well, I'll read everything in the next hours but... thanks for the tl,dr line - as someone who has written almost 500 thorough reviews.. I think it's something good =P
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It's good for games that get off topic bombs, like "this game has no Chinese language" for games that don't advertise Chinese at all...
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It's bad that they "ended up agreeing" that review bombs caused by adding denuvo last second or banning all mods and similar publisher malpractices are also off topic.
Just my 2c
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Old situation; Paid mods are terrible! - downvote - Bethesda changes
New situation; Paid mods are terrible! - downvote - Bethesda silences all discord
Such a great thing for us right?
Thanks Captain Marvel! (Or am I paranoid thinking this is conviently close after RT silencing all opposition?)
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well to be fair this could be judged as on topic review bomb
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They go full Rotten Tomatoes?
And why not hide ALL offtopic meme reviews from the storefront? No, that would be too good a change?
Always funny every site tried to remove downvoting campaigns, but all upvoting campaigns are 100% fine. And most "meme" reviews even from terrible games are positive.
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So how will we identify these off-topic review bombs? The first step is a tool we've built that identifies any anomalous review activity on all games on Steam in as close to real-time as possible. It doesn't know why a given game is receiving anomalous review activity, and it doesn't even try to figure that out. Instead, it notifies a team of people at Valve
sounds good
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team of people, i thought valve was 1 dude with his thumb up his ass 11 months out of the year. lol
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:D
was re-reading their previous post, and i think they're doing it good, like, that could be a good way to enhance "The Steam reviews", something quite precious Valve has, in my -ignorant- book
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I'll give it 2 weeks before they burnout and just automate it.
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Or realize that they will cost money and don't get enough revenue, just like Artifact, and just tear it down :D
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sure it will cost, not sure about revenue (really don't know) still, quite sure they'll continue.
i'm shower-thinking about -pretty much- all Epic-stories (seen also from a developer point of view, not only from gamers/buyers)...
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Yup. Just what I was thinking.
About time that trolls get knocked down a little.
All the "Sux" thumb downs just because the next game in the franchise is not going to be sold on Steam, won't be counted but I'm still unsure what qualifies as a thorough review.
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Disabling reviews altogether. Click. Done. - this is my opinion on the whole matter
If you have to censor/ban/hide reviews, whether theyre just fake or actual bombs, you're creating a bias that I dont respect.
Some things need to be ignored, some things perhaps need to be disabled completely.
I like reading reviews - especially the negative ones, cos i want to know what's wrong with something Im already interested in, not what is right about it.
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Disabling reviews altogether. Click. Done. - this is my opinion on the whole matter
Are you serious? I'd like to direct you to the Nintendo Switch E-store, where lack of any reviewing system has led to an absolute trashland of a storefront.
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When you censor only the negative reviews because you think review bombing is unfair and doesn't represent the quality of a game, then you can remove the good ones too, because it doesn't really matter at that point....
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I'm not supporting the censorship of reviews. I'm saying the removal of reviews entirely would be disastrous (i.e. Switch E-Shop).
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The removal of reviews doesnt in and of itself make the store start selling crap, it just (in theory) puts the popular stuff on even par with the rubbish. Are we talking about an even playing field or skewed results?
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We're talking about quality control. If the storefront (Steam, Nintendo) doesn't utilize quality control, we users need a way to do so ourselves. Otherwise, it's just as you say-- quality games and mobile shovelware sitting side by side.
Either way, I think you've misunderstood my point and believe I'm trying to say something that I'm not. Your stance is that if reviews are being tinkered with, then we're better off with no review system at all. I do not wish reviews to be manipulated either, but believe the complete removal of the review system wouldn't solve anything. Case in point, Nintendo's current E-shop.
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But review bombing is unfair, and doesn't represent the quality of a game.
I worked as a beta tester on a game that was delayed to give the dev team more time to resolve bugs and issues. Some people who pre-ordered were so upset that the game was delayed that they launched a review bombing campaign against the game. The game was great, delaying to fix bugs and release a better game on launch was the right call, and review bombing because people were upset that they had to wait longer to play was completely unreasonable, unfair to the game and developers, and misrepresented the quality of the game.
But if you feel that strongly about paying attention to review bombs, you're welcome to opt back in to worthless Steam reviews.
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Which brings about the objective reasoning of what defines fair and unfair.
You cant review a game that hasnt been released on steam (including early access, which is a stupid thing again, and really shouldnt be part of of a game store, but i digress), so for a review bomb to happen on steam implies the gamers had access to the game, and it wasnt the reviews that were the problem, but rather the implementation of being able to post said reviews. I have no idea what the game your using as the example, so not able to comment on this, but im assuming it was an early access game.
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It was not an early access game. Some people were so upset by the release delay that they started a campaign to buy the game once it released just to leave a negative review and refund it. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
When the delay was announced, they actually wrote stuff like, "I was really excited for your game, but this is a huge slap in the face. Now I'm going to buy your game just to leave a negative review and refund it," in response to the announcement post. How delaying a game to fix bugs is a slap in the face, I don't know, but they organized to review bomb the game on release just because they had to wait longer for it to release.
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in the end if people want to review bomb its fine as long as its people and not bots. i myself joined in the review bombs for fallout 4 when they announced payed mods... sry, mini dlc
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In other words:
Finally we removed the effects of those pesky negative reviews. Our patented algorithm now automatically filters out every review we see as review bombing and moves it to to the bottom of the page where you can easily find it after 5 minutes of scrolling. If we can describe that algorithm or the involved criteria? Nono, that is highly complex. At least you can still find each and every positive review as before, so stop worrying and buy ALL THOSE GAMES! CONSUME SLAVE!
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I would maybe complain about the change until I've read that it's not forced on you:
Finally, we've also enabled you to opt out of this entirely, if that's your preference - there's now a checkbox in your Steam Store options where you can choose to have off-topic review bombs still included in all the Review Scores you see.
So I guess it's alright.
I hope they'll keep improving steam review system. It would be great if steam could recognize and remove those copy-paste meme posts for example. There should also perhaps be a minimum amount of characters to write down before you can post your review, because those one to two sentence reviews aren't really benefiting anyone.
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11/10 comment. Much insight. Such true. Would agree with again.
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when 500 people have 1/2hr of playtime and give a new game a good review, is that review bombing?
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That's a legit question but I think their definition of "review bombing" only affects negative reviews. "This new AAA game is great! 100%! Don't look under that red carpet, lots of bugs, but it's fine if you can't see them!"
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review bombing bad.
review padding good.
buy it.
shut up and take my money...
shut your mouth and give me your money...
would you like dlc with that.
gonna stop typing now
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Will this censor and remove the fake positive reviews? No, of course not. It's only the bad reviews that would affect Valve profits.
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agreed, completely, on Valve profits and -bad- reviews.
question for you, thou: do you think they're making it the right way (about this bombing thing)?
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There is no clear, realistic / viable "right way" to do this. Short of a human reading every single review ever made, which isn't going to be possible. Valve have simply chosen one of the possible tactics which also happen to work for their interests (as all valve changes do).
Negative reviews means customers less likely to make a purchase, Positive reviews means more sales and more 30% cuts for Valve.
The fake positive reviews should be given just as much attention as the negative ones.
As for the "bombing", at the surface I think most people will admit it's a low brow thing to do, but the deeper factor here is about being heard. People want to be heard. Forum posts get deleted and buried due to abuse of control so people go to reviews to have their opinions heard. Things like DRM and Poor performance and bad developer actions ARE part of the game experience. Valve are now deciding who to be silenced.
Valve are now deciding for everyone what they can speak about, or get buried. First Valve's actions said If we don't get the 30% cut from the game sale, then your review doesn't count. Key activations don't count towards the final rating.
Now they are going over their customers heads and deciding for them whether or not their opinions matter. Anyone who reads a review can make up their own minds as to whether or not it's a rubbish review, but Valve have decided to take it upon themselves to silence and bury anything they like. Hey, their platform, their rules and all that. But it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do or the best way to do it.
They have merely chosen to push forward with a poor method because they can't think of a better one. As always, Valve are taking a lazy automated option which shows they will always care about publishers and their profits more than the customers who gave them their success. Silencing the public opinion seems to be the popular thing now (Netflix, youtube, rottentomatoes, IMDB etc)
It's always easier to smack something with a blunt hammer than fine tune it I guess. Okay, I'll shut up now.
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"we listened", so they -usually- say. "also cause is about your money" we're kinda saying. i mean, could it be that they have to listen, more and more carefully?
they said that a "score" (a rating system and such) is needed, is a must (and i agree). if we (gamers/buyers) are the ones that generates that score, also by reviewing, don't you think they will have to care more about us? also because, say, Epic would be really happy to have these kind of problems :D
edit: about "a score is needed", quoted from their previous post
obvious one would be to simply remove the Review Score. Then, as a potential customer you'd be forced to read the User Reviews themselves to see if the product sounded interesting. If you saw reviews talking about something outside the scope of the game, you could decide for yourself if it was an issue that would affect your happiness with the purchase. Unfortunately, we're pretty certain that this isn't really an option - scores were added in response to player demand in the past, and that demand for a summary of some kind is likely to still be there, even if players know it isn't always accurate.
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If they're smart, they use the same detection mechanisms to spot positive review manipulation and nuke the related publishers from the store. (It's the only thing that reliably gets stuff removed from the store at any rate going by the evidence.)
But well, this is Valve we're talking about. So I don't expect much to happen there.
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A review that is a couple of sentences long is more likely useless than not unless it's to warn that a game is highly broken or unplayable.
Unfortunately, you are not likely to find a detailed review, on Steam or elsewhere, about an obscure or lesser known game.
Caveat emptor.
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I don't know, I think that a short review can still be usefull if it lists the important things. Sometimes, people don't care about a detailed analysis, sometimes they just want to know if there are any major issues with the game.
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Instead, it notifies a team of people at Valve, who'll then go and investigate. We've already run our tool across the entire history of reviews on Steam, identifying many reasons why games have seen periods of anomalous review activity, and off-topic review bombs appear to only be a small number of them.
Once our team has identified that the anomalous activity is an off-topic review bomb, we'll mark the time period it encompasses and notify the developer. The reviews within that time period will then be removed from the Review Score calculation.
They're gonna play those bad games? Really, huh?
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I think the "meme" reviews are more of a problem but they won't be targeting those obviously.
Some of those game have very positive reviews but most of them are fake one, you think that would be more of a problem for people to evaluate the likelihood that they'd like the game cause honestly often I'm more likely to read through them when it's negative to see what are the issue.
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I guess this makes sense after the Artifact's fiasco.
Bad move on their part.
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"Off-topic" review bombing. Like review bombing isn't the expression of something problematic about the game. Let's sweep the bad news under the rug, so you can have bunnies and candy everywhere. Newspeak at its finest :/
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censoring negative reviews regarding DRM? wft why valve kill one of the few ways people have to warn others about DRM.
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Like many commenters before me, I would also much prefer if something was done about the actual problem - the meme positive reviews for shitty, objectively broken games. Now they are just blatantly silencing criticism.
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Has anyone here paid any attention to the recent situation with a wonderful Taiwan horror game Detention? It sank from Overwhelmingly Positive to Mostly Positive with 1875 negative reviews in one day after somebody had found a reference to Winnie-the-Pooh/Xi Jinping comparison in the developers' new game, Devotion. This act of review bombing wasn't about adequate criticism in the slightset, obviously. So yeah, I'm all for clearing such bullshit out. Sure, such reviews can be informative in some cases, but I don't think they should be able to influence a game's score.
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full text: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775
tl,dr; review bombs won't count toward score but the reviews themselves will be shown for those who like to dig more. optional, default opt-in.
how to disable and keep it the old way
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