Steam is aware of the Review Bombing...

I was very glad to read this tonight.

I don't know why there has to be so many people in the world willing to lie, cheat, steal & kill to get ahead or at least get "their way" but am glad that Steam is well aware of it and working towards a solution.

Read what the Steam folks say here. Figured I might as well share it as I have talked about this before and for some reason folks seemed like they couldn't quite believe it maybe think I just make up these things and that is not the case. Lol

I think if a few dozen were banned as an example it might just knock a bit of sense into all of the others.

 

It's a perspective thing, not an imagination thing. I haven't seen it, so my perspective is that it doesn't happen. You seem to have seen it a lot, so your perspective is that it happens a lot. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle, because perception is flawed - it's based only on the very limited part of reality that we're personally exposed to.

That's why I ask for numbers on these things. It's not an argument that it does or doesn't happen, it's an attempt to filter out the perception error.

 

There are news articles mentioning this was a result of Firewatch being review bombed, but I'm more inclined to believe it's the result of Bethesda's Fallout 4 being review bombed. Shortly after announcing their second approach to "paid mods" the game received over 6,000 negative reviews on the Steam store.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/377160/Fallout_4/

 

TBF dev shot first. (Also what the hell? He wasn't even playing firewalk when he cursed. So it's all a publicity stunt by devs...?)

"You have been banned because GarBenjamin disagreed with your opinions on multiple occasions". I don't look forward to the day.

 

The review rating histogram they have added is a good idea.

It would also be great if they mapped events like update releases on that histogram so that potential buyers would know whether or not the review ratio is affected by game updates or external factors.

 

I wasn't aware of the controversy between PewDiePie and Firewatch, and after reading about it I cannot help but feeling a bit sad about the whole situation, possibly because I liked the game quite a lot when I played it.

As I don't want to start a debate regarding any social issues here, I'll refrain from mentioning how I think about their respective actions. But as to the review bombing itself, I found it to be a quite silly thing to do.

Aside from being utterly childish, I feel it kind of defeats their purpose, since the whole thing started off when the company behind Firewatch decided to voice their opinion on the matter by using something completely unrelated to the issue. It doesn't make any sense to me, if people are protesting against such a measure by doing basically the same thing themselves.

I can neither see how a certain streamer's choice of words could determine if he can legally stream a game or not, nor how an owner of the game company deals with such an issue could decide what merit and artistic value their product has.

So I'm relieved to know that Steam is aware of such a practice and taking measures to prevent it from happening again.

 

Reading the Steam article it seemed to say 'review bombs never matter that much or last that long'.

 

They say in most cases some time after the review bomb the game recovers its positive / very positive rating. Most may be 51 out of 100 or 2 out of 3 and still I would say during the time when it is occurring there are lost sales.

Also we know of course Steam are not going to say "this has severely impacted sales of many games and destroyed other games" even if that is the truth.

The Firewatch or AAA game incidents I don't personally care much about. Such cases the games have already done very well. Although of course it is only because of those cases that it is being taken seriously unfortunately.

It is all of the other smaller scale review bombings on much smaller games that I hope is solved. Games being hammered because it is too mobile or otherwise doesn't look / play a certain way, etc. For a good or even great game that is not well known this kind of stupidity can kill it.

 

It's something at least. Unfortunately we live in an age where everyone thinks they're entitled to attack & butcher anything they don't agree with. It's been happening to Indies for years now and not just on Steam. Idiots targeting mobile games because "it's not free." Other idiots targeting mobile games because the developer wouldn't buy their app marketing service.

The only real solution is to get rid of such people and we know that won't happen. So we'll see how it goes now that it happened to bigger companies so was taken seriously.

 

If anyone actually read the article (it's in the second-to-last paragraph before the figure), Steam isn't doing anything about it.

They're adding a graph of reviews over time, so you can see if there was a spike somewhere. This doesn't remove "bomb reviews" or anything.

So this won't change anything.

As for whether or not review bombing is okay, see this article. Review bombing is a gamer's defense in a system where they don't have a voice otherwise, or so it is argued.

I think people afraid of review bombing need to keep in mind that for the most part, it happens in response to drastic actions by developers. Someone releasing expansions for an early access game. Someone blocking modding of a hugely popular tool in their game well known for modding. Someone trying to introduce paid mods when they've always been free. Someone making a big drama about a Youtuber after they've undoubtedly made money from that person's publicity.

An indie dev who keeps their head down and works on their game is not going to face these issues.

 

I think the firewatch devs have so much money they dont really care. $20 million enough money not to care.

http://steamspy.com/app/383870

 

Yeah I don't care about it from the big popular Indie games and AAA games. The risk is when people coordinate the attacks on the lesser known games. The super niche games. The tiny Indies just trying to get started. It is hard enough to market a game and make enough sales to make it worthwhile without jackasses intentionally trying to sabotage games just because they got a wild hair up their behind on about something.

 

What about their image? I thought it's priceless for companies.

 

Image is only important as it translates to sales. A company like Disney that markets to parents is highly concerned about a squeaky clean image. On the other hand a little controversy here and there probably helps the average indie dev.

 

Evidently not for them.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-09-19-firewatch-steam-review-bomb-pewdiepie-racism-incident
That's why I said they shot first. Themselves in the foot, that is.

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/steams-review-bombing-graph-may-only-encourage-review-bombing/

The narrative that "review bombs are bad" is clearly being pushed, but thought this was worth sharing.

 

IMO it would be a simple solution. Anyone can review, like now, but if you do not have 20+ hours in the game, your review should be shoved to the bottom of the list, and not count towards "mostly positive, mostly negative" at all. So if a purchaser really wants to see all the foul language I hate this game cause I died in 10 minutes, or OMG I couldn't find Iron so no house for me reviews, they can certainly get to them. i don't believe in censorship. However to count towards a postivie/negative rating the reviewer should have invested some time actually playing the game and putting a good effort in. Those reviewers should also be at the top of the pile because I would believe they actually know what they are talking about for the most part. This would also stop another trick I have seen done, buy game, review it, refund under time limit. That review stays, person doesn't even own the game and has their money back.

 

So you're saying Firewatch shouldn't have any reviews because it's a four hour game.

And you're also saying that a user cannot form a complete opinion of the game's core loop before 20 hours in the game have passed. This is, obviously, quite ridiculous.

Additionally, take a look at a game like Ark Survival Evolved, and see that a great deal of the negative reviews are from users with hundreds of hours in the game.

Additionally, Steam has a system in place to prevent refund abuse. I don't know how well it works, but it's there.

 

Well if you can't put more than 4 hours of gameplay into your game, that is likely not review bombing, that is deserved gtfo and finish your game bombing lol. If you have been spending your life playing games that you can get through in less than 20 hours, I feel very sorry for you. One day you will hit that magic game, and you will understand....

 

I suggest you re-read what I wrote. Setting aside all of my other points...

The idea that you cannot form a complete opinion of the game's core gameplay loop until 20 hours have passed is nonsense. In most games it can be done in an hour or less. That's the entire reason for Steam refunds only being two hours--that's long enough to get a fairly representative view of the game and whether you would like it or not.

 

What you are describing here is a perfect example of the real problem. So many people with strong extreme beliefs being able to publicly pass judgement on the games. That is the real problem.

There are a lot of people including myself who only play short games or at least only play for short amounts of time. Point being it isn't up to someone to dictate only games offering x hours or more of play time should be sold on Steam anymore than it would be right for me to go around Steam leaving negative views on all games that cannot be finished in less than 2 to 3 hours.

And this really is the whole thing in a nutshell. Too many people are trying to control which games can be on Steam going only by what they want and to hell with everyone else.

I do think your idea of a certain amount of playtime is reasonable. 20 hours is just way too long. But even 15 minutes would be far more than many of the negative reviews show.

 

Well how about you re read what I wrote then.

I said all reviews should be there, but reviews with 20 hours or more should be the ones to count towards the mostly positive, mostly negative ratings. The less than 20 hour reviews would go to the end of the list, like now they sort it by people clicking the helpful yes/no/funny now. If you can form a complete opinion about games in an hour or less wow I feel really sorry for you, takes me longer than that to choose my character design I am going to have to live with throughout my game life. There should be way more content than that. I mean unless you are just playing fruit ninja.....

Now GarBenjamin if you only play short games then nobody will have a lot of playtime in those games now will they, so everyone will be in the same spot, that short game with no content just won't qualify for mostly postitive or negative ratings. if it is a game you can finish that fast, what is the harm if you buy it and it stinks anyway, it wasn't going to provide you with a whole lot of enjoyment anyway. The issue at topic is the review system. I don't believe it is unreasonable at all. 20 hours is very reasonable, a couple of games I have you wouldn't even find your behind to wipe it in 20 hours.

 

I hear what you're saying I am just not sure you realize this is a perfect example of the kind of people causing the problems with the review system. Can you recognize that is an extreme view that you seem to feel very strongly about and therefore think it makes perfect sense to enforce simply because you feel so strongly about it? Well that is what is causing all of the problems with Steam reviews.

People bashing because a game is too short. People bashing because of this and that. People bashing the games because the developer likes blue and they hate blue. Maybe the developer is a republican and the reviewer is a democrat. Just stupid stuff. Extreme views trying to be enforced.

 

Like yours sitting here bashing me because you want to spend and hour in a game not even taking the time to look at the fine details of the graphics quality then write a review? Gotcha, your opinion is all that matters!

 

I see it's short games bashing o'clock here on the forums.

 

There is nothing wrong with anyone having an opinion. That is to be expected. The problem happens when one person (or really when many like-minded people team up) to try to enforce their beliefs... their opinions... on others such as the Steam and mobile stores.

That's what I am getting at. You liking games that take dozens or hundreds or hours to complete is fine more power to you. Like them all you want. Same for people who like short games. More power to them. But they shouldn't go around Steam and elsewhere bashing games that take 20+ hours to complete just to try to "get their way... make all games only the way they want them", right? And neither should anyone else.

That is exactly what people are doing and why the review system has been broken. It has become a way for people who feel very strongly about their own personal preferences of games (and even the behavior & beliefs of the game devs) to try to "punish" such games by negative reviewing them. It could be because "hey this game used a few assets from the Unity store" or it could be any of a number of things people feel very strongly about and because of that they attack by negative reviewing. And I think a more sensible approach is for people to just say "this game isn't for me" and in those cases don't leave the review to begin with.

 

20h+ minimum for a properly recognized review is just asinine, I did all that both of the portal games had to offer in less than 20h each, are you still telling me I can't form an opinion on them?

Not every game is long and not every gamer spends thousands of hours on a single game, some people have better things to do

 

If the first ten minutes of a game sucks, the next twenty hours will also suck. And vice versa, if the first ten minutes are good, the next twenty hours will also be good.

Requiring some time limit before allowing a review is stupid. It will limit reviews to those who liked the game enough to play for a long period of time, or those who have nothing better to do with their life.

 

20+ hours required for a review is just ridiculous. If your review was going to be "Game errors out on launch with all NVidia graphics cards, only works on AMD and Intel, and hasn't been fixed for 3 months", you obviously wouldn't be able to get your 20 hours in, and blocking that kind of review does a disservice to potential buyers.

 

I don't play most games for 20 hours, even if I do like them. Some of my favorite games aren't 20 hours long, and I don't have a problem with that. For instance, BioShock was probably ~15 hours long for me, and I think it was about the right length. Adding an extra 5 hours of filler just to meet some arbitrary number would likely have made it worse. (Heck, it could probably have done without some of the stuff after the Golf Club Moment as it was.)

And lets not all forget games like Half Life 2 (~10 hours) and the Portal franchise (~3 hours and ~6 hours?). Grow Home and Grow Up are probably two to three hours each if you just do the main objectives. And if you look at indie games... well, plenty of those - especially the narrative ones - are well under 10 hours without that being a problem.

 

I'd say between 15 to 30 mins is sufficient time to pass a judgement. Note: it's short sighted to assume you would actually know if it sucked in the first 15 minutes because a lot of games require a ramp up time. Any kind of strategy game or RTS or even adventure game, needs a bit of orientation time at least.

And some other games progressively suck more :/

 

Don't work for a lot RPG (or narrative product), persona 4 has a very slow start and is great after that, many game have slow start before getting to the actual meat, which cause anxiety when one of your fav game is like that ... suddenly all long games you are in waiting of the take off point, the good one need that build up. But we are also in a short attention span society, now even 30s trailer has a rapid cut to maintain attention past the 5s mark ...

 

I am going to buy Firewatch right now, this minute. Good for them for standing up to racism. Sad that the Youtuber fans feel the need to try to hurt a company for this.

I really wish we lived in a world where respecting others, no matter their differences, was the norm.

I looked into this a little more: It seems a big part of the controversy and the reason for the review bombing is this thing called "fair use". The fans of the Youtuber believe that the guy had the right to do whatever he wanted while reviewing the game.

However, fair use does not cover a game with a copyright. Meaning, that a game developer can ask a video to be taken down if they feel that the actions of the Youtuber might adversely affect the game. This is true of any art. The license sold to the Youtuber did not give him the right to use the game to make money. Most game devs are fine with it because the advertising usually helps them. But in this case, the developer did not want his game associated with this sort of language.

Pewdiepie apologized and took down the video and then deleted it from the archive.

His fans, however, insist that he had the right to do this so they are angry, for whatever reasons that I honestly do not want to know. lol They make a lot of justifications for it, but unless they really hated the game, those justifications are very weak. Reviews are supposed to be of the game, not of the developer.

 

You will be depressed, he has a attracted a specific brand of follower, with these kind of "mistakes" he made, I don't know if he is comfortable with that.

 

Oh, not depressed. Unfortunately for him, that is the consequences of his actions. Once it happens, it is difficult to get from under it and I am sure it is uncomfortable for him. But...we are each responsible for what we say or do.

I have never been a fan so no skin off my back. lol Some folks just have to learn the hard way.

 

It's just people. These days people think anything is fine as long as it doesn't happen to them. If something like this happens these people are outraged and see themselves as victims.

They can't stand the idea that the video was removed. They can't stand the idea the game dev would speak out against it because they should just shut up and let people do / say whatever they want. Of course if any of it was switched around these same people in the game devs shoes would also be outraged and creating a ton of noise. Like I said always the victim. Always outraged over something. It is a way of life for them.

Basically I see it like we are very much in the Age of Entitled Forever-the-Victim Whiners.

 

Feel free to support whichever side you choose, I do not condone of racism either, however I think the firewatch team are in the wrong or not. Even if we assume that you don't by default have the rights to let's play a video, Firewatch explicitly gave permission in their FAQ; meaning they have no right to retroactively remove the rights and DMCA takedown him. Sure they can tell him to never make another video about any of their games, but I believe its a false DMCA to takedown what they gave rights to.

 

Well there is no doubt the Firewatch folks could be part of the Age of Entitled Forever-the-Victim Whiners too. It is very widespread. Basically someone is constantly being offended by something and then grossly overreacting. That may describe what they did as well I don't know because I didn't even know about this incident and was talking about something completely different when I made the OP. Still... it is just all of these extreme beliefs held so strongly that cause the majority of problems. That's what I was talking about above. That is what is driving the problems on Steam.

And people get so hung up on words. Just freaking words. I don't really understand this modern world. When I was a kid I knew very well that sticks & stones may break my bones but words can never harm me. These days people are making it out like saying a word is the same thing as walking up to a person and sucker punching them or shooting them. It's ridiculous really.

Words never have any power by themselves only the power that a person gives them. Someone can call me an a-hole or any of their choice of words as much as they like. I might find it annoying after a while and think I should maybe knock them out simply because they are obviously intentionally trying to attack me albeit in a very weak way but them saying those words does absolutely nothing to harm me. And I wish people weren't so sensitive. Didn't have such low self esteems that cause them to feel pain simply from hearing a certain word. That is the real problem but we can never seem to get to the point of addressing it because someone is always flipping out over the use of the word and making that the entire focal point.

And for the record I am not trying to make fun of people who are greatly offended by certain words. I am just saying the real problem is that a word in itself shouldn't be the focal point to begin with. Even if people simply said I am offended by their use of this word which I feel was done intentionally to try to attack me and that is why I am reacting this way at least that clarifies it and gets to the real point.

That is the thing people are losing sight of many times I think. Someone joking around or just getting excited or feeling stressed or whatever and using a taboo word meaning absolutely no harm and directing it at nobody with no intention of attacking well that should be seen as such. But these days we have people that no matter what the context is well it seems to be irrelevant. And just because the word was spoken it becomes this huge thing with a life of its own.

I shut up now because this is a very sensitive subject.

 

My opinion, which by the way if you want to argue with me about it, don't, this is my opinion, is that words by themselves are meaningless. If you use said words to show your hatred towards someone, their race, etc. then sure, be rightfully hurt by that. But if you hear a word and whilst knowing the context and the intentions behind it, please stop getting so offended.

EDIT: Gar, the arguing thing wasn't directed at you btw. Was a 'you' to anyone who'd like to argue

 

It's only a conclusion you can have if you don't have a very specific kind of continuous life experience, those aren't just word, those are signal that normalize a certain kind of behavior, they are sign of recognition to help spread an idea slowly by testing water, they make joke about it to mask their intention and rally, it's used for and to control. There is no surprise there was a huge uptake recently, they have sowing the seed for a long time, despite many wake up call. These are used to gaslight and abuse, you should look at harassment strategy.

Also I was on social media when the word "outrage culture", I have an habit of surveying shady site and their discussion, let's say I'm very suspicious when this word is toss around when I know the very context of its appearance. It doesn't mean that anyone who use it mean bad thing, it mean they have a neat clever shortcut to hide behind and invoke to dodge seedy behavior. There is a reason, even though pewd might not be in the joke himself, they rally behind him, the clueless bystander is their best strategy to spread their idea through stupid meme and seemingly innocuous "accident" like that.

I won't fault people for not educating themselves on that matter, after all if they take over (and they kinda have with current presidency) most people who don't have "visible marker" will only have to groan they are under an unjust society that don't target them ... for the rest of us it's not outrage, it's pure survival.

 

I'm not entirely sure what you are saying here. The way I see it there are always people that will not like you or not like what you stand for & support. There are always people who will try to knock you down. They do exist they are out there. And when I say you I mean you, me, whoever.

There will always be people filled with hate no matter which political party they support or where they live or what their race or gender is. It's just people. There is no specific restrictions on where good is found or where bad is found. Both are everywhere.

BUT it kind of sounds like maybe all of this and your own personal views & experiences could be put into a game!

 

According to Wikipedia, and one of the news articles, this isn't the first controversial action he has made. If he wasn't comfortable attracting a certain type of audience then he would be better behaved.

https://www.theringer.com/2017/9/11/16292206/pewdiepie-racism-gaming-dmca-shift
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PewDi...deos.2C_network_drop_and_streaming_.282017.29

If it does turn out to be legitimate then I feel like it might bring more downsides than upsides to video streamers.

 

From what I gather he's just accepting the strike instead of taking it to court since he knows what he said was wrong and it isn't worth the effort, so we will probably never get a conclusive statement on whether the DMCA is false or not since no one is willing to fight it

 

You mean this actually had nothing to do with the Firewatch game? I just don't get into this stuff unless it is something related to game dev I don't pay much attention. But I was thinking he was playing Firewatch when he said the word. I am not sure what or how it has anything to do with the Firewatch devs unless one or more of their team were truly that offended from hearing the word they issued the DMCA or maybe they are seizing opportunity for good guy marketing or something.

Who knows. I'll leave this alone. Sounds like it is more of a very personal thing maybe.

 

He was not. None of the controversy surrounding him happened during his Firewatch let's play. That's a big part of why there's such an uproar

 

My post was simply pointing out that this is not the first incident for this YouTuber. He has a history of it.

 

Yeah I get that and it also made me realize it had nothing to do with Firewatch. I figured it did since they were making such a scene over it apparently.

Well on his history... we can look at every single person who is out there actually doing something and find they have a history. Because everyone messes up nobody is perfect. It is the reason we have judges involved in murder and sheriff's & fire chiefs dealing in drugs. The only person who is near flawless is the person who is doing very little at all period.

 

Not every one of those "mistakes" was an accident. One of the examples, mentioned on Wikipedia, involved him signing up for Fiverr and paying a couple of people to hold up a sign that says "DEATH TO ALL JEWS". He then recorded his reaction and uploaded it to YouTube.

 

The issue is a bit complex, and has very deep roots, when you are a bystander, you only seen disconnected events that don't make much sense.

I wish it was that simple, going into the specific is beyond the forum EULA, let just say people use the term systemic for a reason, and part of why you can come into that conclusion (that it's just hateful people) is part of the issue, the entire culture dismiss and disregard threat toward a certain kind of people and prevent actual understanding of the situation.

Let take one example to avoid sticky point: when the game nier was translated into US, they replace with a character that they think american would like best (ie moving the whiny boy by a "mature brute") and they were laughably off the mark, because they don't understand the premise of the design in america, they only have superficial understanding. That make sense, they don't have much contact with american, there is a whole hemisphere of distance between teh two country, misconception is bound to happen, it's not malicious. Now certain type of people in america are only represented in a certain kind of way, not necessarily malicious in intent but does harm nonetheless. It's as outrageous as the nier one in term of misconception, but as real life consequence, and there is literally no distance between the two group of people, and the group depicted constantly try to communicate what's wrong ... there is so many time where a dice can land on the same number before we call foul play.

Meanwhile the same japanese has gotten better at serving people they don't have regular contact with, whatever the group, nintendo in particular has given stellar example of design that don't land on the same number everytime for that given group, and was promptly rewarded for it. Why does japanese can get it faster than people pretend to be hateful but still rely on thing that hurt you, and you are regularly in contact with? Especially when that group that is hurt don't do it the other way. When does repetition of harm cease to be innocent accident and be seen as malicious? You won't belive me if I tell you this harm our survival much more than hateful people, and it allow hateful people to thrive without consequence too, so it's doubly harmful.