Can developers even do that? I thought they can only flag reviews but not remove reviews.
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Really doesn't surprise me that much. I thought it was weird this afternoon when the game had only positive reviews.
Usually, the negatives start rolling in at around 200 reviews.
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What do we do though? I've never encountered something like this. I think it's shameful that developers of a good game aren't letting the game stand on it's two feet. Even though the game's good and would've been fine even with the negative reviews. This killed my buzz and now I lost a lot of respect for the developers for pulling underhanded shit like this.
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From what I've seen in the past, nothing you'll do will change much about what the devs do/think. If they delete reviews, they will probably ignore and delete your discussions/comments on the matter.
However, nothing stops you from spreading the word. A little public shaming goes a long way (you can see multiple example of that on forums, Steamgifts and otherwise). Try Reddit, for one. At least, if someone considered buying the game before, they may see the thread and reconsider their decision about purchasing the game, knowing about the shady behavior from the devs.
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Hmm well that's not great. Just as I was enjoying the game. It would be nice if someone was to find some proof of this though.
When you've got a good game why would you care about a few troll negative reviews though? Seems a little strange to me.
Also can I see these screenshots of the negative reviews?
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i thought reviews were permanent and only support could remove them (ie: because of abuse).
no point in reviewing a game if it can be censored... O_o
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Developers really shouldn't have the option to remove reviews. Yes, they should be able to flag them for review by Valve for inappropriate content but that is about it. The only way they should be able to remove, or as jbondguy said hide, would be to remove the game entirely.
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lol, they instantly removed your comment in the forums.
might also help to post this in reddit.
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That sucks, a good game with shitty developer practices. Why stoop to this level when you don't even need to?
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Could it be a case of mass reporting by 4chan/8chan/Tumblr fanbase or false-flagging vindictive trolls trying to smear the dev's name? Are you familiar with any closed communities discussing the game anywhere?
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No. I mean, literally i've seen nothing but people excited for undertale. Really people either just think it's some random garbage game no one will care about and they forget it. Or people remember it because of various good reasons.
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Yeah, that was my impression as well - the game seems both polarising and personal, which means that none of the three options is off the table:
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A bunch of highly impressionable fans of the game get together on IRC and decide to mass-report every negative review to Steam, 'protecting' the image of the game that spoke to them on such a deep level.
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A bunch of critics of Toby Fox's previous work got together on IRC and decided to mass-report negative reviews to Steam - in order to sully the name of the game he has worked two years on, and has put his whole soul into.
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The devs are reporting the negative reviews to Steam and feel justified in doing so because Undertale is a labour of love and is practically their child that they'll do anything to protect.
Have you tried posting your findings on /r/gaming? Someone else might have noticed something similar, and people love conspiracies, so someone will inevitably chime in. Maybe find someone who genuinely disliked the game and have them post a negative review - and then see what happens. With screenies and maybe videos and all. And at 6kk subs, the subreddit will be one of the first things popping up in Google search results - which should help get this controversy into light.
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To be honest. Toby Fox is internet famous because of their involvement in the Homestuck series. So that may have something to do with why there's just sudden missing negative reviews.
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310 positive reviews you say. Im sold buying game now to try it!
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Something similar happened in my country ~50 years ago.
It was called a dictatorship.
On a note, ofc this isn't even close, but this censorship isn't right. Users should be able to by some means report these kind of games. This might even be considerable as false advertising.
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Hmm, for the one I saw I think the user was just bullied into deleting it by getting pounded with harsh comments. I had the URL in my history and can confirm that the review has disappeared, which it shouldn't if it was censored.
If a review is found to be abusive by Steam staff and "banned" then its URL will still be accessible, like shown here. According to Steam, if the developer flags a review then it will "continue to be listed on your store page, but in a collapsed form and marked as spam until a (Steam) moderator can either delete the review or remove the spam flag."
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Wow, I've actually seen a few devs doing this sort of thing in the past, but with as many positive reviews as Undertale was already getting, I would never have figured this to happen ...
I was planning on buying it tomorrow (payday), but I think I am going to hold off now until I find out more about this. I love good games, but really dislike supporting bad devs. :/
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Momentum. It's all about momentum. Basically, they're going to make their big money in these first days of release and they don't want to let anything slow that down, knowing that eventually they'll be in the bargain bin with everything else. These heavy-handed measures look bad to those who are aware, but sadly, most people won't have a clue, will see the 100% positive and take a chance they might not take at a lower rating.
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100% positive is just ridiculous past the 200 positive reviews point. It's sad that people are so clueless.
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Maybe you can pass it on to steam support? Idk but this situation is pretty unfortunate. :/
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The problem is that we don't actually know why these reviews were removed. We can't go shouting accusations and hating the devs until we know they're the ones removing the reviews. Wait till someone posts a screenshot of them getting their review removed until you blame the dev I think.
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I read the reviews first hand. Some of them aren't bad or dumb yet they were removed anyways.
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How many reviews do you estimate that disappeared?
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Seems like 4 or 5. There's time I wasn't here and I don't have any reports of any other disappearances. But we have confirmed 2 disappearances.
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But my point is that we don't know for sure it was the dev that deleted them. It could have been the user for whatever reason.
Not defending the dev. Just saying that he should be assumed innocent until being proven guilty basically.
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Exactly. Moderator removed reviews look like this. To not be accessible would suggest these users have deleted their reviews themselves (and the counter lags behind) or there's some sort of purgatory that reviews go to after being reported by a dev but before being judged by Valve.
Edit: Or as someone else has pointed out, changing the visibility of it to non-public. Would be odd on Valve's part if friends-only reviews didn't count towards the overall rating though?
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best way to found out what's going on is to write a negative review and wait :3
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So what? Can't it start here? It's a valid concern, but she doesn't have proof. Only evidence.
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Ok, I don't want to start an argument right now. Sorry for causing any problem.
Bye, comment deleting time.
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indeed. I apologize. I presented it as proof, it's just evidence. I'm really just making nothing but a baseless accusation. So I changed the description of the thread.
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Really sad to see this. If the negative reviews were left, it would have had less of an effect on sales than removing them altogether..
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I was pondering if a person requests a refund if their reviews would be deleted but from your other thread promoting the game, Svipur posted a screenshot of a negative review. This is his profile.
He still has the game, still has a review under game activity, but not visible. Also has "3" reviews but only 2 are visible.
So yeah it looks like something fishy is going on. Either way it doesn't look like my type of game.
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Yep reviews definitely don't deleted after a refund. My finesweeper review is still up even though I refunded the game.
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Was checking this game some time ago and saw 2 negative reviews, but now it's 0. Pretty BS if you ask me using "100% positive reviews" marketing if you hide all the negative comments.
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I don't know what's going on, but devs cannot delete reviews. From the FAQ:
Q. I'm a developer. Can I delete reviews of my product?
A. Not directly. If you find abusive or offensive reviews written about your product, you can flag it as spam/abuse. The review will continue to be listed on your store page, but in a collapsed form and marked as spam until a moderator can either delete the review or remove the spam flag.
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Err... About the "I can't see the review" thing : this is ultra common. Tons of users have had some of their reviews you cannot access since Steam allows you to post reviews, nothing fishy going on - you can set the visibility of your reviews as you wish, as about anything on your profile.
The interweb paranoia sure is infectious, on the other hand.
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Anyone here who owns it, should leave a legit looking negative review so we can test the theory
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I am thinking about that. But users have being sending me copies of what happens when a moderator hides a review. From what i've got, it doesn't seem like that. Right now it seems like we might be getting massively flagged reviews. Toby Fox is a famous person on the internet and is most-known for their involvement in the internet series "HomeStuck" they made music for the story.
So we're considering that it might be because of fans who don't want a ruined image of the video game. Because i'll tell you, i've been involved with Undertale for the past two years. People REALLY like undertale and Toriel. They feel very emotionally connected to this game and take it personally when certain things in the video game happened.
So for them to perhaps, not want anyone to badmouth this "masterpiece" is possible. We'd have to look into potential groups of fans who may have banded together and maybe flag the reviews to keep a perfect image of the game.
Also people could just be trying to protect Toby Fox since they adore them and it could just be a fan thing. I guess it'd be a fan thing either way.
We're looking into fan-related causes for why the reviews are missing XD Because I cannot actually access and see the reviews anymore. I just get sent to the users recommendation page. Not the actual review. But the reviews are just simply hidden from the community hub I believe.
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It could help somewhat, aye, but the person posting the review shouldn't be anyone from this thread. Preferably, they shouldn't have ever visited SteamGifts at all. Because otherwise, whoever is doing the deletion of negative reviews right now, they could point at this thread as proof of collusion and get Steam to remove anything they dislike in the future. Remember, we've got nothing on them, so they'll walk free, and we will be the criminal posting those nasty negative reviews.
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i'm glad you brought this up... was in my wishlist ... People should be aware of what is going on!
Thank you.
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It's up in the air right now. We're making a lot of suggestions. Toby Fox is a internet famous musician for their involvement in making music for the famous internet novel "HomeStuck" So it's possible that people might have banded together to flag down negative reviews to promote Toby Fox's product.
Sorry for just emotionally typing this thread with potential misinformation.
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Update 3: Okay. So I just got a comment reporting that Toby Fox doesn't know how to delete or hide reviews and doesn't even know if it's possible. According to Toby Fox, they're aware of 2 reviews (I am aware of 4-5) that were written. They go on to say that they just "disappeared" They state that they have no idea where they went or what happened to them. Here's a link to the comment if you wish to read it yourself. Click Me
Please remember this doesn't mean it's fact and that this doesn't mean that Toby Fox does indeed not know about those tools.
Though from my personal experience with one of the missing negative reviews. I was re-routed to the users recommendations page which has only two reviews when on their profile is says 3 and shows the undertale review link on the players recent game activity.
This is what happens when a review is removed by a steam moderator -> Click
So the developers may have flagged and have the remove hidden. Or the fanbase may have done so, or something else. We are not sure. But it still stands that on Machaeus's profile. The Undertale review still exists, however we cannot access it.
Update 2: It's pretty up in the air right now, but Undertale MIGHT be censoring reviews. We're discussing below and trying to find and reach out to people who've written negative reviews and ask them about what happened. We're also considering multiple possibilities such as how Toby Fox is a internet famous musician for making music for the famous HomeStuck series. So maybe people banded together to remove any and all negative reviews or stuff like that. Anyways, the data below is things I posted when I first wrote this review and the following edit.
Yeah, me the undertale lady who's incredibly hyped about undertale. Well i've been watching undertale closely all day today and I can confirm they're censoring and removing reviews. I've been getting screenshots and keeps links of negative reviews and they just disappear. So I don't really know what to do. But Toby Fox (fwdgradation) or someone on their team is removing(or hiding) negative reviews.
Undertale
Currently they still have a "perfect" score. As of this moment, it is 310 positive reviews out of 310 reviews. Which I have a few negative reviews.
Edit: I managed to recover one of the links. See here. Click me. You'll see that that user has indeed played undertale recently on their recently played games profile. However, if you click on the link that says "review 1" for their undertale review. You get nothing. It leads you to their recommendations page and undertale is non-existent. However their profile says that it exists. However we cannot access it. The developers hid it. I saw it and read it this morning and now it is gone.
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