Valve making steps to address 'off-topic review bombs' on Steam

For being a Linux site this is really full of corporate drones, which are like, "ohh my God, those poor devs".

Developers are humans, too.

For being a Linux site this is really full of corporate drones, which are like, "ohh my God, those poor devs".

Developers are humans, too.

Nonono, they are greedy, scummy beings, whose only intention is to suck the money out of unsuspecting, innocent users, who blindly and tragically stumble into their malicious schemes.
The suffering and screams of the innocent is the only thing keeping developers alive, don't you see it?!

How, without the powerful weapon of unrelated spam, can we possibly hope to defeat those evildoers? Oh, woe is us!

Guys, put off your tin foil hats. The only game I could find that is filtered is:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/822240/Animal_Jam__Play_Wild/

This is not a AAA game by all means. It really got review bombed without a valid reason.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider still has all reviews, Metro still has all reviews, Firewatch has still all reviews, DOTA 2 has all. I could only find this one game. If anyone has more examples I'd be very interested. But right now it absolutely looks totally sensible. Steam should have filtered out Metro's reviews, too imho...

That shouldn't even be explained. When someone decides for you what you are entitled to express your opinion on, that someone is free to shit on you.

This is not what happens. You are still able to review-bomb however you like, it's just being flagged like that. Other users are still able to see and read your review and your opinion just fine. It's just the overall score that has some new rules for calculation, and even that is configurable.

For example, you liked a game and gave it a good review. But a different new game from the same publisher has some kind of issue in your view, and you are really mad about it. You go and change your review of a different game from a different developer in order to express your disdain for the publisher.

That's one example for review bombing. For me, that is abusing a tool in a way that it never was intended for. Of course, I understand the frustration of the lack of a tool for that. If you ask me, Valve should implement ratings for developers and publishers. That way, people can express their views on these entities.

But in 2019 claiming that software is just a bunch of binaries and that everything around it from support, publisher policies, associated media, distribution platforms, pricing, DRMs, EULA and so on are totally unrelated to the product, have 0 effect on customer experience and thus must not be subject to end user review... frankly speaking: it's bullshit.

It's not that there is never a connection between those things. Just as much as there is not always a connection between them. It depends.

Guys, put off your tin foil hats. The only game I could find that is filtered is:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/822240/Animal_Jam__Play_Wild/

This is not a AAA game by all means. It really got review bombed without a valid reason.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider still has all reviews, Metro still has all reviews, Firewatch has still all reviews, DOTA 2 has all. I could only find this one game. If anyone has more examples I'd be very interested. But right now it absolutely looks totally sensible. Steam should have filtered out Metro's reviews, too imho...

Hi guys, from Valve's official announce: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775

Q: Does this mean you'll be going back to identify and remove old off-topic review bombs?

A: Based on internal conversations and consultation with some of the partners that have experienced off-topic review bombs, we decided not to unilaterally grandfather in what's happened in the past.

Hi guys, from Valve's official announce: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775

Q: Does this mean you'll be going back to identify and remove old off-topic review bombs?

A: Based on internal conversations and consultation with some of the partners that have experienced off-topic review bombs, we decided not to unilaterally grandfather in what's happened in the past.

Fair enough. This Question does not appear at the News displayed when I go to steam. It always displays the German version (web and client) which only has two Q&A. Well, I guess we now should wait for the first review bombs to happen and see if this system works.
Btw. it's really easy to Show the filtered Reviews. It's more easy than usually and with a few clicks you can see why a game was review bombed. Just look for a star in the review score and click on it and from there go further.
This even helps pro-review-Bombers. You will be very quickly able so see if a game was bombed because some stupid Youtuber or DRM or Microtransactions and decide accordingly.

Another example being Shadow of the Tomb Raider because it got a sale soon after release.

Price and value of the game is definitely part of my ratings and reviews. This is IMO deserved, they should have not cut price so soon after release ....

Hmm, but every one looking at the game a few month after release, will see a negative rating. And this does not help these customers. They want to know if the game is good if it is fun to play. They do not care, if someone thinks, the game was lowered in price to early.
So it is a point of view. If I want to inform me, if the game is fun to play - what does the reviews help me, that rate the game down, just because it was going cheap to early (and this is just a feeling of the ones, who bought it at a higher price).

The act of lowering prematurely is still present. People who bought it early were paying for a service they didn't get (exclusivity in exchange for money, they lack money and exclusivity, theft?). This is not some subjective metric, you can compare all AAA games in last several years and look at how long it should remain at the top price. Weren't last Battlefield and Fallout just weeks after release hugely discounted? Right there, that is anti-consumer and in my opinion should reflect rating of a game, because if they pulled such scam once, people should expect to pull it again and this (rating and reviews) can warn new customers against scummy practices.

I am for everything being on-topic, because seeing how Valve is incompetent - saying DRM and EULA are OFF-TOPIC and not part of a game (WTF? DRM is literally part of a game and EULA must be accepted before playing, so, in my view, part as well). I don't trust them to not **** up, because they have several times already.

Hey, I think you miss the main point, nothing is censored, you can see everything and you can decide, if you want these reviews to be counted or not!

And by the way, I shall give Eizo a bad rating for my Monitor eh? It got much cheaper, since I bought it ;-)

I am simply stating that buyers after release are paying for time-limited exclusivity, for a new game to experience it first and for some time.

Huh. When I buy a game, I'm paying so I can play a game. I don't approve of positional goods where someone pays in the hope that other people won't be able to. Seems kind of dickish to me.
But you know, under the new Steam policy I can still read the reviews explaining why lower-income lowlives like myself shouldn't be able to afford the game yet and why it's terrible that the general guideline that the proles should be kept out for a while was violated, and I can click a setting to see what the rating of the game would be with those complaints factored in. And if I'm persuaded I can then refrain from buying the game, or at least wait a decent while for the upper middle class to enjoy the snob value of the product before I muddy the waters with my economically unworthy feet. So worry not, the new policy still allows that sort of review bomb all the influence it deserves.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 18 Mar 2019 at 9:36 pm UTC

(TheQuartering)
Steam Betrays It's Users & Further Shields Publishers From Backlash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvz7Tce0CwU

Wow. So many people go nuts about something that can be configured. Steam shows how this should be done so that everyone gets what they want, but some people blindly assume that something has been taken away from them and go nuts. For those people, it doesn't seem to make sense to actually read if their fear is true.

I'm sure there will be people review-bombing Valves games because of that. In their view, they show how right they are about their behavior. In my view, they show that this configurable feature is needed.


Last edited by Doc Angelo on 18 Mar 2019 at 11:45 pm UTC

I started watching that video and I didn't really like its attitude. And I am generally in agreement with you that this Steam policy is OK. But,

Remember that you can't fight fire with fire.

You can, actually. It's a well known technique in fighting forest fires to do a hopefully controlled burn somewhere the main forest fire will be passing through, to get rid of the fuel. And in general it is often perfectly practical and appropriate to fight a set of tactics by using similar tactics. If you're sitting at a chess board and somebody starts making chess moves at you, you can fight them by making chess moves back.

And I do think review bombing, although it seems often abused, has a place. Which is why I'm glad Valve are doing this the way they're doing it--not taking down the actual reviews, and allowing you to access what the review score with review bombs would be if you're interested. I would actually be upset if, say, the policy was that reviews identified as part of a review bomb were taken down. That would be bad.

Bit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

Bit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.

Bit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.

That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

Bit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.

That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

Yes, but if things change and you are required to play for one hour to leave a review, it is easy just to leave something running on your computer when you grab some lunch. That takes very little effort and people will do it if it is needed.

In general, only a small percentage of people leave reviews.

Factorio has sold over 1 million copies and has only 37,000 reviews. That is less than 4% of the players (though it hit 1 million almost 2 yearw ago and I think it is closer to 2 million which would make it only 2%)
Rimworld also has sold over 1 million copies and only has 30,000 reviews. That is only 3% of the players. (again, it is probably more in sales by now.)

Those are 2 indie games with highly motivated players. (both 98% positive.) It requires motivation to write a review... forcing a little in-game time is unlikely to stop someone from creating a review.

Bit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.

That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

Yes, but if things change and you are required to play for one hour to leave a review, it is easy just to leave something running on your computer when you grab some lunch. That takes very little effort and people will do it if it is needed.

You underestimate just how lazy people truly are. As a developer myself who sees a lot of interaction between support and users (and in the gaming business, too): Incredibly lazy. It is a fact one simply has to accept and deal with.
The few people that do leave short-playtime negative reviews are not highly motivated to do so, they are barely above the motivation threshold to do so. Increase the threshold and it is 100% guaranteed to decrease the number of those reviews.
Obviously, a few would do shenanigans like you described, but that will only be a minority among a minority.

Positive and negative reviews are also different to begin with.
A positive review is almost always left after a longer time of playing (for obvious reasons), so the minimum time requirement is a non-issue here.
While a negative review can also be left after a longer time of playing (making it a non-issue), many negative reviews are left after a very short while - and the main reasons for many of these are:
- Players did not inform themselves before their purchase and blame the game for not being something it never tried to be - which is pointless criticism. "I don't like my new blue car because it isn't red"...
- Review bombing because they disagree with the dev on issues not related to the game.
- Bugs or other severe technical issues.
- Design flaws so obvious and numerous that really only such a short time is needed to come to valid conclusions.

Of those four main reasons, only the last two are truly valid in judging a game's quality.
Which does make such a minimal time requirement a bit of a double-edged sword. From what I've seen over the years on Steam reviews, though, the part of the first two reasons is much larger than the last two, so I'd still be in favor of such a requirement.

Alternatively, Valve could do what they do with review bombs themselves, allowing reviews at any playtime, but not making them a part of the (default) score.

Anyway, review bombs come not only from those short playtimes ones, but also from normal players that simply didn't post a review before and now something non-game related cause them to lash out. Nothing other than Valve's measures will stop that. At least I couldn't think of anything right now...

In general, only a small percentage of people leave reviews.

Thats true because not many people feel the urge to write their experience down so that other can read it. However, many people have a strong motivation to somehow express their frustration with something. I'd say that review-bombing is typically done by people who wouldn't write actual reviews.