather what my buddies and I refer to as Aunt May) in the flooded city (gonna stop looking up proper names now for times sake) with Lysop leaving the crew over loosing the first Flying Lamb.
But maybe I just watched too much One Piece in one go, that has happened to me with a couple of shows and made me lose intererst. I think I watched everything from Navarone Island to where I stopped in one go.
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just to get the details right flooded city = place of frankie? (if yes, water 7)
Lysop is I think ussop (the snipper and had a fight with luffy in water 7)
Flying lamb? is going merry, the ship?
^^
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Yeah, I'm using the german / english names because that's how I first saw the show.
On a sidenote even if it objectively maybe makes no sense but the name Luffy even seems a little racist to me because I've come to known that character as Ruffy and there is this stereotype that (some?) Asians have difficulties pronouncing an R so it always felt a little weird to me that he's called Luffy in the original version :D
Yeah, I was referring to Water 7 with flooded city. I should have rather called it the occasionally flooded city.
Lysop is indeed Ussop and I didn't even know the ship is called Going Merry in English. So it's only called Flying Lamb in german or also in English and Going Merry is literally translated from the original version ?
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almost literally, japanese is "merry go" or something like that
https://www.youtube.com/embed/RR0S4suYrZ0?start=5&end=8
This is the japenese anime and you hear luffy (your case ruffy) say merry go, going merry sounds better in english ^^
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And in the end, they probably loose more money from disgruntled customers that seek elsewhere than they would pay in salary-costs.
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Because fuck people who buy boxed games with Steam keys at half the price (Scholar of the First Sin: Steam price is 164PLN, retail price is 59PLN ; Grey Goo - 120pln vs 60pln ; Nier Automata - 250PLN vs 140PLN, etc etc etc) or simply at another retailer that has a better fucking deal.
Best not punish the people who actually are abusing the system.
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Of course not, we all know stores don't ask money for their games...
Now go on and be an "invested, paying customers" from the Steam Store instead!
(You don't make them money, those scammers do. Best scare you off, not them. Valve logic)
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maybe I don't understand... but explain to me how a gamer is going to accept a total steamy pile of shit of a game (for free) and then make a positive review? I would not accept a steamy pile of shit for free in exchange for a positive review - so why would anyone else?
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Someone jokingly suggested the next step is "if you bought on discount your review doesn't count" :)
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Nah. If you buy on a 50% discount your review should count as 50% of a review :P
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how about if you play 50% of the game, then your review should only count as 50% of a review?
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If you buy after release, your obviously not invested enough to review.
If you paid TOO much in advance (Kickstater) this obviously counts too. Obviously.
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Positive review DLC $0.99
Negative review DLC $0.99
Weblinks in review DLC $0.99
Season Pass review $2.49
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Troll review DLC Get $1.00 free Steam credit!
I mean, Valve has seemingly actively supported them thus far.. :P
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The weirdest step is them doing it AGAIN, considering they litterally already did this before.
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Next step: Reviews don't count of the game was bought at a discount.
Next next step: reviews don't count if you are not part of a Valve-sanctioned curator group.
Next next next step: reviews only count if you buy a Reviewer product on Steam, which has a monthly subscription fee.
Next next next next step: reviews are only displayed if you pay the individual game review fee, which is the game's non-discounted price in USD multiplied by 0.0012 for each character (including spaces), with a minimum of 850 character fee limit.
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Next step: Reviews don't exist and you must buy the game to even see its store page. :P
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Next: you get to see 5 random letters of the game title, and a blurry image. I dare you to buy it.
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Hm, what is about a game I bought first as a gift and then decided to activate it on my own account anyway? Will the review be counted for the score or not?
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I was wondering the same thing. Apparently it will not count (judging by the OP).
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I always buy games from traders, because the other regions are cheaper. xD So, that's like saying that my reviews won't count anymore. ;_;
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As long as they're tradable. But what about untradable ones? :/ I buy a lot of untradable ones too.
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Ah, okay. Thanks for the information. I took a really quick look too but wasn't sure if the change was already in action.
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So more accurate reviews, great for me as customer! ^^
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Thousands of people get games as a gift and arent doing a good score because a developer told them to.
You won 100 games here, were they all by developers who told you to make a positive one?
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If I get a game for free, I tend to give a different opinion than if I pay $60 for it. But maybe it is just me. Paying more money I expect more from a game
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Because fuck people who have the AUDACITY to shop somewhere else if there is a better deal.
I'm from Poland. We get the same prices on Steam Germany does. At less than 25% of their average income. So excuse goddamn me for buying my games in retail shops, with neat boxes, mandatory Steam key and free artbooks for less than half of what Steam is asking.
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I don't understand, is Valve stealing something from you? :|
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They aren't, but treating your platform consumers as second-class citizens because they got your product somewhere that offered a much better deal, compared to your unreasonable price, IS against consumer rights and probably against a few laws related to monopolies and market competition.
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What kind of right exactly? You can still write reviews (and your friends will still see them). It will just not count for the steam scoring.
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Something about treating consumers fairly and fair competition - you basicly are treated as a second-class citizen because you got your game elsewhere, most likely because the elsewhere had a better deal.
I am not a lawyer, I can only repeat what I heard from people far more experienced at this.
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Do you become a second-class citizen just because Valve doesn't use reviews from people who didn't spent their own money on them? Also I think you are a bit confused because it has been a time since games bought out of Steam doesn't count; this time we are talking about buying games as a gift in the Steam Store vs buying games directly to your library in the Steam Store.
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"Do you become a second-class citizen just because Valve doesn't use reviews"
Given the fact that Steam is mandatory for more than 90% of games these days, then yes, by definition, you are a second-class "Steam" citizen.
" Also I think you are a bit confused because it has been a time since games bought out of Steam doesn't count; this time we are talking about buying games as a gift in the Steam Store vs buying games directly to your library in the Steam Store. "
I know, I am just repeating myself from the last time. Same shit, new layers.
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All points of view deserve to be explored. Someone has to be the devil's advocate
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Bullshit. Especially that proper reviews again will get ignored, with but all the store-bought "10/10 would refund again" reviews will stay and count. How will make reviews ANY more accurate? Devil's got a shitty advocate lol.
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Simple thing, the positive refunds don't count. But this still don't solve the issue that you also simply ignored, that with the changes to review system (non-Steam + gift doesn't count) to combat shitty devs of a *few* shitty games. They made 82 out of my 88 reviews technically weightless, because I got them in a way that can be exploited by some people, and especially on Steamgifts, centered around gifting and bundles a lot of other people are affected.
You being happy for thousands of legit reviews again getting ignored just because you think that it will improve on anything is again, just completely missing the point of people being discontent with the situation. This change will make no quality difference in 99% of the games, as devs could only affect the score this way of small, generally ignored games to being with.
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Combating fake reviews is not easy, and yes, sadly a lot of legit reviews are affected in an unfair way, and I'm sure there are more legit reviews than fake reviews that are being affected by this measure. But there is no other way to do it. In the end the ratio fake/total reviews will decrease thanks to this, and that is what all of us want. The fact that your reviews don't count towards steam scoring doesn't mean they are meaningfull tho, since your friends should trust your reviews more than reviews from anonymous users.
This change will make no quality difference in 99% of the games, as devs could only affect the score this way of small, generally ignored games to being with.
I have no data to verify/deny what you say. Valve is the only one that has all the data and they are doing this, I hope they know what they are doing, because you know, they live from users' money and it is of their interest keeping them happy.
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So first you want just one point (Steam Store buyers) and now "all points of view deserve to be explored"...
CONTRADICTION!
Make up your mind.
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Everyone here was offering the same point of view, so I tried to contribute with a different point of view, exploring new options. I don't see any contradiction there.
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The contradiction is;
- You want to exclude a group of people arbitrarily to get "more accurate results"
- You want the opinion of everyone to get "more accurate results"
You can't support both theories since they're mutually exclusive.
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- It is Valve who wants to exclude a group of people, not arbitrarily at all, but for getting more accurate results by removing possible biased/paid reviews. I am trying to give a different point of view about that, since everyone else here was giving the same point of view.
- I don't want the opinion of everyone to get "more accurate results". I want people to study all points of view so they can think for themselves and being able to give their OWN opinion.
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My "own" opinion is Valve trying to get people to use their store (failing) by forcing limitations on buyers of Kickstarter or bundles is completely and utterly corrupt shit.
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We are debating about gifts bought from the store now, not about steam keys. That was another thread.
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It's a trend, they narrowing down the options. Another thread or not, they go hand in hand.
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They are not doing it to force you to buy from the Store. Would you buy a game from the store just for your reviews to count towards the steam score? And then why do they care if you bought it as a gift or added it to your library? They are narrowing the options to avoid fake reviews, not cutting any of your rights as customer.
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Easy to not give a fuck for you, you wrote 5 reviews in the past 2 years. Others maybe put effort into it, time and attention, and maybe it fucking bothers me that YES, my rights are getting smaller and smaller and I'm getting the same treatment as the criminals get according to their TOS. Easy to bark into a discussion when you don't even write reviews, therefore you get ZERO negative outcome of this.
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I'm not sure how heavily skifted towards Steam Store buyers (read; influencuable) is any way more "accurate" than the masses.
That's like doing elections in the US in one state, and say it's more "accurate" than the entire country... cause... reasons.
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Why do buyers from the Steam Store are more persuadable than the rest of buyers?
Also I think you are a bit confused because it has been a time since games bought out of Steam doesn't count; this time we are talking about buying games as a gift in the Steam Store vs buying games directly to your library in the Steam Store.
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Cause anyone and their mother can buy a game, review, refund it. Or be given the $1 it costs to buy the game in question to fraud.
It's easier to scam the system if you need 5 buys to shift the scale your way than it is to buy 100 since everyone's say is counted. The limited reach makes a more mallable system for fraudulent influence.
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Cause anyone and their mother can buy a game, review, refund it. Or be given the $1 it costs to buy the game in question to fraud.
I thought you were defending that reviews for games received for free should count.. Fraud there is a lot more easy and cheaper. About the review+refund, that is a different issue, and I will tell you the same I told Adam, choose one:
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/RgN52xa
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/HDi9nOp
It's easier to scam the system if you need 5 buys to shift the scale your way than it is to buy 100
I don't think the majority of purchases in the Steam Store are in form of gifts... Precisely he whole point Valve is trying to do is making reviews more accurate. People receiving games for free were altering the review score from legitimate users due to the high rate of paid reviews. In the end all of us want reviews in which we can trust.
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By "paid reviews" you mean kickstarter, third party stores and bundle paid reviews right?
Cause darn those people having opinions!
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We are not talking about kickstarter now. This thread is about steam gifts.
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I still don't understand you. You are AOK about proper reviews being ignored because anyone can still see them, but at the same time the "illegitimate" reviews will be STILL visible just as they were, just not taken into consideration. Now decide this please, because very comfortably you're saying that the good one will be visible (but not counting) and the bad ones won't count (but still be visible). Also, do you REALLY think that gift copy percentage is that low? I don't know about you buy I buy gifts for SG ocassionally, and last sale sent/got like two dozen gifts between friends. They won't count, because fuck logic. Because my review being the 11000th on Brothers' page is surely a malicious one that was bought, and not on a fucking gift from a friend. Because all of the gift review's percentage that is bought is surely so big that the whole system have to be fucked up AGAIN because Valve is lazy to move it's ass. Good thing that they have servients who will defend their point without them even stating how this will help on anyone. And again, stop being delusional. Giveaways are anything but accurate. And if you take seriously what you just said then you'll know that if the "not many gift copy's fake reviews" can properly tip over a game, that game has basically no visibility and therefore miniscule negative effect. We won't get better reviews because not their quality is getting improved, but they collectively being shut down regardless of quality, only their origin will count.
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You are right, for me reviews doesn't have much importance. It seems there are people who give them a lot of importance, and people who took the time to write hundreds of ellaborated reviews. You say Valve should focus to improve the quality of reviews instead of just limiting them to people who paid for them in the Steam store. That would be great of course, but I'm afraid that is not possible (at least in an automated way). Both you and me want quality reviews. When Valve discouraged developers to promise keys for their games once they get greenlighted it was clearly not enough. Then Valve stopped counting reviews from keys, since developers were still bribing people to gain visibility for their games (most of these games being crap). Was this enough to stop to stop such kind of bribering and system exploit? I have no idea. Since Valve is modifying the way reviews are counted, it seems it was not enough. I even had no idea about the buy-review-refund thing until today. How can those fake reviews be stopped? Even if they change the system again to just take into account reviews with 90% of positive votes with a minimum of 5 votes, that is easily exploitable. I have seen ads in some forums of people offering their services to developers for gaining visibility with their army of steam accounts (bots? members in a group? it doesn't matter). These kind of "services" should have disappeared with the last modification of reviews on Steam (keys not counting). I never thought of gifts as exploitable in the same way, since developers can only generate keys, not gifts, so each gift have to be purchased from the Steam store. A dev is not gonna spend hundreds (thousands) of dollars in getting hundreds of reviews... or are they? :S Valve didn't give an explanation as the last time. They could just not take into account reviews from free weekends if that was an issue. The big mistake here was that Valve has not given a "why". Without having the data they manage I shouldn't have said it was a positive thing. It can or it can not, but the sure thing is that it affects legitimate reviews. Ok I have to change my opinion and agree with you, at least until Valve gives an official "why".
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I don't get what the point is in making such a change. It seems strictly dumb. Like there's no middle ground on this, I think. Maybe I'm missing the point entirely?
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Next will be that if you buy the game on sale, then your review isn't valid.
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haha, it's funny how they restrict people from being part of the "real" score, but they still don't do anything with useless reviews like
10/10 would play again
i got cancer with this game
killed hitler twice best game ever
excellent visceral survival horror game with photorealistic graphics 100% recommended (woodle tree adventures)
so informative and honest reviews, thanks valve for helping the community.
i wouldn't mind at all if they removed reviews completely, and also get rid of useless curators.
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In their defense they tried to do something about joke reviews with the introduction of the Funny button.
What else are they supposed to do ? Delete reviews that are not up to a certain standard by hand or permanently block everybody who has ever written a joke review from writing reviews ?
I wouldn't mind at all if they removed reviews completely, and also get rid of useless curators.
Now that is something I could get behind although it would making up your mind about less known titles more time consuming.
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I think GreenManGaming was actually trying to do that. So was GamersGate. A review was only published after it went through a short internal inspection. Which, of course, meant people behind it, or at least an algorithm that they paid to develop (or be developed).
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I once wrote a review on GMG and it indeed didn't appear on the site until a day or two after when it had been checked for relevancy.
At first I was going to say that an algorithm would probably do a poor job but even if it just filtered common stuff like review doge (&cock), Good game and cancer memes I guess it would be something.
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Also, at some point, both GMG and GG stimulated writing reviews by giving credit/virtual coins to customers for doing so. Not sure if they still do it, though.
Just saying, they gave incentive to users to write them, they checked the relevancy and had them years before steam.
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I didn't mention that intentionally to avoid triggering a tide of quality reviews but yes they did. (not sure it they still do though)
Why do you think I copypasted one of my Steam reviews to GMG ? :D
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Yes. Reviews who are "the uninstall button works great" "bretty gud gaym" and "i see boobs, i buy a game" "this game doesnt work for me" are totally useless and shouldnt be shown by default. Have some volunteers curate such shit so only actual helpful reviews show up.
I want to know WHY the user thinks a game is good or bad, not see a ascii of a guy crapping on the game title.
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While I generally agree with you I think the game boards are a good example why volunteers can be problematic so I'm rather in favor of an automated solution although that idea doesn't seem to be particular popular here.
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You never cease to crack me up....Woodle Tree Adventures... :p
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They could just delete them rather than just preventing modifying :/
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"This review has been banned by a Steam moderator for violating the Steam Terms of Service. It cannot be modified by the reviewer." Holy shit, I've never seen this message :D
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He posted a review for csgo january 11, and then the 15 he posted or modified all the other reviews.
Now the csgo review (modified the 22) is "banned for no reason".
I guess that why he did this.
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Gotta love how he has over 100 hours in a game (Stick It To The Man, for example), and the review is "crashed my computer". No surprise that he's not able to make any more reviews!
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And now he lost his reviewing privileges! He's lucky he didn't lose more (not sure if Valve could/would do more for that sort of thing).
I suppose one of the Devs/Publishers of the games he maligned could pursue legal recourse if they wanted (again, not sure if they would have any grounds to do so), especially if the game did nothing like what he purported it to do!
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I'm not saying that that's the case here, but I had a game crash and afterwards it always said I was playing it, even when I didn't even have Steam open. And when I did open the Steam client, I couldn't close it (always told me to quit that game first, which I hadn't even started - because when I tried, it told me it was already running). Lasted a few days until the next game update, I guess (re-installing the client didn't fix it), and added about 150 hours to my playtime. It happens.
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Ha, I saw that guy too. One said something gave me a virus, or killed my gpu, etc. I checked his reviews and every single one thumbs down. Def could hurt sales unless recognized as trolling.
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why not just remove the damn review system, that's far more "accurate" then this step.
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Because most people don't trust the gaming journalist world; this is mostly where the mock IGN 10/10 score thing even came from. It is not even new: I remember how stores like Reflexive relied on user scores to determine featured games, and for the most part, it worked (and it works on sites like Big Fish Games to this day).
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well i just think if they'd remove it a few third party sites would popup, for a year there would be a little competition on who does it better.. then after about 12-18months we have ourselves a dominating well made user review site done better then imagined while its competition fades off into the darkness. problem works itself out and it's no longer valves issue.
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That present the same problem as journalists: since it is a 3rd party site, Valve has no obligation to even monitor it, and if someone bribes the admins and the review scores are skewed, game developers wouldn't be able to do anything since they are in no contract with the site, unlike with Steam. So, for example, Arkham Knight may have had a 90%+ launch score on such a site, because admins could have withhold any review that mentioned how it didn't run or ran at below 20 fps, misleading many, many people into buying it.
The problem here is Valve itself and their lack of moderation and control, not their system. The system is good like most any other user-dependent systems other sites use. The issue is that the obviously malicious or misleading content isn't moderated at all.
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that's true really.. they just need some humans hired and some actual quality control. instead of trying to have a system do all the work.
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wait, you mention 'quality control' in relation to Steam/Valve ;-)
Current reviews at least give a hint, it is better than nothing. I still remember times prior, could have saved me some wrong buys back then. Don't forget, refunds didn't exist either.
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it is better than nothing
pay $0.99 now in order to review this game!
that's better then nothing also, i wouldn't say it's a good idea though.
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Having them checked by real people would be best sure, but we know it won't ever happen.
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the gaming journalist world
"Professional" reviews also don't touch on developer policy, game stability, or a dozen of other things actual gamers make a point of addressing in their reviews; Likewise, most indie games don't get any reviews at all (other than for fan-devoted genres like Adventure games and VNs, where you may come across blog reviews or comments on hobbyist boards).
User reviews play a critical role in game interest, which is why their poor presentation is such an issue. If they weren't important, then presumably people wouldn't be as agitated by troll reviews or Steam policies toward reviews.
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I think most professional reviews are fine when they exist (and when there's enough of them for you to take a general average), but the fact that indie games don't tend to get reviews is a real issue. Most of the games in my library don't even have metacritic scores.
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Like the support issues, it probably has a lot to do with their "flat" corporate structure bullshit they should have outgrown already, where no one seems to have set responsibilities...
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still steam if better than gog... like not being able to sort games by discount, hide owned games from search or other minor issues, but i'd not just hope, but also vote with cash for gog.
because drm free concept is much better than steam drm service.
but, well, pirates =\
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The reason they're reluctant to do that is because it'd be an expense that would increase the more games they have on Steam. Their business model depends on being able to scale endlessly; they're terrified of any expenses that would increase as the number of games or users they add to the service increase.
(This is also why Steam support sucks.)
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Of course, the number would not blow up this exponentionally with actual quality support, as a good deal of greenlight games are just pure scams.
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You're so right on point with these 2 posts it's not even funny :/
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I've seen a number of games where the overall review will say its positively reviewed, and then go down to see its actually overwhelmingly disliked. -_-
Valve needs to completely re-think their approach to review ratings.
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Just looked and in both of those cases even if every review was counted towards the overall rating it wouldn't really make a difference.
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Isn't Devil Daggers extremely cheap and basically just a throw-away purchase?
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They actually did. More recent reviews are shown at the top, and you get the recent/overall reviews score. It's not perfect, in particularly not for games that receive a low volume of reviews, and thus don't get enough for a "recent" score, but they did try to do something about the problem.
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While it's not uncommon (like blocking out pissed off Kickstaters cough Torment cough) there's an element of trolling where people just upvote ALL negative reviews and downvote ALL positive reviews, meaning you will get negatives on the front page even if they are the minority.
Just another way the system works cough fine...
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I don't like much either how they keep messing with the way they count reviews. But in the end, reviews are just here to help customers, the same customers who can choose to view all reviews, and buy to try for 1-2h, and then easily get a refund if they don't like the game. So no matter what they do, it basically works good enough for me 🙃👀
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I fully supported the previous change, where key-users' reviews were not counted in the leading stat, because there was no natural barrier against devs generating keys to use to buy faked reviews. There is a natural barrier against devs using Steam gift purchases for that reason, though, because the devs would get back only 70% of their cost (after Valve takes its cut) and then those funds would be taxable to boot. Yet, we still see devs trying to game the review system. At least 5 have been tossed off of Steam since the beginning of the year for this reason. I guess I'd prefer that Steam monitor the system rather than taking this more drastic step, but we should all know by now that won't happen if they can automate something, even if it's heavy-handed. :-(
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I think one way to go would be to allow users to set their preferred Review settings and then only display reviews that fit those criteria.
For example I personally don't like to read reviews under a certain playtime. That playtime obviously varies depending on what game it is.
So for example every review for Brothers a Tale of Two sons that has less that 2 - 2,5 hours playtime is basically worthless to me because the person hasn't played the game long enough to have an educated opinion.
For big games like Skyrim or Assassins Creed that duration would be obviously higher like for me maybe ~ 20 hours.
This is just an example based on my personal preferences. It should also be possible to decide whether key activations should be included in the overall score and any other criteria that can be relevant to some people.
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Like, "show only reviews that have more than 30/50% of median play time for this game"?
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That would be a good solution because my suggestion would require you to set a different minimum requirement for every game while yours would allow it to set a general bar for all games.
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Problem will be you won't see all of the "didn't run and had to refund it..." reviews.
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Sounds like a boon to me... can't help but get annoyed by all the people who are so tech-unsavvy that they expect everything out of the box, and with the first sign of trouble (on a PC! Oh my, nothing ever goes wrong there) refund and put up a negative review.
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That's the case for some, but when determining if a new release is worth buying, they can be pretty important.
If you see someone saying the game had frame-drops while running on a Titan X you can tell the optimizations was lacking...
Not all refunds for poor performance are from ignorant users.
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They should remove review option if it doesn't matter in total count. I can understand their decision with keys reviews (because shitty indie devs were trying to boost a ratings), but why touch gifts and free weekends?
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I can't give a single shit. Valve is making an ass out of themselves at fighting "promo-scams" with devs who are as far as I've seen are in the very indie scene, while they do absolutely nothing to stop the joke reviews, nor the brutally outdated and not relevant ones. I really doubt that they did this to improve quality in the store at all.
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+1 The joke reviews are probably the biggest flaw in this review system
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To be fair, joke and meme reviews are part of the review culture, and it is not Valve's job to deal with/censor them.
That's where the thumbs up and down come into place.
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Mmhm, so Bad Rats have positive ratings because they really do believe it's a good game. Please continue about that "culture".
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But... but I really did enjoy that game! :( It's like a violent Incredible Machine, albeit frustrating due to inconsistent physics.
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I only played the second, and I genuinely would have given a positive review if the last chapter wouldn't be a superfrustrating experience of making the broken physics work in a 3D map... so if you think it deserves an upvote, why not? But all the "goty" and similar meme-upvotes are just plaguing the system, making it less accurate and useful. But hey, fucking Gaben is at least fighting fake dev-reviews again, because that violates their TOS and they try to protect the review-ratings from *them. Not because quality matters at Steam.
\edit: Caps and bold letters added for Niko
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I completely agree. There are many "10/10" and "IGN adores t3h gaem!" reviews. Ironically, it makes it so when I say I actually had some enjoyment with it people wait for the punchline because it's assumed that no body could possibly enjoy it, or at least would never admit to it. :)
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Are you the fun-police?
It should be pretty obvious for everyone to spot those reviews and find ones that actually describe the game(play) with all the pros and cons.
If anyone buys a game simply because of the ratings (and is disappointed afterwards), that is his own fault. But that can happen with every game. Luckily for us customers to have the ability to get a refund.
So again, nothing wrong with joke reviews. (Ignore/thumbs down and move on.)
Besides, I actually enjoyed the game, trying to fight the broken physics and finish all levels.
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Maybe I should have said meme-reviews. I've seen awesome, fitting reviews that were written as jokes. Like Wany's CK2 review - it reflects a lot from the actual game's themes and ways. But an ascii doge? or the "my grandfather died of cancer, I never smoked [....] but this game gave me cancer" or "it's bad" level of mocking of a reviews shouldn't be in the system. Oh, or Shrek is love, Shrek is life ones either because Valve's beautiful idea of having the new reviews showcased as well so often present these garbage that it only makes harder to find the proper ones.
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I agree that the ones you listed that have nothing to do with the game, have no right to appear under the game. But for that matter, not Valve nor the developer should have the power to remove them, as that can be abused.
A better way to deal with them could be in the likes of reddit, if a review goes under a certain like/dislike ratio, it will receive a banner a la "This review has a very low rating, click here to display anyway."
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It would be still implemented by Valve - it may sounded differently, but I don't necessarily want Valve "itself" do the work, because we've already seen where their focus is... but at least it could address it as an issue, and try to find a solution.
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I understand the reasoning for previous changes to this system, but it's getting kind of ridiculous now.
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Hell yeah, soon people won't be able to review games if they haven't purchased them directly from Steam Store. I guess developers are lobbying hard for these changes, to limit negative reviews, so people buy their shit games.
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You do realise that "soon" time is now.
Not a Steam Store purchase? You can review, but it's ultimately pointless as it wont be counted and automatically hidden under 'more valid' cough reviews.
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Shouldn't they just keep up their campaign to boot anyone who's abusing the review system off the store instead, to clean things up and keep them clean?
And expand that to also boot off any owners and willful particiants in boost groups?
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Any manpower is hard in Valve world.
Better do it automatically. Being utter crap, well, it's Steam... what do you expect?
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Don't understand, don't care. When I'm on the fence about buying a game I look how many good and bad reviews there are and then I'll read the most helpful reviews before deciding to buy a game. Some scores on certain steam store pages were already rigged, hence why I do this.
BTW: Some of my favorite games on steam have negative reviews (different tastes & such) so I don't take them all too serious anymore.
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if you got a gift (let's say from someone on steamgifts... or a friend... or yourself...) and not bought the game directly into your library, your review now counts the same as key review.
Makes sense given their stance.
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I can understand why people would be upset over this, however it's not something that I'd personally care about. I don't really pay that much attention to reviews, I simply give a quick scroll over them and that's about it. I've never read one that's generally considered good review because those are always long and I simply don't care. :D Only ones I've cared about are those short ones that just say something like "needs third party program / uses google analytics without telling you / has broken achievements," etc.
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http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/563352991934009789
tl,dr; if you got a gift (let's say from someone on steamgifts... or a friend... or yourself...) and not bought the game directly into your library, your review now counts the same as key review.
Is there already a thread? search didn't find it...
Update:
New titles under a certain number of reviews don't have score calculated anymore.
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