Seems weird, but out of the 3 negative reviews, yours is the only one with a link (I do not know the guidelines for reviews though)
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You need go to Community then Reviews and change to other languages. Yes, you only see the reviews in your mother language and english if it is your mother.
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It sounds like the dev definitely wanted a positive review, but either they thought better of flagging it or Steam decided not to remove it. Worth keeping an eye on, though.
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They offer you a key, you turn it down and run. Indie developers expect you to write a positive review for free keys and if you don't… well, you already know what happens.
So, next time a dev or someone from a review group says that hey, here is a key for a game, write something about it, just say no.
Or sell yourself, write generic nice things (if you need pointers on writing nicely in 800-2000 characters without mentioning anything about the product, look up any reviews written by a member of the Original Trader/Whatever Groups), and cash in another +1 game in the library. Destroys your credibility, but some people prefer the free games.
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Actually, I've seen a few devs that give out keys for reviews and accept critical, negative reviews for their games. Microblast is just... well... shady. They have apparently paired with the Original Network to throw away even more of their keys than they have been, as noted their pricing practice is really not consumer friendly, and their games are barely above Digital Homicide in quality. Of course they would want a paid review, but that doesn't mean the same for every indie dev.
Better advice would be to consider the developer before accepting the key. Don't blame the whole herd for one black sheep, as it were.
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Those could exist and heck, even I know a few decent indie developer or two – but in general, I never met a scenario where they said "here, a free key for our new-ish game, we totally accept any review and won't try to do everything to get a negative one buried or taken down".
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I've seen plenty of indie games on Steam with "Key provided by developer" reviews that are negative, and the dev providing a friendly follow-up to the review. All very amicable and professional and constructive.
In fact, in many cases, in sharp contrast to the scenarios you're more used to, the reviewers tend to come across less professional than the developers.
[Ex: There are a lot of situations where developers directly address and fix the concerns noted by the reviewer, but the reviewer simply edits their review to say "The developer has informed me they've fixed their issues, but they should have had them fixed to begin with, my time is too valuable to spend re-reviewing the same game.", and leaves it negative.]
In other words, in my experience, scummy reviewers are more common than even scummy developers. :/
So it really does vary- I'm sure a lot of it is that a: You pick up on those negative scenarios more readily and b: they tend to get publicized, like with this thread, a whole heck of a lot more.
And yeah, obviously scummy Digital Homicide style developers are going to make their name for doing stuff like that, but we already know they don't represent steam as a whole, or even a notable part of it, despite our concerns that steam keeps sliding in that direction.
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I only met the scenario you described in the form of "game has technical issues, my review is about that and nothing more". When it comes to core mechanics and story, those are pretty impossible to just change totally; few large-budget games ever had the money and manpower to do that (for example: Fallout 3, Mass Effect 3, Final Fantasy XIV, Destiny).
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With the scummy reviewers part, thanks for reminding me about that I've promised to rewrite negative Infinitrap review after a big update comes. While waiting for the update, I've, at least, put a warning that the review is meant for a first official version. I even had a short talk with the developer about what the game should have to be better, this interest of feedback is great to see.
I think that bigger developers won't care about scummy negative review but for unknown indie studios it can be bad, if it's not reasonable or serious. Also, there's an interesting article about it by Emmy Jonassen.
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Well, I have enough games in backlog so I don't need such +1 free games. I prefer the honest truth.
But it's disappointing to see how many people are willing to sell themselves for bad indie games... Maybe I was too much positively thinking before. :-)
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Steam reviews are not curated (even the so-called high-curated ones are mostly bought reviews), so honest but decent review-writers are, well, just slightly less rare than an honest Republican. (As in, these reviewers at least actually exist beyond the theoretical thought-experiments.)
Still, the system is not totally useless, because it can give nice pointers, one just has to learn how to reach the information under all the garbage, memes, fakes, and so-called funny ones.
Plus never, ever underestimate the hoarding instincts, especially on goods that don't take up physical storage space.
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The funny part is that I included your message in the post you replied to, but decided to delete it before sending. I have to agree though, this is my method too, because sometimes in the sea of rage typed by impatient 10-year-olds who want every game to be CoD (even if said game is a 2D puzzle…), the harsh, brutal honesty in some negative reviews can tell a better tale of a game than a 4500-character swooning ode.
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I have a review flagged by a dev for over half a year now and it seems that it was never reviewed (and I can't edit it either since it has been flagged...). While devs and publishers can't remove negative reviews this tactic seems to work to make them invisible at least.
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Steam moderator, after I've mentioned this on /r/Steam, removed the flag. Does the flag really make the review invisible? I thought it just locks you out of editing.
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You are right it is just flagged so that I can't change it (and I read the line about the visibility exactly the other way around). Still it's odd that it hasn't been reviewed in over a year (I made that review in December 2014).
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Oh, I have one too! Apparently it is off-topic to criticize a word game for bad dictionary and unresponsive/sluggish controls/feedback.
Also, as a rule, I think the dev down-votes all negative reviews himself. Every time there is a new one, it's always "0/1 found this review helpful"... Of course, just a feeling.
Wanna guess how many people I have expressly told NOT TO BUY the game as a result? ;)
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I actually liked your review, it was honest, simple and easy to read, and complete. It covered pretty much all the aspects of the game you want to know to decide before purchase. It was direct to the point with arguments. I cannot see anything bad in it, so my only conclusion after what happened is, I believe it was just a cheap move by the developers so they can have all the positive reviews on sight of everyone while taking down the negative reviews.
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this game will probably be given away for free soon
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Well, I actually like the game, but you're review looks pretty legit to me. I mean, you don't use any offensive language or anything like that and thoroughly explains why you didn't like it ... So I don't see any reason for it to get flagged.
I don't know much about flagging - is the dev the only person able to do that?
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Not sure if the only person but they can do that to make a Steam moderator check the specific review.
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I grabbed some popcorn and looked through some of those nice reviews. I noticed one written by someone with 3 games in their account and I was curious if they actually tried the game. The achievement for level 9 was gotten a few days before levels 1-8 (same timestamp). What a joke. I wish we could report reviews like this one and I also wish someone gave a damn.
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So, few days back Rafael from Microblast Games contacted me about their new game, Red Risk, and sent me a key for that game, saying: "I would love even more if you could write a nice review for the game on Steam."
Since I've been recently doing Steam reviews for fun (I have a huge Steam library and I like to play less known indie games and share my opinion afterwards), I was ok with that idea so I've played it and wrote a review. Honest one, of course, I wouldn't lie because somebody told me that it could be nice.
I have responded his e-mail with the review but I ended up without an answer but with having Steam review flagged as 'Violates Community Guidelines'. Not that it would matter much but I'm interested in your opinion, and I believe there's people who know more about it than me - do you think that's just for their keep of positive reviews, or it's because I've also linked this Reddit thread and mentioned price reducing of their previous games?
(In case you'd want to see the flagged review, it's there.)
EDIT: Flag removed by SteamMod Matty, contacted via Reddit. I'll keep the thread open for a while for discussions.
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