Holy crap, they’re learning…
Or they are putting pressure on platforms to block “review bombing”. That probably won’t work on Steam, so it’s kinda of a moot point.
Why? Steam has come out and labelled legitimate criticism of games a ‘review bomb’ in the past. They’re more than happy to bend over for big publishers like this.
They added a feature that changed what review score you see based on a preference to see what may or may not be review bombs, I can’t remember exactly what it’s called, but I haven’t seen them react to so called review bombs since.
https://kotaku.com/superhot-game-gets-review-bombed-after-removing-depicti-1847352470
This was in direct response to changes in the game, any negative reviews because of changes made to the game are legitimate reviews, not a ‘review bomb’.
triggering Valve’s anti-review-bombing tech to kick in and filter out the flood of bad-faith evaluations.
https://kotaku.com/valve-says-it-will-remove-off-topic-review-bombs-from-s-1833332643
“We’re going to identify off-topic review bombs, and remove them from the Review Score.”
Of course Steam is the arbiter of what they deem ‘off-topic’
The “Store content policy” option made it so Valve doesn’t have to manually do anything about “review bombs” or review bombs, which is a very Valve way of handling it.
Bringing up incidents from 3 or 5 years ago kinda solidifies that point, they put it up to the algorithm and don’t manually get involved.
They even say in that article, as an update, that they aren’t removing reviews. This function lets a user decide what they consider relevant, without removing reviews, and most importantly for Valve means they don’t have to manually do anything.
They still could, but again you found articles from years ago, they wanted a solution that requires less work for them and stopped the headlines, and that seems to have worked.
Your claim was that it never happened, this was just a single well known example of it happening.
At that point, Valve says a team of people will investigate those anomalies, and, if they determine that something fishy is afoot, they’ll “mark the time period it encompasses and notify the developer.” If Valve finds that coordinated review bombing has indeed occurred, any reviews posted during that time period won’t count toward the game’s review score.
Also it isn’t fully automatic. Valve claims that people are involved ‘evaluating it’, and the result of the evaluation was that reviews were not counted.
I never claimed that it never happened? A single well known example and also the only one you provided, from half a decade ago.
Yeah, no one at Valve, the same people that won’t even make their games playable without a massive community uproar, is reviewing any of these. That being something which directly affects there reputation as a company and there bottom line through crates/keys, instead of there reputation as a storefront to publishers. The article even mentions Valve’s addressesing this was a reaction to devs salivating over EGS having opt-in reviews, more so than them actually caring about publishers
Developers have cited this sort of toxicity as a reason they’re excited about the Epic Games Store, which plans to address the issue with an opt-in review system.
Also in the same article, they describe the option I’ve been referring to. You are still able to see the marked reviews reflected in scores if you wish.
On top of that, Steam users will be able to opt out of this new system entirely by using an option that’ll keep review bombs in games’ review scores. And, again, people will apparently still be able to look at reviews that have been removed. Review bombers won’t have as much power to affect games’ standing with the Steam algorithm, but this could also just encourage review bombers to find other ways to evolve their tactics and get through what sounds like some still worryingly large loopholes. Time will tell.
If you want to review bombs or “review bombs”, you can still do so on Steam, and the score will reflect your preference for that, as opposed to EGS where you may not be able to see any reviews if a publisher doesn’t want you to.
I was just thinking of this. I seem to remember someone having the nerve to refer to review bombing as harassment and did something to prevent it at some point. That said, we’ve since had the debacle with Helldivers 2 so… we’ll see?
Edit: Fixed typo
That’s literally the point, though. There are some easy steps to avoid it too.
- Make sure your product is finished when you charge full price on release
- Don’t remove features that were previously present
- Don’t add invasive software
- Don’t add arbitrary requirements that you’re not upfront with
Imo that’s not review bombing, that’s just reviewing. Review bombing should be used for unwarranted reviews, such as “muh wokeism” type shit.
I disagree. imo review bombing is more like a protest or boycott. a collective action that may or may not be justified
That’s exactly what these companies and gaming journalists refer to as review bombing though. It’s just a way to stop consumers from using the one weapon we have
As much as I get your point someone leaving a negative review because of (perceived) political elements in a game they don’t like is still a valid review
Leaving a negative review over people of color, women, women in power, homosexual relationships, etc. etc. is absolutely not a valid review. Stop normalizing bigotry.
There is an easy solution to prevent “review bombing”. Don’t make shitty games and don’t act like an idiot in public.
I hope it does. And if that’s a problem for them, Then they shouldn’t have canceled a title that many had bought during early access under the impression that it’d eventually reach proper release. Not only did they leave many players hanging, but they laid off all the devs with no announcement, and the unfinished game is still for sale.
I’m not sure what game you’re referencing.
Kerbal Space Program 2. All people working on the game were fired at the end of June, with the studio as a whole shut down. No announcement has been made. The only reason we know is because of state laws requiring public disclosure in advance of layoffs.
