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Randy Pitchford about review-bombing on Steam: "makes me want to reconsider Gearbox Publishing’s current posture on the platform"
- Thread starter benzopil
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Well they can't exactly reviewbomb Borderlands 3, and they can't reviewbomb Gearbox or Epic Games themselves, so they're doing the next best thing that will get noticed.
Very well said!
It's a bit sad that on an enthusiast gaming forum you find people who seem unhappy about customers actually having an effective means to lobby for their concerns, but what can you do.
Exactly.
Well, that's just demonstrably wrong. Among the outcomes of review bombing were: the removal of problematic DRM; the restoration of modding capabilities; the allowance for full refunds even beyond the standard period; the implementation of better control options; and other unmistakably positive results.
Is this being intentionally dense? How would it show the same game when the entire point is that one of the games is only available from a small handful of places? What is it with you people and misrepresenting the issues here?
It isn't a bad comparison.
The entire point of the picture is, that a game on the EGS can only be bought from the EGS, where as a game from any other platform can be bought in a multitude of places.
How are you supposed to compare the same game when the entire point is that EGS is buying exclusivity.
This guy knows what'sup
Just posting this here.
After Zelnick lie in February 2019 this was expected.
User warned: inappropriate language
Why are you making shit up? DON'T BUY THE THING. Why are you assuming I'm telling you to buy Borderlands on Epic store? DON'T BUY IT. But also don't reviewbomb previous games on steam like a little bitch because the game you want is not on your store of choice.
Just proving my point that reviewbombing is useless, even though they worked so hard on trying to destroy this movie's reputation they didn't achieve anything.
No. Don't buy it and call it a day. Don't understand why are all of you reading my comment as an invitation to buy the new game.
It's not a bad comparison though... Somebody could probably make two dozen more of these because the trend encompasses nearly all EGS exclusive games. At the very least you can explain why it's not a good comparison beyond the fact that they aren't comparing the same game. The left was the norm, the right is the current new EGS paradigm.
User Warned: System Warring
Must be nice always having 20% off pc games, and crazy steam sales while others have less options for getting games at a bargain. But what do I know I'm a perfect wonderful console customer.
You didn't talked about review bombing, you specifally attacked people for boycotting the game, calling them "entitled" and "dumb".
I am not making shit up, that is literally what you said. Don't backtrack now hun.
You first.
Nobody, who is not clinically insane at least, thinks that the exclusivity retroactively makes the previous installments shit. What people do think is that the publishers give zero fucks about anything that does not directly affect their bottom line. Petitions, tweet storms, letter campaigns? That's all for nothing and if anyone is seriously recommending it they're just trying to shut the protests up. Plastering a huge red "overwhelmingly negative" next to the buy me button has been proven to work. It's a protest, the aim is to inconvenience them in a way they can't easily ignore. While the fact that it has to include only tangentially related titles, because BL3 is currently unavailable, is regrettable, so is the publishers fucking with us with impunity.
And yes, not buying would work too, although it's less direct (you cannot not buy thing and send an exact "I hate you because of X" message), I bet T2 has some minimum sale guarantee in the contract with epic.
Why not both?
It was useless in the case of Captain Marvel because it was a bunch of sexist/misogynistic nerds complaining about the lead actress being a feminist, and most people in the world aren't assholes, luckily.
Your point? Lots of PC gamers have said that they hate how the console market is, heck I moved off of consoles because of it. The reason a lot of PC gamers are up in arms is that they view this (EGS, moneyhatting, 3rd party exclusivity) as moving closer to the walled garden of a console rather than the openness of the PC platform.
Which would be useless.
The reason people use review bombing is inherently the same reason dev/publisher hate it : it's seen by everyone and is very likely to hit their wallet, which as this deal prove is the only thing which matter to them.
Many people just don't like giving any form of power to the consumer. "please complain in a way which can't lead to any result" No wonder we are at a point where corporations can pit a fight between cities/states so they can get the best deal ever while treating their employe like shit.
oh fucking please, then take this, the division 2 before and after the EGS deal ( pretty sure GMG shouldn't be there, it's actually always "out of stock" ) :
happy ? now you can simply say "it doesn't matter" and 'just wait"
It's bullshit there too, paying a publisher to delay games on other platforms can fuck off.
You're soooo close to getting it, but you're just not quite there yet.
Review bombing does absolutely suck. It severely harms the usefulness of user reviews to the point where they can't really be used anymore. They also rely on the thing that is being criticised actually having available reviews, otherwise you get this situation where Borderlands 2, a fantastic game, is being hurt by people's objection to where Borderlands 3 is sold, which is absolutely not fair.
But people aren't review bombing because they themselves are "sad" or their life sucks or anything like that. The problem isn't with them, it's with the system.
These aren't people who are choosing to review bomb because it's shitty, they're taking the shitty option because it's seemingly the only one that actually works.
Storefronts and publishers in general really want to restrict criticism of their products. Publishers aren't exactly going to signal boost criticism, they only want potential customers to see their own curated talk that maximises the chance that they'll buy the game.
User reviews however have become an accepted part of many storefronts or other websites, to the point that it would be very difficult to remove or limit them in any meaningful way without losing a lot of consumer goodwill. And as there are no other meaningful places that criticism can both be heard by the masses and not be hidden away by the developers, review bombing has become one of the only actually useful tools consumers have as a protest. Boycotts would work, but usually not enough people care to be effective, and you can never truly say how much damage was done. You can complain on forums like this, but no one is going to see these criticisms unless they're in these threads. But user reviews? They're right there on the page, for everyone to see. Publishers can't escape them.
Review bombing is a response to a broken capitalist system that will take any opportunities it can to restrict criticism. It sucks, and it's broken, and it's far from an exclusive tactic used for good, but it's not being done because the people review bombing are the problem. The problem is far bigger, and far more troubling, and I can't help but think that in an attempt to feel superior, a lot of people are just filing this away as weirdos doing a bad thing and not putting any deeper thought into why review bombing is happening in the first place.
Really is insane the comparison is even being made, to hold up an example of a review bomb due to sexists and misogynistic and somehow think its akin to the borderlands review bombing. Feels like using a disgusting situation to somehow take a moral highground.
It's a perfect comparison. It's comparing a game on the "Steam monopoly" that is sold on multiple stores at multiple price and a game on the "Epic Store competition" that is sold on Epic store only.
Making a disingenuous comparison does not yield a moral high ground.
It's bizarre how common it is for developers to have such contempt towards their customers. His audience feel betrayed and disappointed in his companies actions, surely the response from a company that respects their customer should be to try and understand the frustration and mend bridges...
The worst part is about this whole situation is that a majority, if not all of the people bitching about this is probably gonna end up buying bl3 when it releases on steam anyway. Like others in this thread have said;
vote with your wallet instead.
Gamers love to talk about boycotting this game, or don't buy this company's game, but those same people always end up giving the same companies they complain about their money.
Remember when DLCs were becoming a thing and everyone complained? Well people still bought it and now it's standard fare for video games.
At the end of the day if you complain, but turn around and buy the game then who really wins?
vote with your wallet instead.
Gamers love to talk about boycotting this game, or don't buy this company's game, but those same people always end up giving the same companies they complain about their money.
Remember when DLCs were becoming a thing and everyone complained? Well people still bought it and now it's standard fare for video games.
At the end of the day if you complain, but turn around and buy the game then who really wins?
One thing it should be clear: EGS is not only attacking Steam, they are attacking all other third party (except Humble Bundle store) stores out there. AS much as Epic says is not the case, is pretty clear at this point.
Voting with your wallet is an absence of a vote. It says noting about why you didn't buy the game or why one is angry.
Surely why can't people do both?
I'm in my 40s. That's why I think I've got an idea of how this will play out. I know why Steam beat out its competitors a decade ago. I was referring to older being early 30s on average though. I think the average age here is about 22-23 IMO.
Two things did it: The Orange box and Civ V. The Orange Box was the loss leader for Valve, and Civ V was the title that made Stardock give up on Impulse entirely and cleared out the last competitor that wasn't willing to be a Steam key reseller (GOG came later and with a different intent).
I also know that's a lot more difficult to win now against Valve, than it was against the small publishers competing with Valve last decade.
EGS does have its Orange Box with Fortnite. The question is will they be able to get their Civ V. They realize the only way they can is to buy it, something Valve didn't have to do.
Also, the tools to express anger are a lot more avaliable these days. 10 years ago twitter was in alpha , and folks were a lot less angry in general (we're in an age of anger now thanks to politics- the anger over Bush was so much less, and that anger was huge at the time)
Do I sense hostility ?
I mean yes, I love getting 20% off my games.
So it means you were arguing in bad faith and that it actually makes a difference ?
You know, I get it. I get what you're arguing. But instead of saying "Entitled PC users" maybe you should try being "entitled" too.
Maybe if you were more "entitled" you wouldn't pay to play online on P2P servers.
Maybe if you were more "entitled" servers wouldn't close despite the fact you pay for online play.
Maybe if you were more "entitled" prices of membership wouldn't go up. Or you wouldn't pay for cloud saves. Or to change your username.
And you would also get 3rd party stores selling PSN/XBL games for cheaper too.
Eh but what do I know I'm an entitled PC user. :")
First. I didn't even mention the game, just the boycott culture. Second I posted another message talking about that before you even replied, it's like ten messages before your reply, in the same page. If you cared enough to read through the page before hitting reply you would have known.
Please don't reviewbomb this reply too, thx
Well I spent 1k on my PC parts so the 20+% off games definitely softens the blow.
You guys spent like what, 200-400 on your consoles and can buy used physical games for cheap. Definitely don't see the issue here.
Review bombing is unfair in a lot of cases, but it is effective and it's one of the few effective ways to get a reaction from the developers/publishers. I remember when GTA 5 got review bombed to hell and back due to T2 going after mods, OpenIV in particular IIRC. GTA 5, one of, if not the biggest game ever - you'd think if there's a game where the publisher will just say "fuck it, who cares" then that'll be the one since it sells like hotcakes anyway. And yet, a week or so later R* released an apology and changed their stance.
Who knows if that would have happened if it wasn't for the review bomb. The game went from "very positive" to "mixed".
Who knows if that would have happened if it wasn't for the review bomb. The game went from "very positive" to "mixed".
To each their own I suppose.
Personally speaking, if I genuinely was angry at an upcoming movie for some reason, say they whitewashed the actors, I wouldn't write about it, I just wouldn't go see the move.
You don't see almost every movie ever released. Why on earth would you think that communicates anything to anyone?
If you don't write about it you haven't done anything
Why then are you posting in this thread at all? Surely if you disagree you should say nothing. That will show 'em
That is their intention
put all key sellers out of business until they completely control digital distribution and you can only buy games from them.
The eagerness of some to shut down the most effective avenue consumers have to show their displeasure outside of the most ineffectual, toothless ways possible is sad. "Just don't buy the game" tells the publisher nothing about why you didn't buy the game. Tweets can and are ignored all the time. Discussions on developers forums can and are easily shutdown by community managers and mods that work for said publisher.
Regardless of how wrong Randy is. I'm kinda disappointed review bombing doesn't even work anymore. There's no way for us to communicate to them how fucked this is now besides uninstalling EGS and not buying Borderlands 3 until it releases on Steam, and you know people aren't gonna do that. Randy should know that too though and stop behaving like a baby.
Surprised user reviews still exit on there. They're so shitty.
That was your choice to spend that much on a build, you weren't forced into spending that much. Typical average price for a new Used physical game is like $55, so it's not really a deal. You can get older pc games for cheap so your argument doesn't really have legs.
So do you see most movies then?
Because I assume you don't. I'm going to guess you only watch a tiny amount of the total movies that come out. And yet, with the abscence of anything else from you, whatever message you have sent when you "boycott" a movie, you've sent to every single movie you just haven't gone to see, for any reason.
There needs to be more than just the absence of a purchase, if you actually want results.
Never forget that one guy who randomly review bombed every Shin Megami Tensei game with 100+ fake accounts on metacritic for literally no reason a few months ago.
Metacritic user reviews are gutter garbage.
What are you even arguing anymore?
"You entitled PC gamers had it too good for far too long, now suffer with me"?
Apologies for not making it clear in my post that I don't particularly mean in a sense of "bad reviews" in as much as it actually impacts the game in question that's being bombed (i.e if Borderlands 2 has shit DRM then go ahead and bomb it) but the process of using it as a trojan horse against shit that doesn't actually affect the game in any meaningful way, and at this point the latter is what the system overwhelmingly favors. So yeah, fuck review bombing. It's become a tool for disenfranchised users to abuse, and the abuse of that system makes its impact lessened in the grand scheme of things.
So review bombing is done because people have no impulse control and can't wait six months to play Borderlands 3? Sounds like PC gamers should be angry at those people instead.
The fact that Steam had to implement a feature that can dismiss recent reviews from the overall score when something like this happens shows that they don't agree with it either.
To the passerby on the store page a review bomb isn't as in your face as it used to be, but a game that has experienced one does still have a big asterisk next to the score. Upon clicking it you get brought to the review page where the influx of negative reviews can be seen, likely before the positive ones. A little less bite, but it's still possible to see that a game is causing a stir.
If no one wrote about the whitewashing of actors and the movie bombed....how would the studio know it was because of the whitewashing? Or how would the studio know it was a problem at all?
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