Valve have made some steps towards trying to improve their reviews system, so let's take a look. See the news post here for the full info. It should cut out people gaming the system, but it's not great news for developers in reality.
They added in review result customization to give you more options, here's Rocket League for example:
One massive change, is that the review system will no longer include scores from people at the top of a store page (the Recent and Overall marks) who got their key from outside Steam.
To be clear, you're supposed to still be able to review the game if you gained your key from outside Steam, but it just won't affect the total score.
They have done this to reduce the amount of developers who abuse it. I actually wrote about that issue here. Developers essentially generate a ton of keys, and use bots and fake accounts to make good review scores on crap games.
It's good to see them take steps to stop this happening. Valve say they will be ending their relationship with developers who do this kind of abuse—good!
So now developers can't throw out keys to people for a positive review. While the review will still be shown, it won't be included in the overall score.
The major problem here, is that anyone who provides a Steam key for something like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, direct sales, Humble Store etc are no longer included in the overall score for the game. This will hit smaller developers harder, and already has judging by a lot of concerned developers in my twitter feed today.
Considering the amount of games that have done crowdfunding, this will be quite hard on them.
Valve are going to need to be careful here, and may have to backtrack a little as there could be a storm brewing from unhappy developers. Good intentions, but not the best way to deal with it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
They added in review result customization to give you more options, here's Rocket League for example:
One massive change, is that the review system will no longer include scores from people at the top of a store page (the Recent and Overall marks) who got their key from outside Steam.
To be clear, you're supposed to still be able to review the game if you gained your key from outside Steam, but it just won't affect the total score.
They have done this to reduce the amount of developers who abuse it. I actually wrote about that issue here. Developers essentially generate a ton of keys, and use bots and fake accounts to make good review scores on crap games.
It's good to see them take steps to stop this happening. Valve say they will be ending their relationship with developers who do this kind of abuse—good!
So now developers can't throw out keys to people for a positive review. While the review will still be shown, it won't be included in the overall score.
The major problem here, is that anyone who provides a Steam key for something like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, direct sales, Humble Store etc are no longer included in the overall score for the game. This will hit smaller developers harder, and already has judging by a lot of concerned developers in my twitter feed today.
Considering the amount of games that have done crowdfunding, this will be quite hard on them.
Valve are going to need to be careful here, and may have to backtrack a little as there could be a storm brewing from unhappy developers. Good intentions, but not the best way to deal with it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Anything that goes towards stopping the customer being fleeced by developers is OK in my book, no matter how small or large the company is.
Look at the blow back that shit heap Arkham knight got. It forced one of the largest game publishers in the world with one of the largest franchises in the world on the largest gaming platform in the world to pull the plug on the game. If there wasn't a method of reviews and websites like GOL to point out both good and bad developers then they would continually release garbage and steal from customers.
Look at the blow back that shit heap Arkham knight got. It forced one of the largest game publishers in the world with one of the largest franchises in the world on the largest gaming platform in the world to pull the plug on the game. If there wasn't a method of reviews and websites like GOL to point out both good and bad developers then they would continually release garbage and steal from customers.
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Have they done anything about EA reviews skewing overall results when the developers make crucial changes mid-EA causing reviewing bombing, when it in fact, it's a good change for the released game?
The "Recent" system works for well-established games making unpopular changes (looking at you, Payday 2), but it's no use when you have 1000 bad EA-based reviews and 10 good launch reviews. No-one is going to touch that game, basically.
The "Recent" system works for well-established games making unpopular changes (looking at you, Payday 2), but it's no use when you have 1000 bad EA-based reviews and 10 good launch reviews. No-one is going to touch that game, basically.
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Quoting: scaineHave they done anything about EA reviews skewing overall results when the developers make crucial changes mid-EA causing reviewing bombing, when it in fact, it's a good change for the released game?Nope, that still needs some adjustments.
The "Recent" system works for well-established games making unpopular changes (looking at you, Payday 2), but it's no use when you have 1000 bad EA-based reviews and 10 good launch reviews. No-one is going to touch that game, basically.
Early reviews do have a tag on them to show it's from early access. In reality, it would be nice for early access reviews to stay, but not affect the score until they are re-done for the current version. Or something like that at release time.
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They should just weight scores by account age and number of games owned.
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i mostly hate the reviews that doesnt tell anything about the game or the content itself, but just throw shit at developers or praise the developers without mentioning the reviewed game at all.
this needs some cleanup. you cant just give negative or positive raiting because of some developer actions, you have to review the said product!
my 2 cents
this needs some cleanup. you cant just give negative or positive raiting because of some developer actions, you have to review the said product!
my 2 cents
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ElectricPrism Sep 13, 2016
I wish they would require a minimum play time in order to leave a review - or even esteem reviewers who have completed 50% or 100% of the game.
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Quoting: ElectricPrismI wish they would require a minimum play time in order to leave a review - or even esteem reviewers who have completed 50% or 100% of the game.Would be quite difficult to do, who would set that? Steam or the developer?
Games are all different lengths, what about Sandbox games, how long would you need to play for them?
Play time is one that would be too difficult to implement I feel.
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It's a shame demo's aren't quite as prevalent as they once were, I kinda prefer those over reviews to find out whether or not to buy a game.
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1mHfoksd1Z Sep 14, 2016
Yeap, a very needed and welcome change. It might be a bit "forceful / dictatorial" but seriously guys, the freedom of the review system was also it's plague (Freedom fails big time when people abuse it). I'm happy they don't count the key activations anymore, even tho some of them are legit for example, most of my games are activated using keys from various 3rd party resellers or even other users from trading forums. My reviews will not be counted but I don't mind, it's for the greater good. I always took the Steam reviews with a huuuge grain of salt and found them very unreliable. I hope that this step will be as effective as intended, if that's the case, then it's a big step forward, IMO.
It's also good to see they added options to change what reviews you see. I will personally only look at the "Steam Purchases" ones, and probably so will most other people, but it's good to see that there's a choice, and it might be useful to others... For me it isn't, except maybe for the curiosity of seeing the number of reviews on each side (and the positive/negative ratio) and see how many there are, which might give some insight about the game's quality (like, is it a game that's been given away for free, cheaper in 3rd party stores, or the devs try and fail to abuse the reviews, etc...)
It's also good to see they added options to change what reviews you see. I will personally only look at the "Steam Purchases" ones, and probably so will most other people, but it's good to see that there's a choice, and it might be useful to others... For me it isn't, except maybe for the curiosity of seeing the number of reviews on each side (and the positive/negative ratio) and see how many there are, which might give some insight about the game's quality (like, is it a game that's been given away for free, cheaper in 3rd party stores, or the devs try and fail to abuse the reviews, etc...)
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1mHfoksd1Z Sep 14, 2016
Quoting: tmtvlIt's a shame demo's aren't quite as prevalent as they once were, I kinda prefer those over reviews to find out whether or not to buy a game.So true! Demos are great if you want to get a "first person" impression of the game. Even if the reviews are accurate, everyone has different tastes, maybe it's the most positively acclaimed game on Steam and I still don't like it for some reason.
The most important thing it would be to test / benchmark the game. Many game nowadays release with serious compatibility issues, be them either software or hardware incompatibilities. Trying a demo will give you an answer as to whether the game will run on your system, thus not only spare you some wasted time, the stress and half the disappointment, but it would also reduce the number of refunds by quite substantially.
Currently the only way of answering those really good and noble questions, is to get a pirated copy of the game, which is not "noble" at all. It's ok if you buy the game afterwards but it's still a shady way of doing things, especially since there's Steam Refund to save your bucks in case the worst case happens and the game is a complete "garbage" for you.
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