It is, but also seems like a reasonable response.
They might have also considered an Amazon-like system with a “verified purchase tag” and allow users to filter score by the tag. They could have even made it the default, but given users the option to factor in all ratings or see other scores separately.
I agree. It’s bad for devs who rely on their core audience to help them get their scores up. Now i’m at the mercy of random people who feel that a $5 game should have deep 50-hour gameplay or its junk. It doesn’t really factor in that at least 50%-60% of people get their games outside of Steam, and their opinions don’t matter anymore. One my games went from 56% Mixed to Negative 0% – which includes a number of people who played for 10 minutes or less and decided it wasn’t Stellaris for $5, so forget it.
I think the fact it nukes fake reviewers is fine, but my reviews are pretty much legit as far as I know and are now being rendered invalid, and that stinks for really small guys like myself.
I read a post on Steam and thought their idea was a good middle ground for this.
What would happen if non-Steam purchased keys were still considered in reviews if the account giving the review had more than perhaps 25 games and at least 5 or 10 reviews on the account? Would this not prevent the abuse by some developers who create spam accounts to inflate their review scores?
I am sorry but I want to be sure I am reading this correctly. Are you saying that your review score went to 0%? That not one person who purchased your game via Steam has given it a positive review?
I think one of the things this change addresses is the elephant in the room that often isn’t discussed: the emerging group of “brand evangelists”, influencers, previewers, and let’s players. This is a type of consumer-creator exchange that isn’t as obviously thorny as getting keys in trade for positive reviews
Not to pick on Paradox since this is just a theoretical I am creating at the moment but I think developers and publishers are engaging in a closed feedback loop or preaching to the choir; and possibly even subconsciously. You see a gamer has 2,000 hours in Europa Unversalis IV and 1,500 in Crusader Kings II and is extremely active in the Paradox forums or has a YouTube channel where they do Let’s Plays and Guides of Paradox games 24/7. That is an ideal candidate to receive a key for Stellaris or Hearts of Iron IV. That person has already bought into the Paradox style of games and has a clear and evident affinity for their brand of Grand Strategy. That individual is also nearly predisposed to providing a favorable review of the new game and submitting a “Thumbs Up” on the Steam page.
I’m not even positing this as a conspiracy but rather a side-effect of how large gaming is now and how the gaming community has splintered off into a bunch of tiny niches. There is also a blurring of the lines between previews and reviews. A lot of YouTubers claim what they are doing are previews or impressions when the content is uncomfortably close to a review. There are a whole army of commenters that will happily fall on their sword defending Total Biscuit saying that his WTF videos are not reviews but harmless first impression videos even though the content and format is nearly identical to what would be a review in a print publication.
Now how one feels about this trend will highly vary and many may see aspects of it as positive. Groups of enthusiasts orbiting around each other in closer and closer feedback loops.
It has been interesting to observe.
I wonder how Steam sales will affect the score overall. If a lot of people do not buy until a sale than the reviews that are scored will be lower not giving the best results?
I do think that people who buy directly from a dev site would naturally be more inclined to give a good score. Those who purchase founders packs as well. This cuts off a lot of the higher scores possibly causing an overall lower point than would normally happen.
Yes, but factor in the average Steam user who just randomly buys a game on Steam. Many of them would consider my games to be “Facebook” games if they don’t feature fancy 3D graphics or anything. Lunch break types light strategy games are a very distinct subculture that won’t really translate well when it comes to the average 26-year old buy-on-a-lark Steam gamer. I do occasionally give keys to long-time fans of my games, but never ask them to leave reviews at all. Their reviews are now null and void, and that sucks, plain and simple. Now I will have to probably stop that practice to be honest, because otherwise it will impact the game’s score (and thus revenue) on Steam, and i’m certain many other small companies will follow suit.
Will these effect dev from selling on GOG, etc?
Yes. If you don’t buy directly through Steam, your review will not be factored into the general review score.
Games on GOG don’t have steam keys?? edit: maybe I’m mistaken!
I was thinking maybe there should be some gating to the reviews - like prohibit leaving a review unless you’ve played the game for a representative amount of time. But then I figured people would learn how to game that system (open game, go to bed, come back next day and you’ve “played” a lot).
Maybe Valve should allow all reviews but let you filter them for more meaningful data… for instance, I would love to filter out all reviews for the last 3 months where someone played the game less than an hour. Or some such.
Steam will always do the thing that requires the least amount of gruntwork. They consider easy tasks beneath them.
Overall I don’t think this will be a big change- the neg-bandwagons will still happen, just see fewer reviews.
Oh, I’m familiar, and eternally grateful I’ve never had to have a lengthy dealing with Steam’s “support.” It just blows that they are so averse to hiring grunts for gruntwork.
Epic here in Cary has a parking lot full of cars that cost more than my fancy private school degree. More or less across the street’s a buildingful of low-paid phone jockeys providing support services at low-middle-class wages. Somehow, Epic manages to survive!
This was the only reasonable way forward for Valve, I think.
The review abuse was really getting out of hand, and there’s very little else that could have been done, I think. the amount of mails even small devs get for “fair reviews” in exchange of keys has been rising and rising. There was just too much noise in the (small percentage of) reviews from Steam codes.
What this means is that most reviews will now come from customers to paid higher prices (as others noted, Steam is no longer the cheapest venue most of the time). This means more invested customers (good for the scores) but also more demanding ones (higher prices, and bad fort the score). Scores will keep more or less the same except in cases where abuse was rampant OR in very few specific cases with huge audiences outside of Steam compared to Steam.
I don’t really see how this affects much, who bases their buying decision purely on a numerical score? If I am curious about a game on steam i mostly just read the most upvoted reviews, some positive and some negative, to make a determination. I don’t know that I’ve ever looked at the numerical score at all since I never trusted it, not even counting all the fraud they’re talking about. Any douchebag can spend 30 seconds giving a game a numerical score with nothing to back it up.
If I’m weighin the net benefit of buying a $2.49 on-sale niche title from 3 years ago in the middle of a busy Steam sale, I’m likely to keep moving if the reviews are even just middling at best (remember, Steam doesn’t show a numerical rating at top-of-page, just a vague summary of how pos/neg). Not very fair to gamedevs, but then again, I’ve got a big enough backlog that I can afford to be callous, lol.
This. Also, Valve will do what’s good for them, and this move also guarantees that they’ll see more sales on their own platform compared to other stores, and higher profits for them.
Don’t think for a second that people at Valve were thinking about the “community”. They’re using this, like they did with other things before, to maximize their profits by both increasing revenue and cutting costs.
This seems a little heavy handed. I think a better middle ground solution would be to still allow the review to be posted if the user has for example over 500 or 1000$ worth of games purchased from Steam in his library. There are a number of metrics that Valve could use for a whitelist system so flat out banning reviews of 3rd party key owners feels like a rushed decision.
Why would this be? I doubt customers are going to care about their ability to post a review that contributes to a score when choosing where to buy a game.
Devs shouldn’t care either. Why stop selling in no-review-score compatible places?
I don’t see how this affects sales by platform at all.
For the most part, players still have the abiliy to rate their purchases wherever they’re made. GOG customers can rate the game there, Amazon.com customers can rate them there, and GMG customers can do as like. There are some exceptions to this, such as Humble Bundle (unless they have buyer reviews I’ve missed), but I always get the feeling most of the stuff they sell probably sits in a back/junk log and goes unplayed anyway.
If the Steam store wants to limit buyer reviews to people spending money in their store, I don’t really have a problem with that.