then why are we supposed to care about this if review scores don't matter and people don't look at them
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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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The "I'm taking my toys away and going home" threat doesn't work when you've already taken the toy away and you're halfway home.
I never framed it as the majority. I just found it a ridiculous assertion in comparison to alternatives.
I also find it egregious to conflate review bombing with poor reviews over technical issues.
Like I don't consider Fall Out 76 or Arkham review bombed.
More like this is what happens when people equate review bombing with 4chan, alt right and racism.
I said no strong correlation to added sales, from positive reviews
I did not say the inverse. There is certainly evidence low scores have hurt / impacted sales
im so confused if review bombing is so ineffective why are we supposed to care when it happens
it can't both be some terrible spectre haunting over a game and at the same time be worthless
it can't both be some terrible spectre haunting over a game and at the same time be worthless
Review bobbing is immature and dumb. Randy is immature and dumb. Shows all the signs of a narcissistic sociopath with his thin skin, thinking the world revolves around him and inability to control himself from lashing out. He needs help. He needs to stop talking because he's making life tough for his employees.
where is this data?
i would be surprised if there wasn't a general correlation between high user reviews and better sales for lots of different reasons
I can't believe people are defending removing review scores.
Like, let's just take every option a customer has for showing dissatisfaction with a product just because there are bad actors out there. Baby with the bath water and all that.
I still don't think the two can be compared as greatly as you think. Lets compare what you're suggesting
Negative Review
- Turn on Steam
- Leave Negative Review
Refund title on separate platform
- Have an account on said separate platform
- Buy said said title on separate platform
- Go through the method of getting a refund
- Leave a post somewhere (Tweet, reddit, etc) saying what they did.
If Review Bombs are too much, the refund method looks even more ridiculous for everyone involved. Why go through all that effort when at the end of the day you're just not going to buy the title on EGS anyway?This just goes back to there needing to be a better method for consumers to voice their concerns. Review bombs or stretched out refund scenarios ain't it.
You can keep saying "6 months exclusives" but I prefer people "whining" about that rather than people giving a pass for anything. As of today, you're still paying to play online on the same servers as people who don't. Maybe if you were "lazy" too, you wouldn't.
That's because the gaming industry has a good history of giving a pass on everything. For once, I'm.glad it's not happening here.
Well, that's not really a bad thing considering
https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim
Then the PS3 version was straight up fucking broken at launch.
Many of these companies want to be seen as your friends and in some cases like with Blizzard, they want to be seen as "family," and speak to that on stage presentations to fans. Of course it's ridiculous but they do use this sentiment to sell product, it's not just in our heads. It seems they want to have their cake and eat it to. They want all the benefits of a loyal passionate fan base but none of the negatives.
With that said the illusion of "friendship" has been shattered for Blizzard, Bethesda, Bioware and now Gearbox and that is a good thing. Take the emotion and nostalgia out of it and have each game they release be judged on it's own merits. I don't think they will like the sales they get from that kind of approach and will slip back into the old ways of being our pals but they can't have it both ways.
It's difficult for me to care about the supposed social power of Review Bombing, or the politics of "gamer rights" to be honest. Outside of the pro-consumer aspect of it, gamer politics are almost always misguided. Metro gets review bombed for its exclusivity deal on Epic's PC platform, but gamers can't be bothered to do the same to THQ Nordic's games after they do an AMA on a forum openly harboring Nazis, misogynists, and pedophiles?
Do you think the review bombing due to Paradox charging everyone outside of EU/America EU american prices wasnt justified?
Or people being pissed about the removal of modtools not justified?
Honestly this thread is part of the explanation why video games are so fucked sometimes. People are legit arguing that the world needs less ways for consumers to protest the action of video game companies. Oh no not review bombing that is childish and goes against the sanctity of reviews. Consumers should instead use avenues that can be more easily ignored to get their grievances heard.
Better yet they should just not buy the game and say nothing that way the publisher/developer, using their psychic powers, will know exactly why people didn't buy their game. It was because there wasn't enough loot boxes and we didn't do a good enough job monetizing everything.
Better yet they should just not buy the game and say nothing that way the publisher/developer, using their psychic powers, will know exactly why people didn't buy their game. It was because there wasn't enough loot boxes and we didn't do a good enough job monetizing everything.
Schrödinger's review, both effective and not effective.
I'll repeat what I said earlier in the thread, if companies would be more transparent this wouldn't be happening, at least not as bad as this.
You see this mostly with GAAS titles where the developer makes changes irrespective of what the community wants and then wonders why the playerbase drops.
I'll repeat what I said earlier in the thread, if companies would be more transparent this wouldn't be happening, at least not as bad as this.
You see this mostly with GAAS titles where the developer makes changes irrespective of what the community wants and then wonders why the playerbase drops.
You're conflating a bunch of different things with retroactively review bombing an older game that was well received because another game you don't own and hasn't been released will have to wait 6 months after release before it's sold on a store you prefer. In your other examples, I may have agreed with their methods.
Then organize a mass boycott expressing in detail why it's happening.
A boycott is an ACT of voluntary and intentional abstention from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an EXPRESSION of protest, usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons.
Err, if the game got bad reviews then good word of mouth wouldnt have happened. And the game woulda flopped since there was no marketing either. That aint a gotcha statement
Never been a fan of Randy, especially after the Aliens Colonial Marines fuck up.
I wonder how bad things will get if Red Dead Redemption 2 (Take Two) is announced as a timed exclusive.
I wonder how bad things will get if Red Dead Redemption 2 (Take Two) is announced as a timed exclusive.
Deplatforming "bad actors" is far more important than giving nerds a way to complain about their entertainment product launching on a different store.
This isn't that serious. Gamers don't need to rise up.
The thing is there is a corelation between good reviews and good word of mouth. Good reviews happen because the game is good. Then people open the Chinese parents storepage and see it seems to be good. They might leave a good review too and tell friends about it etc.
And, my personal favorite, they should just look for another hobby if they don't like what's happening.
And you can just as easily express your disapproval of his methods by not speaking to him further. I'm sure the silent treatment will really make him see the error of his ways.
Do you think it was justified when Chuchel was review bombed because the devs changed the design of the main character so they no longer had blackface?
I should be more specific here. What I mean is this
As long as a game gets generally ok user scores. Leta say 70s and up there is almost no notable increase in sales the higher you go. People mostly care if a game is "good". So its difficult for me to say really positive scores help sales.
On the flip side very negative scores CERTAINLY harm sales numbers. Big time actually. They have a hugely detrimental effect.
So I can understand if you are a business saying, "hey these usee scores really arent pushing that many more sales for us, and if one of our games gets targeted for review bombing it can hurt us horribly," wanting to not put your game on a platform like that.
No. I do not think so. I am aware there are stupid "review bombs". I am also aware they are review bombs that changed the pub/dev stance on issues not having anything to do with politics. And I am aware that review bombs do not happen as much as people think they do.
But it worked. The response was trash, but it got a response still.
Are you unable to assess events on their own merits, or do you just paint everything with a giant brush based on the worst incidents?
Get that freeze peach "all opinions are valid all events and perspectives are the same the only thing that matters is the method of action" nonsense out of here.
Yes, Boycotting a consumer product is equivalent to ignoring somebody.
Anyone's allowed to feel as they like. I've spoken against the epic store and don't buy from it. Review bombing another game on steam because the sequel didn't come to steam is a short-sighted idiotic move and let's not pretend the reviews I'm seeing are from China. Like give me a break with that shit. I wasn't born yesterday. It may feel good, but in this case, it was a poor decision imo that's not going to help the cause.
User Warned - Antagonizing other members
Yeah I can't agree at all with this bullshit. It's a handful of pissy gamers who want to force a company to do exactly what they want.
You know what a sane way is to make your voice heard but he company? Not buy their games. By attempting to make all of their games look like shit online in kind of a fraudulent way by abusing a system meant for legitimate reviews, you're attempting to make your 'vote' of whether or not to support the company and force it on other people.
Glad that steam is finally, limply, doing something about this shitty behavior. And I'm gonna trigger some people by saying this but it's true, this is the direct result of competition that valve got off it's ass to do something about it.
Yes, and review bombs aren't all done by the same group either. It's other the same people doing that stuff. Ergo...
Like, I just don't get it. White supremacists breathe oxygen too, you going to stop doing that? That bigots abuse something does not mean that something suddenly stops having legitimate uses add that the tactic has no good either. Things can be used for good and bad. That's the whole point of the protest example: that people can protest for good things (BLM events) and they can protest for terrible reasons (Charlottesville hate rallies). That protests can be used for terrible reasons and to attempt to cause fear and division doesn't naje the good uses and the good that can come from stuff like BLM or Women's March and stuff go away and stop matteing.
Same deal with bigots trying to co-opt stuff like Steam Reviews. That's raaon to do something about the bigotry, certainly, but it's not reason to let them co-opt the whole thing and say it's theirs and give thhen that kind if power over the whole thing, anynore than ut would make sense to ban the act of protesting entirely because bigots can abuse that stuff too. That's a completely disproportionate response and is giving them more power and worth then they deserve.
Something should be done about those forms of bigotry when they pop up for sure, but the solution certainly isn't too throw the baby out with the bath water when good can also come from these tactics like anything else instead of just letting them claim anything they touch and throwing the entire thing out as soon as they touch it. Bigotry is terrible, but that shouldn't make legitimate uses disappear and while something certainly needs to be done about it and it can't bbe allowed to fester, I'm also at the sane time concerned about giving then the power to give anything they so much as touch or use to do anything at all get completely tossed out, legitimate uses and all, as I'm sure they'd love to have that power, to get anything they don't like disabled or shutdown or whatever by just spewing their garbage in their and it would just be that easy, and I just naturally dint want then to have that kinda power to do that either, if that makese sense.
Obviously not.
Review bombing happens because people don't have an effective means of communication, and very often larger publishers and developers especially ignore issues or offer only a brief, dismissive tweet in response.
The fact that shit people will also use it for shit doesn't change the overall issue here.
Do you not understand the underlying reasons why it happens? And how it's symptomatic of an issue with communication?
Technically that's not review bombing, but rather, like, normal reviewing.
I posted a list. You can add games to it if you want:
-Firewatch (PDP)
-Rome 2 (female generals)
-Chuchel ("blackface)
-Devotion (China/Taiwan relations)
-Metro (Exclusivity)
-Borderlands (Exclusivity)
-Titan Souls (Totalbiscuit)
-GTA 5 (Mods)
-Nier Automata (for not inlcuding chinese translation even though S- E said they delayed it for that)
-PUBG (VPN service in China)
-Skyrim (Paid mods)
-Paradox games (regional pricing of DLC and games)
-Stellaris (mod made fun of chinese asking for localization)
Review bombing is dumb as hell and childish, but let's be real.
Randy needs Epic/Tencent money so he can pay for his legal fees. He needs to stop pretending and blaming other things.
Randy needs Epic/Tencent money so he can pay for his legal fees. He needs to stop pretending and blaming other things.
I think we can all agree that consumers should have no say or opinion on a product whatsoever. Don't like something? Fine. Sit there quietly and don't buy it. Don't you dare give your opinion of a product or company. No criticisms. Just keep your money, and don't tell anybody that you're keeping your money. Just sit there, quietly.
But if you like a product or a company then by all means shout it as loud as you possibly can, and everywhere that you can.
But if you like a product or a company then by all means shout it as loud as you possibly can, and everywhere that you can.
Good lord, it's just bad look after bad look from PC publishers lately
If you want something that's more effective and something that can't be silenced and effects a companies bottom line...you will need to do work. You are looking at it from the standpoint of "this is easier to do so more people will do it cuz it's easy"...and that's when I say, you aren't being effective because you aren't showing said company that you are being true to your words and not giving me (company) a reason to change shit. All the company is going to see is that people whined about something...but we are hitting <x> numbers so our forecast is the same. Instead of "shit, our forecast changed because of a big drop in preorders...what happened? We lost sales."
Like I said, if you want to get something done, you are going to have to work for it. Talking ain't going to do everything for you...especially for the "vocal" gaming community. A lot of shit talking happens and people still buy games...why would a company care if there's nothing to really show that it will hurt their bottom line? If users aren't willing to do a little bit of work (and let's be honest...that's not that much work) to get their voice heard...they never cared that much in the first place and were just talking a bunch of hot air...therefore their "petitions" or "review-bombs" don't mean shit to the companies and they'll just get that type of shit fixed.
I know this is a joke but Xbox does have user reviews and they're just as meaningless/garbage as Steam Reviews, if not worse because nothing positive comes out of bad reviews there
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I'm not gonna deny benefit of Valve's review system and it's responsibility for fixing abhorrent PC ports due to how visibility plays a part in it's reviews but I'm still not fond of the concept
But you can't really blame consumers using this to speak up when devs/pubs actively when there's literally nothing else lmfao
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