Hypothetical question: If people review bombed MK11 due to the working conditions of the devs, would people be OK with that? Or would be a silly stupid thing to do?
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
[PC Gamer] Rocket League is getting review bombed because Epic bought Psyonix; Shows Steam Anti-review Bomb system is working (see staff post)
- Thread starter Deleted member 18944
- Start date
- Status
It does screw up publishers metric for determining a game's succes. Thats a win for developers..
Psyonix just shot themselves in the foot.
I don't know how much the rest of you know about PC gaming culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is on consoles where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over on PC, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the PC gaming public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase Rocket League for either launcher, nor will they purchase any of Psyonix's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Psyonix has alienated an entire market with this move.
Psyonix, publicly apologize and cancel Rocket League for the Epic Games Store or you can kiss your business goodbye.
A monopoly is characterized by the absence of competition. Exclusives would not qualify unless there's something insidious about it, which has to be proven. Because many stores online and in the real world carry exclusive products. Predatory pricing is the illegal act of setting prices low with the intention to eliminate competition. Amazon is an excellent example of using predatory pricing to drive out brick and mortar businesses from an area.
Neither EGS or Steam would be considered monopolies, nor would they be considered to be doing monopolistic behavior.
Last edited:
Not really. Review bombs happen because some can't keep their emotions at bay and they lash out and do whatever they can for attention. Like I said, there are discussion boards (much like this) that are far more relevant to the discussion. here are a few examples on the review page,
This game is great. This game WAS great, anyway. Maybe it still is? It's moving to Epic, so i'm never playing it again. Fkuc Epic and kfuc the developers of this game.
Honestly such a fun game from what was an independent developer but now I don't recommend you to get it as it is owned by Epic Games and epic is just such a bad money sucking company now (in my opinion).
Great game, ruined by Epic once again
Should we review bomb Ninja Theory and all of their games too or all of Obsidian's games now that Microsoft owns them? It's ridiculous and Rocket League is still on Steam, nothing yet has happened. It's another example of knee-jerk immaturity. Should we review bomb Firewatch now that Steam bought them? It is the exact same thing because right now Rocket League is still for sale on Steam and what are the chances the next game made by Campo Santo will be on GoG, Origin and the Epic Store?
staff says don't come into these threads just to post in bad faith.
somehow, they missed the OP's own posts
c'est la vie but I know who's getting my side-eye from now on
Last edited:
There are a lot of legit review bombs. Battlefront 2 one of them. Skyrim Paid mods, GTA5. Games where pub promised chinese localization, then never delivered (Square-Enix).
Same with Paradox regional pricing, that was then reversed.
Yes really. If a company's actions are permissible as long as they are legal, so should be a customer's. Last time I checked, review bombs weren't a criminal offense (even though I know that some people would love nothing more than that). It makes little sense to hold companies and customers to different standards. People love to apply these capitalist and objectivist principles to justify a company's actions but won't extend the same courtesy when private people do it. Why is it okay for a company to act out of self-interest but not for a customer?
holy shit dude go fucking outside breath some fresh air go offline
You assume correct. I'm already not a fan of review bombing since it comes across as childish at best/borderline harassment at worst, but to compare it with actual protests for climate change *in any way* is so ridiculous that I have to laugh at it.
Hopefully that cleared things up for you.
Lol, so you should wait until the game is no longer on sale to give it a negative review? What?
User Banned (1 Week) - False equivalence
You should wait until an Anti-LGBTI passes, before you can publicly protest against it. Didn't you know?
Reviewbombing is not acceptable no matter the circumstance. You can vote with your wallet. You can express your discontent by writing a letter, an email or on social media. I mean there ar other ways.
Those other ways tend to go ignored. I can't think of a single letter writing campaign that's changed a publisher's mind about something, but feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.
The Verge said it will be gone by late 2019. Not sure if i'm allowed to link to the article.
If you want to raise awareness of the issue, voting with your wallet or an email does nothing for that and social media is not really effective. MK11 dev working issues has been a topic on Twitter yet Netherrealm has to make any kind of action.
We can argue about what makes gamers grind their gears when review bombing and how valid is their protest not the fact consumers can use reviews as a effective tool for protest.
If they can ignore voting with your wallet I'm sure they could ignore 3k bad reviews that dont even end up counting on steam .
Either way I doubt Epic cares what a small group of people think when the games are still selling well for them .
So why do you care then? If no-one cares anyway, why all the hubbub.
Well some people care deeply , seeing every egs thread here.
But it's not something that I think epic will ever care about .
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/1/1...cquisition-rocket-league-fortnite-unreal-deal
"As a result of the deal, Psyonix says it will have access to more resources to support Rocket League's competitive e-sports league and, by late 2019, will bring the game to Epic's PC storefront.
After that, it sounds like Rocket League will no longer be available on Valve's competing Steam store, though buyers of the Steam version can continue to play their existing copy of the game indefinitely and continue to receive support, which Variety is reporting includes downloadable content, patches, and all other future content. "
Agreed.
Also, I'm fucking laughing at anyone that thinks this is pathetic.
Steam only lets paying customers leave reviews for games and software. Therefore, paying customers and people who actually own/play the game can voice whatever displeasure they damn well please.
You can't actually be serious? Most posts I see that explain their reasoning mention that they use gog, Bnet, and Origin as well. Not using steam is not the overwhelming reason for negativity. I am so fucking tired of this reductive strawman. So fucking tired.
Yes, a lot of people are tired of yet another launcher, but that's not because it's "not steam.". Some people are a annoyed at an extra icon, but that's annoyance. The anger comes at how Epic is doing things as opposed to Origin and Bnet. People didn't like those at first but then Origin did things like letting you play before downloads finished and things, innovating as they went, and quickly catching up to steam in feature parity.
Annoyance comes from another launcher. The anger is directed at Epic themselves.
I mean it's things like this RL, Metro driving them to say this.
Don't come into the thread being sensible pls. Reviewbombing can be stupid like when people review bombed Captain Marvel. But in an industry where consumers feel their voices aren't heard, this is one way that companies can't ignore.
We have an entire history of successful boycotts to glean from and for contrast you choose two instances where review bombs debatable contributed to the din surrounding quasi successful developer protest? Okay. Real convincing there.
Most of the paradox stuff e.g. came after people already bought games. To have an effect on sales, most people first have to be "strong" enough to really boycott and it would take months/years to even see that effect.
When Skyrim added paid mods, it already sold over 10 million on Steam.
I do not know other boycotts when it comes to games that I would say were "succesful".
That doesn't mean that the review bombing shares in the credit of developers acquiescing to public demand. There was a ton of other outcry, much more numerous and significantly more legitimate.
Publishers also hate when nobody buys their games. So should we stop buying all games? And is it good when bigoted misogynists review bomb Mortal Kombat for treating its female characters decently? Think before you speak.
1000% agree. I think it's a good idea that Steam has implemented something to help stop it for people looking to purchase products, but they haven't completely removed the ability to review bomb and companies are noticing, people are noticing and that's good.
I mean. It's a "fix". It's a fix that any human could have figured out and done too. They're just disabling reviews from this period of time? Sure. Ok. That's predictably effective. I wouldn't overhype the steam review bomb protection until we see less high profile and predictable campaigns thwarted. And then I hope everyone in the industry can work together to implement better standards across platforms.
I did write it during a break on a bench during a nice morning stroll taking in the scene, checking my phone and then seeing this thread. I then went on being almost six hours offline after that. Thank you for being concerned for my health.
It didn't clear things up for me and it would've been nice if you directed this post also at me instead of the garbage post you made initially. Especially as a mod.
Should I have compared it to people striking/protesting during worktime for higher wages/better work conditions and people wouldn't have put words in my mouth? Or would people still take the wrong conclusion of my post?
Oh do we? You were just responded to with some examples that are real and are not the only two examples out there, but you dismiss them because...there's only two? Even though that's typically how examples are used? How many are enough for you? What arbitrary number? Meanwhile you just counter my claim with a baseless statement just insisting that there are solid examples of your side? And you act like you have the strong argument here?
What are your examples of it working? Can you give as many as you demand from the opposing side?
Agreed.
On a semi related note, it's weird to me how some people on this forum can be so left wing on social issues but be so defensive of corporations. The way some people will defend companies, even if it's at the expense of consumer's rights, kinda reminds me of the whole "corporations are people" spiel in a way. And then there's the people that keeps repeating Sweeney's trickle down rhetorics...
It just... Weird. I think some people are far too emotionally involved with companies that don't really give a fuck about them.
I already addressed this in a message to you earlier in this thread:
Has it crossed your mind that (in Steam's case) most of the people who reviewbomb a game are the fans of that game? That they don't want to boycott the game/dev/publisher because they like their output or past service?
The people who reviewbombed Paradox, were their most loyal fans and Paradox saw the error of their way. What would a Boycott have achieved? Especially in an Industry as random as the Gaming Industry. <1% of people who reviewbomb a game have more cloud as 10% of people who boycott a purchase. Because you can't really point at a game and say "so and so many users didn't buy the game. The higher ups would first point at wrong launch window, bad marketing, the weather, changing Audience, too low metacritic score and a million other excuses before they even think about users boycotting them.
It's not that they will simply ignore voting with your wallet. They won't actually get the message with that.
Only message voting with your wallet can give the publisher is "People are less interested in your videogame than you'd have expected", while in review bombing there's a specific message written on a specific time.
They're clearly not equivalent.
I wasn't responded to with real examples of successful review bombing. I was responded to with successful examples of public outcry. If anything, those two examples make my case stronger. You can't blame the success of public outcry on the worst actors involved. That's not how it works.
I don't have to provide examples of successful boycotts because all you have to do is google "successful boycotts" to see literally hundreds of examples.
https://www.careeraddict.com/top-10-famous-boycotts
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycotts/history-successful-boycotts
http://www.onlinebusinessdegree.org/2012/08/26/6-business-boycotts-that-actually-worked/
https://psmag.com/economics/how-to-use-boycotts-for-social-good
or just Wikipedia if you want a high level list of major boycotts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boycotts
I have considered that, yes. Never have I said that boycotts are the most effective form of public protest. The only reason I'm even being pigeonholed for that is because I compared the (successful) Riot employee walkout to a boycott of sorts. And even then I readily accept the differences. I'm all for various forms of public protest and outcry, and by no means do I limit that to boycotts. The only thing I'm taking issue with here is review bombing.
- Status