Since the announcement of Borderlands 3 as yet another timed exclusivity deal with the Epic Store, some players have performed mass protest by review bombing the Steam store pages of the first 2 Borderlands games with negative reviews. Unlike previous attempts where similar protests have occured, Valve has now decided to implemented a system of review moderation to address the matter.
In a statement released by Valve, the company announced that games with extraordinary review spikes would now have zero effect on the overall ratings listed at the top right corner of the store page (e.g. ‘Mostly Negative), or in other instances of having a preview of a game’s overall score. As a result of this new update, Valve has removed the options for what they call ‘off topic review activity’ to contribute to the overall score by means of a dedicated moderation team.
In essence, an anomalous spike in review scores will send an automatic notification to Valve’s moderation team, who will then personally analyze both the nature and time period of the reviews. If the situation amounts to review bombing, the developer of said game will be notified that some review content will be excluded from the game’s total score. Some 4000 reviews have been hidden from the first two Borderlands game stores, but Valve will nonetheless give users personal preference as to whether they want to continue seeing off topic review activity in Steam pages or not.
The Steam blog post explaining why Valve has decided to implement this feature states that it is in the interest of objective, fair reviews. For many players the Steam reviews are crucial, mass overviews of the games, and review bombing is an abuse of a system for which there are other, more appropriate outlets to voice dissatisfaction.
What do I think? Well, I buy games based on many reviews from many different sources, and not just Steam. Review bombing is too obvious as a protest movement while not actually being indicative of how the game plays. Besides, I just cannot bring myself to give negative judgement to a game which has had a huge impact on my life. There, 2 cents please!
[CORRECTION: The title of this article is inaccurate. The counter measure by Steam against review bombing was already implemented on the 15th of March. Borderlands 1 and two are actually just the first games in which the ‘off topic review activity’ has taken effect.]
Pieter hails all the way from the tip of southern Africa and suffers from serious PC technophilia. Therapists say it is incurable. Now he has to remind himself constantly that gaming doesn’t count as a religion even if DRM is the devil. Thankfully, writing reviews sometimes helps with the worst symptoms.
Moderation isn’t good either.
You can opt into seeing the review score with “off topic reviews” affecting it.
If you like to see cancer destroying the game page you can opt out
This seems like the best way to compromise between devs and customers. You can still opt into seeing “off topic reviews” affecting the overall score.
And remember, when Epic does finally implement user reviews, it will be an optional feature on the developer’s end. E.g. they continue to show they don’t give a sh*t about the end user.
A moderation team? Really?
Hundreds of thousands of sh*t game, let through without moderation, f*k the customer. But the customer review bombing games? Gotta stop that, let’s hire a moderation team for that. Gotta defend the publisher’s interests.
I mean, still, f*k the EGS, but this is the sort of stuff that makes it obvious Steam doesn’t care about us either.
Article is wrong about one thing. It was not after Borderlands got bombarded, it was before. Valve wrote that post at 15th of March, review bombing happened in last few days.
Thank you for pointing out this oversight on my part. Please see the addendum to this article.
You’re welcome! 🙂
You buy games based on reviews???????
LOL is this 1999 or what? We have YouTube now, just watch the gameplay and decide lol.
i only trust steam reviews and common sense when it comes to buying games.
Reviews are very useful. Recently, i wanted to buy left alive. It looked nice on YT, as a game i mean. But little did i know that the game is a mess. Thanks to Steam reviews i did not buyed that hot mess.
i barely have to look for reviews but steam reviews are easily the best indicator of a game’s overall quality.
There it is boys, there goes the last tool we had as gamers to protest and critique devs and publishers.
The journos are bought off, the forums are moderated by shills and now we lose the reviews.
full corporatocracy.
“There it is boys, there goes the last tool we had as gamers to protest and critique devs and publishers”
DON’T BUY THE GAME is the only and the real way to protest against this greedy people.
Poor thing, can’t review bomb anymore 🙁
Can’t bomb a score for reasons that most consumers won’t care about ? Oh no.
Steam has honestly done a kickass job with this feature.
suck that corporate D harder.
No way to voice our disapproval. Just the way the corporate overlords like it.
He supports Epic Games Store. Nuff said!
Don’t be silly, pirating the sh*t out of it is far better. If you don’t, publishers just think it was a flop.
In more positive news, check out the news about the humiliating sale of the commercially failing Kotaku and its parent organisation Gizmodo Media Group. Massive losses of $20m and now reportedly sold for less than $50m after having been acquired for $165m a little over 2 years ago, lol!
The private equity group that is their new owner is set to introduce a paid subscription business model for the sites. Oh dear. Expect major job losses.
#getwokegobroke just claimed another success!
The same Kokatu that published the Anthem piece ?
Yes, they’ve had bad articles, but they’ve also had some quality stuff that you won’t find on the vast, vast majority of sites.
Obviously.
I look forward to Kotaku’s demise if the new ownership is unable to correct its course so to rescue the currently sinking ship.
The only person in that site that does any good investigative journalism is ason “objectivity is a sly thing to strive for” screechier and like i pointed out he is a massive @%#$#$%
If that guy concentrated on proper journalism then he’d be a more than competent writer and journalist. Unfortunately, he trashed his reputation long ago as a consequence of the SJW nonsense he’s otherwise unable to resist producing. Let’s see if he proffers the excuse of ‘I was only obeying orders’ when eventually seeking employment elsewhere.
Ben ‘Cuck’ Kuchera will likely get work at another SJW cesspit such as Polygon because his sensationalist woke clickbait would be a good fit over there. Although being a white male may disqualify him.
Lesser known staff and freelancers may soon be needing to switch to a cheaper brand of blue hair dye because welfare cheques won’t stretch far.
When kotaku burns ill party, sadly the resident shill Jason “objectivity is a sly thing to strive for” screechier will get another job.
Schreechier will get another job sadly.
The day Gizmodo and their SJW TRASH leave the internet forever and ever is the day I throw a party. The entire former Gawker network needs to die in a fire. I can only hope Gawker Media – the new company formed by the buyer of some of the former Gawker assets along with Gizmodo/io9/jalopnik/jezebel/etc/lifehacks etc. also goes down in flames.
If Vice/Motherboard could please be next.
I’m not even as rabidly anti-sjw as the rest of y’all but I loathe all of those websites and their employees. They’ve been nothing but a scourge on the internet for years and aren’t even a step above buzzfeed.
Stop. You’re acting like this isn’t for a reason. First of all, above all else never forget steam reviews are useless. If a game is actually trash, it will get an overwhelmingly negative score in due time but it doesn’t mean people are going to read them or care.
Second, they did this for a reason. Take Two’s anti-consuimer trash practices are well documented all over the internet – review bombing a game that has nothing to do with their current activities is not going to hurt them. It’s pointless. They DO have avenues for you to express how despicable they are, a ton of them. Twitter, their websites, their forums, etc.
The same BS has happened over and over again.
People review bombed RE7 because their trash 8 year (at the time) old AMD Phenom X6’s couldn’t run the game, when the system requirements literally say you needed a newer processor. OH but it gets worse because see, Capcom’s devs actually patched in Phenom support in the demo because people asked for it. But then the game came out and it didn’t work, and then when people cried Capcom said “It wasn’t intended to work on this CPU” and then people review bombed until Capcom fixed it – their own faux pas admittedly but review bombing is rarely ever for a good reason. It’s not reasonable to expect a game in 2017 to support a CPU that came out in 2009. Whether the CPU works fine or not, regardless of how age-proof hardware can be.
Or the GTA5 review bombs after T2 tried to nuke OpenIV, even though it wasn’t Rockstars fault. Even though the game had already sold like 45 million copies and it didn’t matter.
The only “journo” whose opinion I ever gave any credence to was Kevin van Ord from GameSpot, who left long long ago. The rest of their reviewers were garbage and to be honest I’ve never taken any review from anyone else seriously, with the exception of MAYBE Adam Sessler AFTER he left G4 and just did things on his own.
I wouldn’t even bother with reviewers. Just skim some reviews from gamers, check out the negative ones first, maybe watch one youtube video.
Valve caves. Censorship.
I am kind of glad Valve did this if nothing else but to shut people like Randy Pitchford mouths. Now we we can all Review Bomb these dirty Developers/Publishers and reward their games with the Asterisk of Shame™ as a constant reminder that we are not happy with the BS they just tried to pull.
Plus, they can censor review ratings as a sop to crybaby devs/pubs all they like but folk will still see the tsunami of angry comments on the Steam forums.
Things are thankfully not yet as bad as the movie industry whereby in recent weeks we’ve witnessed Rotten Tomatoes trash their integrity for the sake of protecting Disney’s interests and that of Lucasfilm affiliates doxing people for not liking Disney’s Star Wars The Last Jedi.
Good, review bombing is the dumbest sh*t ever, and I’m sure people have been swayed from purchasing games before when they’ve seen the score in the dumps. So happy they did this. Fair reviews are far more important than childish antics.
“fair reviews”
right.
corporation approved reviews is more like it.
Yup, don’t be a fa* and review bomb other products because you’re having a hissy fit like the ten year old you are
You’re pathetic.
Like i said its the only thing we had left, now thats gone too.
People who review the game based on the actual game = ‘corporation approved reviews’
Ok.
So no journalists or approved reviews by the corporation.
You’re a known SJW apologist so you would say that, SoyKnutz.
Awww if it isn’t mentally ill extraordinaire. How are you doing my favorite mentally ill person? Make any headway with the psychiatrist yet?
Using mental illness as an insult is extremely problematic and ableist.
Linguistic ableism reinforces prejudices and discrimination against people with disabilities. You are carelessly displaying your oppressive neurotypical privilege in a way that’s just ugh gross and yikes. I expect an apology and I expect you to permanently remove your privileged self from any and all further discussions on mental disabilities. Y’all.
You’re projecting yet again, I see.
Pitifully amusing as always even though you have stooped to a new low this time. gg
how would you like to be banned for that comment? because on twitter you would be. How does it feel? Censorhip is suddenly not as great as you thought, is it?
Oh look, another stunning display of mental illness discussing a topic nobody brouhght up. Muhh censorship on a non-governmental ran website.
Steam was right to remove those ill intended reviews, because they do not review the product, but the developer. Perhaps they should add a section where companies get reviewed?
At the same time, those bad reviews weren’t really reviews, but a form of comunication, and the message has been sent and received. What I am trying to explain thru logic and reason, as opposed to your rudimentary insults that betray your age and education, is that censorship is bad. But private companies have the right to censor material if they want to and Steam is not bad with censoring, but in this case they were left with no alternative. Also players were in their right to review bomb, in order to get their message across with no other avenues for communication.
My point is you advocate for censorship, while acting and spweing insults that would get you banned pronto on any “non-governmental ran website” that has a censoring policy. That’s at least …careless, to put it mildly.
I don’t advocate for censorship, because it’s not a governmental platform, I advocate for the review system being used for actual reviewing. I know, crazy position to have to take in 2019’s climate for gaming.
You fancy yourself so educated yet you still can’t grasp the concept that the review system isn’t there to allow people like you have temperamental hissy-fits over things you like that don’t direct pertain to the game itself, and are instead choosing to b*ch and complaining, like three year olds, about things that don’t affect the game play, performance, etc of the game that’s already come out. Player’s don’t have a right to review bomb, as seen by the fact that Valve has already taken counter measures in the past-years to ensure you guys get virtually blocked out from the review score and now how directly done it in the best way.
It’s there to allow people to figure out how subjectively good a game is to a crowd of people without any outside influence. You have no other avenue of communication? Throw your big boy pants on and don’t buy the game, go to a Subreddit associated with the game since plenty developers are directly influenced. Hell you can even Tweet what ever developer you want all day long.
There are wonderful platforms where you can continue to throw a hissy fit too in order to attempt to push a point across that virtually nobody is going to listen to you on until Valve takes the same cut Epic does. Metacritic, Opencritic, etc.
Muhhh censorship on a private platform, MUHHHH CENSORSHIP THAT I NEVER HAD!
Hey remember when that good game from that good company was review bombed? Oh right, that never happened.But yeah, let’s defend sh**ty companies.
And yet they did nothing when the Chinese review bombed a Tawainese game off of the platform for daring to make a joke about China and Winnie the Pooh.
“there are other, more appropriate outlets to voice dissatisfaction”
Like games’ official forums where over-protective moderators routinely delete critical comments no matter how constructive or politely worded those comments are?
Like the comments sections at shill media sites that are commonly ruled by SJW activist ‘journalists’ and moderators who routinely delete comments and shadow ban those who don’t march in lock-step with their poisonous Far Left ideology?
“Valve will nonetheless give users personal preference as to whether they want to continue seeing off topic review activity”
So it’s not the victory against freedom of speech that PC Gamer and its fellow anti-consumer authoritarian brethren have been hoping for. Excellent.
Precisely this.
The fact that people feel compelled to review bomb is indicative that there are actually no other outlets to express dissatisfaction. Everything gets censored, all negative feedback gets suppressed for the pettiest reasons.
We’re seemingly heading toward a nightmare world whereby any opinion that isn’t corporate-approved and/or doesn’t successfully tick all the SJW tickboxes is to be considered controversial, so-called ‘trolling’ or even so-called ‘hate speech’ and therefore must be silenced and the person deplatformed.
This is the stuff of 1984, the Soviet Union under Stalin and Nazi Germany.
EDIT: As though to underline my point, Disqus just forced my comment to await moderation because its owner Google deems the word ‘nazi’ to be controversial. Jesus wept.
Welcome to Clown World.
HONK HONK
Completely agree with this, I was banned for a Steam Hub for telling others about how the devs of that game have this behavior or releasing 1 – day DLCs, and how it was better to wait some months after release.
Preferences>Review Score Settings>Edit Preferences> Include reviews from all Steam purchases in Review Scores.
Enable it, it’s off by default.
Snowflake developers should never sell their game if they can’t take critics. Gamers are buying games with their hard earned money not leaves lol
Epic, make piracy great again.
It’s the only voice that will make a difference.
And you say Gaben is doing nothing to please butthurt AAA devs, now they are censoring reviews to please them!!
moderate nazi games: NOPE, FREE SPEECH
moderate homophobic games: NOPE. FREE SPEECH
moderate sh**ty games: NOPE. FREE SPEECH, FOR SOME REASON
moderate malware: LOL NOPE
moderate users opinions: ALL ABOARD THE BAN SHIP M8!
how about we give valve the middle finger starting now, my view of them was validated by that former employee that says valve had become complacent living off the huge money they were making from a 30% tax on the industry . I agree, they had it too good until now and after being against the epic store and their exclusive crap i now see things a bit different. Epic is doing what it needs to to compete and i have 0 sympathy for valve.
Devs decades ago: We greatly value any and all input you give us, it’ll help us make good better games in the future!.
Devs 2019: Suck a chode and lose that voice, b’cause we don’t give a rats a**e what you guys think. You’ll buy our game regardless!.
I appreciate that Valve are at least continuing to allow users to express their views on any developer or publisher through this new method. It’s just like how they resolved the issue with the surge of Adult Only titles: by giving us options. But ultimately this is only going to throw off many publishers who go against anything that grants customers free will and choices over their purchased items.