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[texhnolyze]

This has been bugging my mind since last year, and it has happened a lot. The fact that you can post a review even after playing for a minute boggles my mind. How can someone review a game within minutes? I agree that if it's due to performance issues, people should be able to say something about it. However, I don't think that kind of report should count as reviews. It's just a report that the game is not running well on their PCs. It's just one aspect of the many aspects that should be included in a review.

Additionally, Steam refund is highly abuse-able due to this. People can easily troll games that they basically have no interest to begin with, or just simply hate for whatever reason, by buying the game, throw a negative 'review', and ask for a refund. To make things worse, most people wouldn't bother to revise or remove their reviews so they'll stick for eternity. The 'recent' and 'overall' reviews that has just introduced recently is not enough to cover the real problem of Steam reviews.

I'm talking about this kind of 'reviews'.

I think Valve really should do something about it. For a start, reviews should be separated from port quality. People need to play for certain amount of time before able to review games. I know, not every games are longer than 10 hours, but it can be done if Valve request the game's length to the developer before greenlighting the game. So everything can be automated. Therefore, there'll be another box just below the review box for people to put their impressions on the performance of the game, how it runs on their system, is the game crashing or not, etc. It might be a text-based box, or just points to choose (from 1-5). Hopefully this can help people make better decisions whether or not they should buy a game.

An example of 'review bombing':

Some people seem to not be aware, but there are groups that focus on certain games/type of games to negative review bomb, some with even hundreds or thousands of users.

Here's a Kotaku article written on it a year ago: http://steamed.kotaku.com/steam-review-bombing-is-a-problem-1701088582

But if you look around you can see it happen in a number of places. These groups include people who take some kind of vendetta upon something, be it a group of GamerGaters, people who hate microtransactions in any way, shape, or form, people who go on a vendetta against certain genre of games that have popular 'shitty' entries from developers (but effect even those games that are actually good), etc. Some are just voices wanting to be heard, some are this weird growing circle of 'video game hate groups', that have found a place recently.

There's also the opposite and some shitty developers will pay to get positive review bombed on their game to try to create the illusion that it's good. That happens less, but it most certainly has happened.

I'm not suggesting anything be done about it since this is the unfortunate effect of giving anyone a platform to be a voice, putting needless restrictions on the system would either hurt legitimate customers and probably not effect the groups anyway. Again, I think the best thing to do is just raise awareness.

The times it's most obvious is when there's a page that's mostly positive reviews but people have gone out of their way to thumbs down all the positive reviews and thumbs up all the negative ones.

 

[Sizzel]

-Interesting point. I would argue that "quality will out" . is a 2-minute negative review worthwhile? Generally no. I am sure there is an instance, but I don't know what that is.


If a game is "good" the positive will outweigh the bad. If there is a rash of under one-hour negative reviews... something clearly is going on... either a coordinated attack on the game( which you can vet out) or the game has something that is immediately and apparently turning people off and might turn you off too so bears investigation.

the refund is there for a reason.. it incentivizes quality. Are there going to be people who play a short game to it's entirety and get a refund? yes, but the benefits of being able to return crappy games/poorly built etc outweigh those cons. short play time is a key for returns.. 100 hours isn;t likely to get a return. ...45 minutes? yes.

now.. if I was a dev whose games was getting hit by these( or an insane gamer who treated a game like my tribe) I would be emotional and hate it, but I would look closer to see what was going on.

 

[soco]

These aren't professional media reviews. People don't need to play for a certain period of time to have something useful to share. I've found a number of those types of reviews pretty useful in evaluating my purchase.

 

[Shiggy]

There are games where I can tell after a minute that they are crap.

 

[Lanrutcon]

2 hours on record: "Game is shit"
...how can you review something you've barely played?

200 hours on record: "Game is shit"
...how can you call something bad that you played that much?

20 hours on record: "Game is shit"
...how can you call it bad when you obviously didn't play all the difficulty levels?

etc etc.

 

[Joyful]

maybe solved by putting a "user has refunded" label or something I dunno

 

[kurahador]

maybe solved by putting a "user has refunded" label or something I dunno

Kinda agree with this.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

Steam reviews are garbage for many reasons. People will review a game negatively because it didn't work on their machine even though it may entirely be their own fault. For example I've seen people say a game doesn't work when it was because they didn't update their drivers. Instead of allowing those types of reviews Valve should have the option to report technical issues in which it gathers the user's hardware and compiles it into a list to see if there's any patterns. Then it can warn people who try to make future purchases on a device that fits that pattern.

There's also the issue of review bombing games for completely unrelated issues. For example if you're a game developer who dared try to make a social statement, whether in your game, or outside of it, be prepared for your steam entries to read "overwhelmingly negative" for a good while. And a lot of the times those trends are difficult to curb with authentic reviews.

Finally there's the issue of idiots trying to be cute and leaving reviews like "Garbage game. Rated positive for views." and "This game sucks because it stole all my free time" and leaving a negative statistic. Like if you're not going to cut that crap from your reviews then what value do they have.

 

[spineduke]

I agree to an extent, but you have reviews that do the same exact thing in the positive :

"best game ever 10/10"

Not exactly a fulfilling review either. I think reviews warning of technical issues are valid, especially since the developer can post responses to reviews (in case it gets fixed) and it's all there in the public eye.

Review bombing is a big issue though, I'm not sure what the best solution is.

 

[Par Score]

If a game crashes every 30 seconds, or has single digit FPS, or whatever huge glaring issue it only takes 5 minutes to notice, and I get a refund on it because of that, I should be able to leave a review pointing out what a train-wreck of a game it is.

Limiting reviews to only people who have played for a long time and not refunded the game would be a real good way to make them totally useless.

 

[Renekton]

Should refund delete the review? Or put a *refunded* indicator?

Or some weighting could be put on those who played less than set time.

 

[mxgt]

Most Steam reviews are dumb and awful

Run 8x MSAA
"Garbage port, get like 10FPS!" negative review.

Okay.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

If a game crashes every 30 seconds, or has single digit FPS, or whatever huge glaring issue it only takes 5 minutes to notice, and I get a refund on it because of that, I should be able to leave a review pointing out what a train-wreck of a game it is.

Limiting reviews to only people who have played for a long time and not refunded the game would be a real good way to make them totally useless.

As I mentioned in my post, it would be better to have a seperate entry in which users report technical issues for Steam to generate lists and warnings from. Otherwise you enable idiots who are at fault for their technical issues. Like those who declare a game 'broken' when they tried launching it on outdated hardware or drivers.

 

[TheHellsLord]

I don't think that there really IS a solution. Rating systems (especially crowd-sourced ones) are always flawed in one way or another.

You can't really tie it to play time or anything else in a meaningful way. You can't really make sure that people will post what they really think. It's not only games.

The best thing I can see is having people vote on wether or not they found certain reviews helpful or not and that again can be abused.

The only way to approach this is a meaningful way is to read through some of the top/worst/middling reviews to get some kind of picture of whats going on (e.g. is the game bad or did someone dislike something the Dev said?)

 

[texhnolyze]

These aren't professional media reviews. People don't need to play for a certain period of time to have something useful to share. I've found a number of those types of reviews pretty useful in evaluating my purchase.

I never said anything about people having to write sophisticated, professional-like reviews. A paragraph of basic review of why you like/dislike the game would be fine. Well, I guess even a single line of sentence would be okay if you have at least spend more than 5 hours in say, No Man's Sky.

There are games where I can tell after a minute that they are crap.

Such as? Can't you see trailers or gameplay videos to come to that conclussion?

2 hours on record: "Game is shit"
...how can you review something you've barely played?

200 hours on record: "Game is shit"
...how can you call something bad that you played that much?

20 hours on record: "Game is shit"
...how can you call it bad when you obviously didn't play all the difficulty levels?

etc etc.

You're missing my point. Here's an example to make it easier:

Whose random user's review would you trust if you have to choose between:

User A, who has 20 hours of playtime, or
User B, who has 2 minute of playtime.

Please answer.

Steam reviews are garbage for many reasons. People will review a game negatively because it didn't work on their machine even though it may entirely be their own fault. For example I've seen people say a game doesn't work when it was because they didn't update their drivers. Instead of allowing those types of reviews Valve should have the option to report technical issues in which it gathers the user's hardware and compiles it into a list to see if there's any patterns. Then it can warn people who try to make future purchases on a device that fits that pattern.

There's also the issue of review bombing games for completely unrelated issues. For example if you're a game developer who dared try to make a social statement, whether in your game, or outside of it, be prepared for your steam entries to read "overwhelmingly negative" for a good while. And a lot of the times those trends are difficult to curb with authentic reviews.

Finally there's the issue of idiots trying to be cute and leaving reviews like "Garbage game. Rated positive for views." and "This game sucks because it stole all my free time" and leaving a negative statistic. Like if you're not going to cut that crap from your reviews then what value do they have.

Thank you for understanding my point.

I agree to an extent, but you have reviews that do the same exact thing in the positive :

"best game ever 10/10"

Not exactly a fulfilling review either. I think reviews warning of technical issues are valid, especially since the developer can post responses to reviews (in case it gets fixed) and it's all there in the public eye.

Review bombing is a big issue though, I'm not sure what the best solution is.

Yes, it goes both way actually. I somehow forgot to put positive reviews for the examples.

If a game crashes every 30 seconds, or has single digit FPS, or whatever huge glaring issue it only takes 5 minutes to notice, and I get a refund on it because of that, I should be able to leave a review pointing out what a train-wreck of a game it is.

Limiting reviews to only people who have played for a long time and not refunded the game would be a real good way to make them totally useless.

You're missing my last paragraph.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

Should refund delete the review? Or put a *refunded* indicator?

Or some weighting could be put on those who played less than set time.

When you refund a game it could ask "Why are you seeking a refund?" with a drop down selection of reasons for things like "technical problems", "not what I was expecting", "bought by mistake", etc. Then on the store it should allow the user to see a list of reasons people refunded the game, but otherwise remove the review itself.

 

[Messofanego]

Don't usually look for Steam reviews for opinions because most never finish the game (although you can check achievements if they have), just the technical things.

 

[TP]

Whose random user's review would you trust if you have to choose between:

User A, who has 20 hours of playtime, or
User B, who has 2 minute of playtime.

Please answer.

Depends on the content of the review

If it's something that appears well thought out and genuine then time played may not matter
they could have played the game somewhere else (console/drm free) and bought it again on steam

same if they have 20 hours or 200 hours
shit sux or OMG waifu/10 are immediately dismissed

 

[Lanrutcon]

You're missing my point. Here's an example to make it easier:

Whose random user's review would you trust if you have to choose between:

User A, who has 20 hours of playtime, or
User B, who has 2 minute of playtime.

Please answer.

Please post their reviews so I can judge. Playtime has little to do with it, especially given how short a lot of indie games are.

 

[StereoVsn]

I disagree about reviews from folks who got a refund. Often you can easily judge a game within that 2 hour window and there is a reason why someone refunded.

 

[Sijil]

Steam reviews have become shit tier trolling and a tool for driving an agenda. A game that's considered SJW will get hammered, an excellent game like Total War Warhammer is getting nuked by Steam reviews not due to its quality but due to the DLC pricing. Company of Heroes 2 had its reviews shit on by Russian ultra nationalists.

In short, user reviews are unmitigated garbage and I wouldn't trust them for a 0.99$ game.

 

[retroman]

How about reviews requiring to have a certain minimum word count? Such a measure might at least help in getting rid of drive-by posters.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

The real problem here is that you're taking user reviews seriously.

 

[Joe Spangle]

I find it funny when a player has played a game for 200hrs + and gives it a 'would not recommend'.

 

[texhnolyze]

Depends on the content of the review

If it's something that appears well thought out and genuine then time played may not matter
they could have played the game somewhere else (console/drm free) and bought it again on steam

same if they have 20 hours or 200 hours
shit sux or OMG waifu/10 are immediately dismissed

Yes, playtime can also be abused. Like by idling in the game or via third party program.

But at least playtime requirements will hopefully reduce the easier abuse behaviors.

Please post their reviews so I can judge. Playtime has little to do with it, especially given how short a lot of indie games are.

Doesn't matter, whether it's anything like you described, 'the game is shit' or 'it's goty', or a comprehensive 3 paragraph reviews. Negative or positive review has nothing to do with it.

Would you trust a professional-like review with 2 minutes of playtime if he could be copying that review from somewhere else?

The real problem here is that you're taking user reviews seriously.

Steam reviews have the potential. It's useful most of the time, but it's mostly only the case after a while.

More organic reviews come from several weeks/months after a game is released.

 

[hemo memo]

How about reviews requiring to have a certain minimum word count? Such a measure might at least help in getting rid of drive-by posters.

And time limit. At least 1 hour.

 

[retroman]

I find it funny when a player has played a game for 200hrs + and gives it a 'would not recommend'.

 

[SomTervo]

Agreed, OP.

And time limit. At least 1 hour.

As much as it's reductive I think this is the only way to make sure people don't "shitreview" everywhere.

Although it needs to be mitigated in line with the 'refund window' too.

 

[Hentailover]

As some memetastic pictures posted above show, the entire section is basically youtube comments. Doesn't matter really either way.

 

[UpDownLeftRight]

IMO all of these reviews hold some merit. Honestly Steams review system actually seems to work pretty well. Sure, there's going to be instances where people complain having hardly touched the game or whatever, but if you just use it to get a bit of an idea of how the game is doing (EA) or a quick glance at some peoples good and bad points, you can normally get a good idea of it's worth looking further into.

The reviews system has also saved me from buying a game or two when the dev had hit financial difficulties, Wreckfest being one. If they start putting more limitations within that system, it's going to become harder to have a game with a good rep slide down into the mixed or negative range, even if it deserves it. They should never be used as a final opinion, but they can be a useful pointer along the way.

 

[Stevey]

Just ignore them, along with the steam forums, Metacritic, IGN etc etc

 

[John Caboose]

I believe the entire base for your arguments are invalid. I think that playtime and ownership should absolutely be shown next to a review but there's nothing that says someone who played a game for 20 minutes has a less valid impression of the game than someone who played it for 2 hours or 20 or 200 for that matter. Yes they have probably done more and different things in the game but that's just a change of perspective, not a validation of any impressions.

As someone said, these aren't professional reviews and probably shouldn't even be compared to them.

 

[KojiKnight]

When was the last time you made a purchasing decision based on user review scores?

 

[NoblesseOblige]

If they're going to allow 'reviews' after 2 minutes then they should call them what they are: impressions.

 

[toddhunter]

The problem is the other side of reviews, which is somebody who has played 100 hours...before the game was even released.

I wouldn't trust any review there unless it was from one of your friends. In that context, steam doesn't have to do anything.

 

[Fbh]

User reviews, by their nature, are never going to be very reliable.

The best they could do is leave comments as they are and make a separate "use review" tab where a minimum play time and word count is needed. (Would probably still get troll reviews, but less of them)

 

[Lanrutcon]

And time limit. At least 1 hour.

This is stupid. You can't place an arbitrary limit when titles vary in length. Playing an hour of FFXIII or Spelunky or Dark Souls will leave you with a terrible impression, for 3 completely different reasons.

Nevermind that you can just leave the game running for an hour if you're intent on shitposting a review (there should really be a word for this).

 

[SomTervo]

If they're going to allow 'reviews' after 2 minutes then they should call them what they are: impressions.

It would be good to categorise it like "impressions" < 3 hours played, "review" > 3 hours played.

Obviously with a different number of hours per-game, dependent on the game.

(Which is all but impossible.)

 

[schlynch]

It's fine like it is (with the common flaws such a system brings with itself).

Any restriction would work in both ways, like making it harder too write a legitimate review too. There are a lot of games you can run without steam nowadays. So these people have to idle to be eligible to write a review?


It's a good system and it's easy to use:
Scroll down and read what the people are actually saying.
Like one should do with every review on every subject.

 

[Ullus]

When was the last time you made a purchasing decision based on user review scores?

Last month. Just gotta sort through the obvious joke reviews.

 

[Anno]

When was the last time you made a purchasing decision based on user review scores?

I actually find Steam reviews to be one of my more consistent metrics of liking a game. Just not right out of the gate. After a month or two they tend to level out and actually be informative. The exception are games like TW:W right now where people are mostly complaints about DLC rather than the base game, but that's easy enough to determine by reading a couple.

 

[Abilidebob]

Even with people abusing the system I think that in general the system works. If a game has only 45% positive reviews, I know with a high degree of certainty that there's something wrong with the game. Unless of course it's a game with not that many reviews, so abusers' reviews are stronger. But unpopular games like that usually don't attract these people's attentions in the first place, so...

 

[hemo memo]

This is stupid. You can't place an arbitrary limit when titles vary in length. Playing an hour of FFXIII or Spelunky or Dark Souls will leave you with a terrible impression, for 3 completely different reasons.

Nevermind that you can just leave the game running for an hour if you're intent on shitposting a review (there should really be a word for this).

It's the same 2 hour refund limit regardless of the game. Why would anyone leave the game running for 1 hour just to shitreview? And your attuide please.

 

[Valahart]

I think at a general scale I trust steam reviews more than those from famous websites.

Not steam reviews per se but any compilation of users review.

 

[stan423321]

I find it funny when a player has played a game for 200hrs + and gives it a 'would not recommend'.

"I have tried to make SimBadger 5 fun a lot of times, I always came back to SimBadger 4 instead. So, buy SimBadger 4 instead."

How about reviews requiring to have a certain minimum word count? Such a measure might at least help in getting rid of drive-by posters.

Indeed. 10chars

 

[Fox Mulder]

Still better than amazon, where you can review without buying or before the product is out.

 

[Whompa02]

I never ever trust steam reviews. Positive or not, anyone can review a game. ANYONE.

I'd rather hear an opinion from someone who isn't 12 year old Jake who loves call of duty and nothing else.

 

[Greddleok]

I think at a general scale I trust steam reviews more than those from famous websites.

Not steam reviews per se but any compilation of users review.

Why?

 

[Gattsu25]

Most Steam reviews are dumb and awful

Run 8x MSAA
"Garbage port, get like 10FPS!" negative review.

Okay.

You're thinking X COM 2 aren't you? A lot of the steam reviews were exactly that.

 

[Shiggy]

And time limit. At least 1 hour.

That's absolute bullshit. There are games where you can tell after a few minutes that they are shit.