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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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Then that's a different thing. You don't care, but here you are caring about the fact that other people care.
Misery loves company, but I guess apathy does too?
I buy like 1% of the games that release in a year. Just pretending it doesn't exist doesn't say anything. Also just because I dislike something they are doing, I'm not going to instantly boycott them, as I'd have boycotted everything at that point.
Because it's effective.
As proven by this reply, and many other instances.
Publishers happily ignore forum threads, tweets, emails, and reviews on platforms that don't have the potential to directly affect their bottom line.
They often only start to act and engage the community when the protest takes a form which has an actual effect.
it is, in fact, very nice. That's why we are fighting to protect it.
It's also nice not to pay recurring platform fees for playing P2P online games, by the way. Or having the ability to modify our games.
That sadly seems to be the real underlying feeling of many people participating in these arguments, I've found.
Getting a decent PC build in Canada does cost that much actually. Its better now that bitcoin dropped off, but PC is not cheap at the moment. Especially not when you have to pay 15% tax.
When I was mainly on PS4 I was getting used physical games for as low as half price a few weeks after launch. Can't do that on PC. Hell I bought Detroit Become Human used on PS4 for $50 CAD ($30 off full price) less than 2 weeks after it came out
Thank you.
I'm not a fan of review bombing (in most circumstances), but steam reviews are an essential resource. Granted, I'll always be biased in favor of them, because I've written nearly 250 myself.
But you do know what the problem here is. Don't pretend you don't. Randy clearly sees the responses. This isn't just random people on Twitter giving him shit. This is people who have bought and played previous games in the Borderlands series and are pissed off at the situation. Gearbox sees these reviews. Take Two sees these reviews. This sends the same message it does to publishers using DRM.
How are ignorant/troll posts like this still allowed in these threads?
Preach. Seriously, disorganized individualized boycotts don't accomplish anything other than to make the person doing it feel better. Even if you don't see this theoretical movie for whitewashing, 1,000,000 other people won't care and will take your place and nothing will be done, because it literally says nothing unless you have a coordinated boycott with 1000's+. Individually, you have to make your thoughts known loudly and directly, that's the only way there will be a chance of change in the future.
To the people venomously against review bombing, please list me the alternatives in voicing your displeasure along with sources for examples when those alternatives objectively had achieved the goal without the aid or threat of review bombing.
Review bombing is the most disruptive option with the highest success rate, especially when you have a company like Gearbox/person like Randy who you know will outright ignore just about every other means of communication people have at their disposal.
Review bombing is the only avenue people have left. I'm not getting mad at people using it.
Jim's recent EGS video where he lays the blame more at capitalism in general than EGS practices is somewhat hilarious now, considering how far people will go to defend Gearbox's "right" to be shielded from a means of criticism because it might hurt a review score (and by proxy, future sales). You can't blame Epic's actions and you can't harm Gearbox income. So what's left?
Review bombing is the most disruptive option with the highest success rate, especially when you have a company like Gearbox/person like Randy who you know will outright ignore just about every other means of communication people have at their disposal.
Review bombing is the only avenue people have left. I'm not getting mad at people using it.
Jim's recent EGS video where he lays the blame more at capitalism in general than EGS practices is somewhat hilarious now, considering how far people will go to defend Gearbox's "right" to be shielded from a means of criticism because it might hurt a review score (and by proxy, future sales). You can't blame Epic's actions and you can't harm Gearbox income. So what's left?
Im posting because I genuinely don't understand why people are up in arms over a 6 month exclusitivity window. Are people that impatient? Do people have absolutely have nothing to do, nothing to play until it releases on steam? If you want to play it ASAP buy it on the Epic store, you don't like their business? Wait till it's out on steam.
An opinion you don't like/agree with is not a troll post, but that attitude seems par for the course with anything related to EGS.
Just as always, Vote with your wallets. If B3 sales are below expectations then suddenly in 6 months they shoot up once it hits Steam, I think the PC industry will take notice and exclusive deals will become less attractive to publishers. This really is all about the end result. 2k is simply betting the money they received from epic will be more than the sum of sales of those who now will not buy the game.
I don't mean to sound dramatic but Division 2, Metro and now Borderlands 3 will determine the fate of PC gaming in regards to store exclusive deals. Its an important vote and only made with your wallet.
I don't mean to sound dramatic but Division 2, Metro and now Borderlands 3 will determine the fate of PC gaming in regards to store exclusive deals. Its an important vote and only made with your wallet.
6 months, 1 year, 2 years. It isn't the length of time, it's the principle. I'm personally ok with waiting, but I don't find the idea of moneyhatted exclusives acceptable.
If you give them an arm, the publishers will take a leg.
I never claimed I didn't. Like most BL fans, I have a pretty low opinion of the man himself, and lord knows I'd rather play the upcoming game on Steam.
I get that you guys are angry *now* and want to say something to Gearbox now, but the only truly effective communication is to not buy the game when it launches.
Money fucking talks, and it's loud. If the sales go in the toilet, that's it for Epic exclusivity.
Money fucking talks, and it's loud. If the sales go in the toilet, that's it for Epic exclusivity.
At this point, this has to be trolling... right? After the threads and threads of discussion over the past 4/5 months of EGS your takeaway from all of it is that the only reason people are upset is the length of the exclusivity?
But the sales aren't going to go in the toilet, because literally millions don't know or care?
You're lying now ?
You just said it yourself about the "20% off games".
It's a larger issue regarding competition in PC game stores. In that, before there was some and now rapidly it's being eroded away.
Perhaps if you aren't familiar with the issue it would've been best to make some effort before jumping in with the same tired talking points we've seen 1000 times already
If everyone had that attitude there would never be a boycott of anything.
Review bombing is the favorite tactic of gamers because it still lets them play the game they want to play while claiming they're taking a stand. They don't have the willpower to not buy it for 6 months, a year, or forever in order to prove a point.
It really disturbs me that people only remember the good examples of review bombing. Do any of you recall what happened to Total War Rome II? It got review bombed by some neo-nazis who couldn't stop complaining about "women in ma videogames!" because of a change that in a certain period allowed more women general to show up in the game. Where were you, then? Any of you? Those who are in favor of review bombing and those who don't? Hell, where was Valve?
Like, fuck Randy Pitchford (a known con man) and Gearbox (a company who defrauded Sega to diverge millions into the development of Borderlands 2), but don't come in here telling me that review bombing is helpful because it helped in a couple of cases. The people who worked on Rome II did not deserve that shit.
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Even if every single person on Era boycotted BL3 it would barely be the smallest blip on the sales of the game. For large products this just isn't a realistic way of change, not without coordinated boycotts which will never be viable on the consumer end because the vast majority just don't care enough.
"You hate capitalism but have an iPhone. I'm very smart"
Disagree there. I think the amount of launch sales for B3 on steam will be a huge indicator. "We lossed this amount of sales by doing the epic store". And yes, 6 months delay on sales is significant to the suits calculating numbers. 6 months later, Decisions have been made on DLC and sequel plans. Hell, its even worse if its a difference in fiscal year.
If millions of gamers are going to buy on the Epic store and don't care about the exclusivity than ,yeah, it's over.
I know people whose biggest beef with this situation is that they'll now have to buy the game twice...
Or you can make enough noise, that the less attentive customer also pays attention. Those protesting are always a minority and the goals to effect change seldom come directly from that minority. But if you bring enough awareness to the wider audience then it can make a difference.
i think that's the problem with the gaming community, we bitch, we moan, but we still bite on what they're selling. The gaming community as a whole is gullible and publishers know that with time we all come around to some really shitty idea and just accept it. Look at dlc and season passes as prime examples.
Calling someone a pedo should be a bannable offense. Especially since it's been proven it's not even close to being true. Why this is allowed to continue makes no sense.
BTW, I was 100% with you until that part. Come on man. Be better.
"Charlottevilles happened so all public gatherings are bad now"
And that's really the point. Money makes these decisions. Only money can unmake them.
That noise is meaningless if you buy the game though. How many people review bombing are still going to buy it?
doesn't solve the issue.
- you can't ignore Games that you already bought.
- I have ignored thousands of games on steam without having any ill thoughts on the Publisher/Developer/Game or its themes or any other thing with the game. I am just not interested in that specific game and don't want it cluttering my recommendations or frontpage. I even ignore games from publishers or devs that I adore.
- I am ignoring/boycotting EA/THQN games for years, didn't work, they are still here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On the other hand, reviewbombing works. Even as an argument. The next time someone snobbishly tells you that we "disgruntled" PC Era gamers are in the minority and not representative of the overall gaming population, show them the reviewbombing, or the 70%disliked youtube trailers. We are not in the minority. And if tens or hundreds of thousands of gamers dislike or reviewbomb games from your company, that should be an alarm bell for those companies.
And IT IS! We wouldn't get EGS defense Force Articles or CEO's from billion Dollar companies doing damage control every day, on the weekend until 4 AM, if they weren't worried.
If we were just some tiny minority, we would be ignored. Reviewbombing is showing them how many of those previous customers are potentially lost forever.
"Just don't buy it" is also the favourite response of people who want to sound like they're willing to take a stand for something, but are against any sort of active protest and would rather that if people want to speak out against companies they do it completely silently.
Hey look, I can do this too!
Please, actually engage with why you believe that review boycotting is ineffective instead of trying to weirdly tie all these negative things to anyone who does it.
So how many public demonstrations have you been to lately?
Oh yeah, I forgot we still have the like/dislike ratio on literally every future Borderlands 3 video. That'll be fun. I wonder if they'll ever disable that and the comments?
Of course it is, and it's amazing that such an amazingly consumer friendly market have kept growing and attracting new dev/publisher for the past what ? 15 years, while some developer like Epic were giving up on it and calling all of us pirates.
I play on both PC and console, and I hate that because of most people indulgence/passivity we are now at a point where I can't play Gundam Versus, smash or splatoon 2, online, or I would need to pay a subrcription. So much for competition. People should thrive and fight to see the console market look more like the PC market, yet most will do the opposite, we see more of them in those steam/EGS topic to defend anything that make thing less consumer friendly than you will see people complain that :
Sony Changes Policy For PSN, Now Will Offer Full Refund Within 14 Days Based On New ToS is not enough.
Sony will no longer sell full digital game download codes to retailers. shouldn't happen ( when just 1 week before for example, ff14 new extension -digital- was 50% of on amazon for ps4 )
and too many topic to choose from trying to defend sony cross platform multiplayer beta bullshit, etc..
Exactly. Some people defend the idea that exclusivity is only a temporary mesure until EGS take foot in the market, but for all we know, some /many games will end up fully exclusive to EGS once it's big enough that they actually have to pay less ( or even nothing at all ) to cover the loss in marketshare/access to consumer.
Protest in the street shouldn't exist because sometimes nazi protest in the street.
Everyone here is saying that Valve shouldn't moderate review in any way or form under any circumstances. That's totally what is said in this topic.
>Steam has no interest in correcting this misuse
Literally GDC, but even before that, graphical representations of scores over time, but even before that, two separate review indicators based on time. Hell, I'm not sure of a more thorough review overview system in general. Definitely not in any existing digital distributors. I'm guessing Randy would rather reviews just didn't exist.
Literally GDC, but even before that, graphical representations of scores over time, but even before that, two separate review indicators based on time. Hell, I'm not sure of a more thorough review overview system in general. Definitely not in any existing digital distributors. I'm guessing Randy would rather reviews just didn't exist.
Nobody has forgotten the bad shit, it's been bought up several times in this thread in fact. I'm personally arguing that the bad shit doesn't outweigh the benefits, the same way I'm all for allowing public protests, even if that means people I fundamentally disagree with on every level will use it to protest for things that I think are wrong.
As for where I was? On the TW Reddit talking about it.
Also, I reported the last post that called Randy a pedo though I don't know if it's an actionable offense so I'm just going to write this here.
Accusing someone of such a serious and life-destroying offense with no public evidence based solely on an allegation in a messy ongoing legal battle is not only disgusting but immoral and unjust. Be Better.
Terrible example.
Games like Dark Souls got ported to PC and started franchising because of a petition.
It's nice to have a tool that is actually effective at lighting a fire under the developers asses. Also, Randy is a slimy gaping asshole.
I agree that it is far more effective. But it doesn't actually have to stop sales, merely resist or reduce them. I'm sure they have projection of how much they want to sell in X time. As long as it falls short somewhere, they'll pay attention.
Judging by the BL3 reveal event "sweaty" would be more appropriate
What a perfect world that would be.
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