I think a moderator being able to flag the review as not being appropriate but leaving it would be fine, if it did not affect the percentage.
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[Polygon] Steam developers speak: Maximum profits for Valve, minimum responsibilities
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
I think a moderator being able to flag the review as not being appropriate but leaving it would be fine, if it did not affect the percentage.
The only way to fix that is to not have reviews. People are people, they do the same on other platforms that allow reviews.
Or its usually full of memes.
Or its usually full of memes.
No one is and hasn't even tried to. The only real competition is Gog and they're still not even there with client features.
That said Valve is objectively the company that does the most for gaming and MS and Sony can't even compare they're not even in the same ballpark. This is 100% correct and anyone who disagrees has never been more wrong in their whole life.
I think that's a rather hasty conclusion. It's demonstrably possible to have valid and helpful user reviews so long as some degree of moderation is exercised.
That's going overboard don't you think? For the most part, Steam reviews are very helpful.
And no I'm not just saying that because I've written close to 250 of them...
I personally only use steam reviews to check if there's a game breaking issue, like an older game that doesn't work on Windows 10. And even then I'll search for a workaround first.
Ah guys sorry I wasn't being 100%, there was a little sarcasm in there. I am for reviews, I use them for the most part. Flag the useless ones also.
That would be a great start.
I'm trying to write a short review for every game I finish. And while doing that, I'm also downvoting all useless reviews like "my controller doesn't work, 0/10". I hope that prevents these reviews from being shown in the recommended reviews colomn.
The underlying problem is that in a small sample an outlier can skew the results more than in a large sample.
From that customers perspective, the game broke. They don't need to know the hows and whys of what caused it to break.
Yes, they should have updated their review to reflect that it had been fixed after the fact, and you are able to reply to that review and say something like "sorry you had issues, this was fixed, please see this thread for details" to assuage future potential customers who may be reading that review, but the solution isn't to allow developers to flag any negative reviews as 'inappropriate' so that they do not 'count' towards consensus opinion, for obvious reasons.
That review isnt marked as helpful, because others arent also seeing the game as broken. It will sink to the bottom for future customers (or be excluded entirely) and I dont know what weighting valve assigns to helpful vs unhelpful reviews, but I'm sure there is at least some weighting where a review many people flag as helpful counts more than one nobody does.
That's not what the article says, though.
It says that Microsoft and Sony team the devs up with a person that they can bounce ideas off of and get marketing expertise from, included in the 30%. Basically, you get an expert vs nothing.
Both Apple and Google have human contacts, and their digital marketplaces are magnitudes larger than Steam.
I've already made a list of features that Valve offers to PC gaming. Almost every feature of this list was on Steam before hitting any other games platform, and several features are still unique to Steam.
Eh. I'd argue that it does count because it's a 'negative' review and affects the overall percentage, and if that percentage drops below 80% positive, suddenly reviews become mixed. The fact that we don't really know how that affects the games score in the long run because the process is not transparent is an additional part of the problem. I realize savvy players know to look deeper than a cursory glance, but you can't depend on the majority of your customers to do so.
I agree with you the small sample size is an issue - we only have 67 reviews total, here, so negative reviews will have a greater impact. If the next steam update causes problems for more folks like him, and we're not 'fast enough' to fix it for them, we could see the scores potentially tank, and visibility will drop. It kind of feels like the sword of Damocles.
I don't think it's unreasonable to have some oversight on steam's part to allow for moderation in that instance.
The customer's perspective was not well thought out or entirely rational, because he played the game for months without incident prior to posting that review. A quick search would've revealed it wasn't a rampant issue, meaning the problem likely existed outside of the game itself.
On a personal level, yeah, it doesn't really feel fair. Yet, the review stands. And it will potentially deter some people from looking further into the title—maybe those folks who don't dig into the responses.
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They took the risk. They took the risk when other companies chose not to, and now they are reaping the rewards. Almost 20 years ago Gabe/Valve approached many different companies including Microsoft (where he had professional ties)/Yahoo/RealNetworks to name a few and pitched his ideas for Steam, with it's potential features and future. Every single company said the same thing "no. not possible, unrealistic, will be a failure, etc." and Valve went ahead and did it on their own completely with their own funding.
Interesting. I didn't know about this. Care to link the source?
That's unacceptable. Thanks for the info. I guess Steam doesn't want an automated system which might get gamed by developers, and doesn't want to spend money on mods to actually review these things?I can provide a small example of this frustration. Again, anecdotal, based on our experience. It is NOT a condemnation of steam or valve, merely a mild example of these frustrations from a developer standpoint:
So a few months ago this review popped up:
We'd made no changes to the game for months, certainly no changes to the throwing system. This person also posted in the support forum, where we were troubleshooting this issue with a couple other people who had experienced it (it was random and rare). I enlisted one of the main programmers to take time out of his day to try and troubleshoot the issue with me.
Within a couple days, we found a solution - turns out a recent steam VR update had nerfed throwing for a couple of players. THIS person was part of the discussion, and acknowledged the fix worked for them.
We responded to their posts in the forum, and responded to the review as well. I've actually asked this person to reassess their review as the game works for them.
Here is where the frustration stems:
-the user has no interest in changing or removing the review (it's the only review in his account). This is despite us taking the time to personally address his concern.
-we have no way of removing the review or flagging it as a resolved support issue.
Now, For the most part we have been lucky - the vast majority of our reviews have been positive, helpful, and kind, and the one or two negative reviews we've received were on point and actually helped us tweak certain elements for a better experience. I can say without hesitation that the fan support on steam has been wonderful, small though the base may be.
But being unable to filter chaff like this is frustrating. There are certainly worse examples of this as well:
It was early enough in the games release that we actually tracked down his argument via a google search, which was with someone else not affiliated with any of us. We tried explaining it to him, but he'd already fucked off and was long gone. Flagged it, finally got a response from a mod which basically said "deal with it and move on".
So there are definitely areas, I think, where this system could be improved or served by dedicated support.
Sure, I absolutely get that, I don't want you to think I'm unsympathetic.
Working on the PC is tough, because there's so much that can go wrong that is literally nothing to do with you and that you have no control over, and widespread compat testing is both a PITA and frankly unfeasible for most devs.
Anyone who's ever worked with customers in a retail or service environment knows that "the customer is always right" is a pile of horseshit, but thats the standard you have to work to.
Unfortunately unhelpful, spiteful, factually incorrect and / or irrationally hateful reviews are going to be a cost of doing business in any system allowing unmoderated public reviews. But they also affect everyone else releasing games - take a glance at any game you care to think of store page, and I guarantee you you will find a shitty unhelpful and nonconstructive negative review there. By the same token you will gain the benefit of vacuous cheerleader reviews that are equally as unhelpful to a potential customer.
There isn't really a good solution to this, beyond what is already there, which is the idea that over time and over a big enough sample size, consensus opinion will arrive at what it 'should' be.
e: Because the reason customers trust unmoderated review systems is because they are unmoderated.
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Looks like the author has a bone to pick with Steam, given the tone and slant of the article.
Right off the bat:
Valve likes to take a cut of sales, but it doesn't like to be responsible for the store
Steam users enjoyed having an easy and convenient way to share their thoughts and opinions, while Valve enjoyed successfully implementing a system that encouraged users to invest more unpaid time and effort toward supporting the Steam ecosystem. Valve never pays for anything it can get users to do for free
This in regards to users writing reviews. Seriously? Since when did Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo or any retailer pay you to write reviews??!!
Guess we were due for the monthly Steam hate thread, despite being the most pro consumer storefront around. I regret giving this turd a click.
Right off the bat:
Valve likes to take a cut of sales, but it doesn't like to be responsible for the store
Steam users enjoyed having an easy and convenient way to share their thoughts and opinions, while Valve enjoyed successfully implementing a system that encouraged users to invest more unpaid time and effort toward supporting the Steam ecosystem. Valve never pays for anything it can get users to do for free
This in regards to users writing reviews. Seriously? Since when did Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo or any retailer pay you to write reviews??!!
Guess we were due for the monthly Steam hate thread, despite being the most pro consumer storefront around. I regret giving this turd a click.
I don't think moderation should necessarily impact trust in the system, so long as the moderators are not connected to the product. And again, flagging obviously trolling reviews so they aren't counted, but leaving them visible, would also be acceptable. As a consumer, I'd rather someone remove unhelpful or bad faith reviews from a product, because I'd rather not have to sift through them to find useful impressions. Additionally, I'd hope the consensus presented (in this case aggregate score) did not include said bad faith posts :)
Steam is still DRM, meaning they are not the most pro consumer storefront around when places like GOG and itch.io exist. And I say this as someone who never buys anything from either of those places.
Steam absolutely isn't DRM.
A lot of games on Steam use DRM, but it's not a requirement. If a game uses DRM, it's 100% on devs, not on Valve.
Itch.io have no rules regarding DRM. Many games on the service are DRM free, but itch allow developers to use DRM if they wish.
This is similar to Steam. The main difference is you can download games without the client. More games on Steam implement DRM, and in my opinion Steam promotes DRM through Steamworks, but it is not DRM in itself.
GOG's stricter stance on DRM is worth praise. I just wish their client had more features and they weren't so bad at supporting Linux.
Where itch are frankly leagues above the competition is in their revenue split. 10% default, but adjustable by the developer is great.
I expected next to zero empathy to be shown when I clicked on the thread. Was not surprised when that was shown to be true.
People are too entrenched.
So ancient that they still lead the PC field in the number of features they offer both customers and devs. It's still the only place that I know of that has a marketplace where I can make money.
and if we extend this to console....playstation still can't even gift games or money to people or even has a functioning wishlist!
Huh. I always assumed the games were tied to one's Steam account and couldn't be accessed without one. Also did not know that itch.io allowed for DRM.
Oh wow that's actually really impressive. Didn't know that - thanks for the info...
This is factually wrong. Look at just the list of client updates that's been put out this year, or better yet jump into the changelogs and see how extensive they are. One of those was 9 days ago: the same day they added language support for Spanish and Vietnamese. That's on top of other updates like changing the policy on adult content, adding dev and publisher homepages, and putting out a new chat client, amongst others. Just browse through this link and see how many things have been added or changed this past calendar year. Improvements might be coming in bit by bit, but they're definitely doing things to improve Steam, even if not all of those changes are consumer facing.
Nope. Some games don't even need the client running to work. IIRC it is case-by-case, but there are a few where once you've installed them they play fine even without it running. I think the Paradox Development Studios (Europa Universalis IV, Stellaris etc) games are big examples.
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https://store.steampowered.com/news/?feed=steam_blog
11 Oct 2018
Improved Language Support for Spanish and Adding Vietnamese
6 Sept 2018
Developer and Publisher pages, updated upcoming tab
21 Aug 2018
Steam Play for Linux
24 Jul 2018
New Steam Chat - Now Released
11 Jul
Improvements to the "Upcoming" tab on Steam
19 Jun
Developer Publisher Homepages Beta
12 Jun
New Steam Chat - In beta
9 May
NEW STEAM APPS TO EXTEND SERVICE OFFERINGS
11 Apr
New Profile Privacy Settings
27 Febr
Free and Open-Source Vulkan on macOS and iOS
15 Febr
New and Improved Steam Store Wishlist
11 Dec 2017
Curating Steam - Major Update to Steam Curators to Help Discovery on Steam
21 Nov 2017
Making Helpful User Reviews More Helpful
26 Oct 2018
Steam Curator Update - Coming This Fall
25 oct 2017
Introducing Steam Digital Gift Cards
2 August 2017
Updates And Additions to Group Invites
13 Jun 2017
Steam Direct Now Available
Clearly they don't do anything to improve their services.
I honestly think the only equitable solution is to not allow either party - consumer or producer - have a 'veto' power. Trustpilot for example has been criticised for offering paying businesses such a power over reviews that non paying businesses do not have.
Yelp has the power it does precisely due to the fact that businesses cannot control what is said, and the arguments against that are the same ones presented here, but customers still use Yelp warts and all and understand how Yelp works and take what is said with a pinch of salt, especially in the case of a review being a huge outlier.
If anything Steam reviews are fairer than Yelp potentially ever can be, as Steam at least verifies a customer is actually a customer before allowing a review.
Considering the author has only posted 2 articles in 2 years and are both anti valve posts ill imagine this polygon editor has an agenda. But thats no different after the shit bag arthur gies manifesting from there either.
Between the authors history, the framing of good, important features like regional pricing as some form of opression, and the header image, it's pretty clear the blogger started with a conclusion first and went on to find and create arguments second.
And no surprise, people that didn't liked steam to begin with are falling for it.
Valve should really call this out in the store UI in a more visible fashion like how other storefronts give an area to denote what drm a key is they are selling.
Be interesting to know the percentage of games that are drm free on steam. But I would never expect most users to realize it's even a thing but that's due too poor UI/UX than anything else.
Too entrenched into what? Not wanting full on curation which stopped good games coming into Steam? Too entrenched into actually understanding what Steam and Valve are actually doing for PC gaming?
Again, there are too many games coming out and not troll games or asset flippers. Until that stops happening, there is no good solution beyond making a great game, marketing the shit out of it and hoping it catches on.
Steam actually has he beat discovery features (if still imperfect) out of any other gaming store. But when your library stretches back decades and 10-20 thousand games, it's hard to get noticed.
Not all games on Steam have DRM. That's the choice of the publisher, not Valve.
Maybe that's why GoG lacks recent games from the large publishers and itch.io literally has nothing but no name indie games.
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Too entrenched in blind hate, yes.
There isn't a single storefront that's offering what Steam does, and at no charge.
What's up with these trash drive-by posts with no response to the people replying to them?
What would be even more interesting is the percentage of games that are DRM-free on GoG but have DRM on Steam. ;)
I can provide a small example of this frustration. Again, anecdotal, based on our experience. It is NOT a condemnation of steam or valve, merely a mild example of these frustrations from a developer standpoint:
So a few months ago this review popped up:
We'd made no changes to the game for months, certainly no changes to the throwing system. This person also posted in the support forum, where we were troubleshooting this issue with a couple other people who had experienced it (it was random and rare). I enlisted one of the main programmers to take time out of his day to try and troubleshoot the issue with me.
Within a couple days, we found a solution - turns out a recent steam VR update had nerfed throwing for a couple of players. THIS person was part of the discussion, and acknowledged the fix worked for them.
We responded to their posts in the forum, and responded to the review as well. I've actually asked this person to reassess their review as the game works for them.
Here is where the frustration stems:
-the user has no interest in changing or removing the review (it's the only review in his account). This is despite us taking the time to personally address his concern.
-we have no way of removing the review or flagging it as a resolved support issue.
Now, For the most part we have been lucky - the vast majority of our reviews have been positive, helpful, and kind, and the one or two negative reviews we've received were on point and actually helped us tweak certain elements for a better experience. I can say without hesitation that the fan support on steam has been wonderful, small though the base may be.
But being unable to filter chaff like this is frustrating. There are certainly worse examples of this as well:
It was early enough in the games release that we actually tracked down his argument via a google search, which was with someone else not affiliated with any of us. We tried explaining it to him, but he'd already fucked off and was long gone. Flagged it, finally got a response from a mod which basically said "deal with it and move on".
So there are definitely areas, I think, where this system could be improved or served by dedicated support.
Yeah, there definitely needs to be some form of quality control for user reviews because currently, anyone can give you a good or bad review for any reason as long as they've played the game for at least 60 seconds. Maybe there needs to be a weighting system of some sort, where users with a large number of reviews marked as "useful" are given more weight in the overall rating.
Yup and I would be curious to know if possibly some smaller games did not realize they had a choice on steam (consumers aren't the only ones who make assumptions) .
With the UI callout , I would also want a way to filter the store to display all games on steam that are currently drm free. I totally get the consumer assumption, be nice to be able to just forward a link to someone so they could view the current selection in one page.