Steam - User Reviews Revisited

I don't know, though. I've seen quite a bit of review-bombing for things like Denuvo, deals with Epic, or anything that causes a certain element to take offence. I could also imagine review bombing coming from the other side, with games getting pounded for not having enough representation, or some such. So, I do think it's a wider problem.

I think the system they propose is quite close to a decent solution. If they have good reason to believe that a certain period of the reviews was heavily influenced by political activity, identify that with a due warning, and give the user the option to include or disregard that chunk of the reviews.
 
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When a game is announced or hits the store, I've quoted steam forum feedback numerous times as is more useful than reviews. Rarely though there is a review with crucial info about the game.

In other words, I don't care what's steam gonna do with reviews. Steam's major problem is shovelware that needs cleanup, not reviews.
 
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Review bombs are usually done by less serious players, who often can't even be arsed to read up on the game in question, or have some sort of agenda that is unrelated to whether or not it's a good game. It shouldn't be hard for Steam to simply filter that, for example by adding a few requirements before a player can post a review, such as actually having played the game.
 
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Stingray said:
Yep, it's kinda obvious that the main point of this new feature will be to shut down anti-SJW'ers.
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Giving reason to Steam censorship attempt then.

Originally the problem with a few SJW was the lack of temperate and the aggressiveness level, but anti-SJW pushed it a lot further and worse, at least in video games. It became pure non sense.
 
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joxer said:
When a game is announced or hits the store, I've quoted steam forum feedback numerous times as is more useful than reviews. Rarely though there is a review with crucial info about the game.

In other words, I don't care what's steam gonna do with reviews. Steam's major problem is shovelware that needs cleanup, not reviews.
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In theory same for me, in practice I quoted I'm still influenced by the steam reviews rate to skip quickly on a game, sometimes it's hardly mindful, more like a reflex.

AAA games have no chance to get hurt by that, but I buy very few AAA games.

Indie games are hurt by that. And it doesn't matter that I cumulate counter examples, and know my tastes could be original, and know some games suffered to not have find their right public. It's still influential.

Do the next step and go in forum, browse feedback and arguing, ask some question, is multiple steps past a first decision influenced partially by steam reviews rate.
 
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Stingray said:
Yep, it's kinda obvious that the main point of this new feature will be to shut down anti-SJW'ers.
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Steam set up their review system and its intrinsic bias to favour sales.

They keep the course with that decision: pushing a system that spurs sales.

They try to eliminate as many causes to deliver negative reviews as they can.
This one is one among many.
 
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tekulte said:
Thought the same thing. Also wondering if Steam will do the same with off-topic positive reviews.
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Old topic that was dealt with time ago.

To do the same, their existence must be admitted. Steam do not care about events or manipulations that inflate review scores as it spurs sales.

They are looking to suppress anything that moved review scores down as it degrades sales potential. They wont look into stuff that moves the score up as it helps sales.
 
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I wonder if this change is related to what happened at Rotten Tomatoes in the last few weeks, considering the timing.
 
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azarhal said:
I wonder if this change is related to what happened at Rotten Tomatoes in the last few weeks, considering the timing.
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What happened at Rotten Tomatoes?
 
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They don't seem to be claiming that the deletion was a bug - but that the mass of reviews received before release being counted at all was the bug. They seem quite open their intention to delete those.

To me, news that crappy comic-book movie is crappy is not very exciting, but was there something about this one that agitated the review-bombers?
 
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I wonder why no-one has had the idea of focusing on "positive off-topic review bombs" ? Users err reviewers might actually hype a game ... because they like it too much or because they've been paid.

It's a bit astonishing to me that it seems to me as if no-one here in this discussion has mentioned on this.
 
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From what I read in the press release, this is a very mild adjustment in the review score.

And to be honest, even if steam totally fubared their reviews, there is always metacritic. I like them, because they don't bow to any stupid pressure.

For example, go look at the Captain Marvel user review score (lol), then compare it to the review score on IMDB and other sites.
 
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Ripper said:
To me, news that crappy comic-book movie is crappy is not very exciting, but was there something about this one that agitated the review-bombers?
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Female main character. They tried something similar with Black Panther last year but Rotten Tomatoes was pro-active about it and technically The Last Jedi was first (with added social harassment).

Alrik Fassbauer said:
I wonder why no-one has had the idea of focusing on "positive off-topic review bombs" ? Users err reviewers might actually hype a game … because they like it too much or because they've been paid.
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Steam announcement only mention "off-topic review bombs", there is no negative/positive mention outside saying those "off-topic" reviews are about lowering the game score. Their algo will probably just look at the text being "off-topic" and flag everything anyway. They just don't think the opposite happens (I've seen that on metacritics a lot but not so much on Steam).
 
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Alrik Fassbauer said:
I wonder why no-one has had the idea of focusing on "positive off-topic review bombs" ? Users err reviewers might actually hype a game … because they like it too much or because they've been paid.

It's a bit astonishing to me that it seems to me as if no-one here in this discussion has mentioned on this.
Click to expand...

There was a positive review bomb campaign for Captain Marvel on Rotten Tomatoes. Many 'users' copy and pasted the same review. At the same time many negative reviews that were genuine were deleted. Do I think it is a potential issue for Steam? Yep.
 
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I don't think review bombing is too much of a problem now when it comes to people that are actually scrolling down and reading reviews. The problem is that the overall score also shows up on search results and in the queued games.

I'm so-so on this issue. There are a lot of times when review bombing seems very unjustified (e.g. game isn't in my language) and other times where it is justified (recent patch mangles the game - or worse yet, mangles the game unless you buy the expansion). I guess we'll have to see what Steam yanks and what it doesn't.
Alrik Fassbauer said:
It's a bit astonishing to me that it seems to me as if no-one here in this discussion has mentioned on this.
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It's a different issue. That doesn't mean it isn't an issue - but the review bombing is a lot easier for everyone to see. (I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the people pushing a review bomb weren't being paid by some competitor, though.)
 
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@Ripper

Disliking a movie is now a thought crime. :lol:

Whoever came up with this is an evil genius.

As it's a win for Disney and other megalithic corporations.

“Dislike our politically correct drivel being forced down your throats? You must be *insert negative hateful stereotype* and deserve to be censored.”
 
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No, no - it's not a crime. Just that review-bombing superhero movies is sad as fuck.
 
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