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[DeliciousDoc]

I dont see how steam reviews are any worse than hype gaf or paid for game critics/pr. Only thing that holds more value would be a friends recommendation if that friend had very similar taste to yours.

I actually go through the top reviews so I can know what is so great or so bad about a game. You ignore what doesnt bother you. You can contribute by saying if you find a review funny, bad or good. Good reviews have higher visibility. You can even see when the review was posted and arent stuck with out of the gate reviews like in traditional media. I also dont care how old a user is if his points are valid. I dont personally look at time played and dont care.

If you dislike user reviews so much, maybe you should be less invested if other people like a game as much as you. If you contributed to making the game than it is to be expected but I doubt this is what is happening here.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

I saw a review from a guy that was a thumbs down because he was pissed he couldn't play Deus Ex on ultra at 1080p.....on his laptop.

You just gotta take this shit with a grain of salt now. People are morons.

I saw a negative review once for a VR game because one of his base stations broke and he couldn't play the game until it was fixed. His hardware broke in an unrelated incident...and he rated the game negatively because of it......

 

[Dusk Golem]

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.

 

[texhnolyze]

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.

So it's really happening? That's just the worst and that need to be addressed asap.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

So it's really happening? That's just the worst and that need to be addressed asap.

Yeah it's been happening. Since gamergate at the very least, or that's when it became blatant to me. Any game that has a dev that is outspoken about social issues gets swarmed with dishonest negative reviews on and off steam from people who haven't even opened the game. It's when I realized how garbage Steam reviews are, and how Valve does nothing to curb the behavior.

 

[Funkybee12]

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

Happens to me everytime I check a gameplay trailer on youtube.I generally need 3-4 clicks throughout the video, if my eyes catch any interesting element, I tend to watch it a bit more, otherwise I can see easily when the game is not my cup of tea.

 

[Boss Doggie]

I'm more annoyed that Steam encouraged 4chanposting style reviews with the "did you find this review funny" tag.

 

[MUnited83]

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.

Yeah, this is my main issues with it. Steam reviews in general are great and normally somewhat accurate for me, but if the game is unlucky enough to attract a certain kind of brigading idiots, it gets completely ruined.

 

[Rodney McKay]

I saw a negative review once for a VR game because one of his base stations broke and he couldn't play the game until it was fixed. His hardware broke in an unrelated incident...and he rated the game negatively because of it......

You see that constantly in Amazon reviews.

"Product broke during shipping/shipped to the wrong address/got stolen off my porch/etc, 1/5 stars."

But there are still usually more than enough insightful reviews on both Amazon and Steam for people to form a reasonable picture of what they're buying.

 

[chillybright]

Take all of them as a grain of salt, just like any other reviews, from an ordinary player or any big outlet.

 

[ultrazilla]

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':

I agree there's room for improvement. There's also an inherent flaw in the refund process as well.

To be given up to two hours of gameplay and/or 14 days to decide if you want a refund is crazy imho.

Average movie length is 1 hour and 30 minutes. I can't go to a movie, watch the entire thing and then demand a full refund because it sucked.

Although I know they publicly said "Firewatch" was successful for them, you better damn well believe the next game Campo Santo makes contains more than two hours of gameplay. No pun intended but they were burned by people who finished the game in 2 hours or less and asked for a full refund. Then they probably turned around and wrote a negative review on the game's length!

While my opinion won't be popular, the playtime should be cut down to an hour, perhaps even a half hour. That's plenty of time to figure out if you're going to like the game or not imho. Same thing with the 14 day period. 1-2 days max.

I think this would actually help cut down on abuse of the refund system AND the review process.

I bought "Song of the Deep" day 1 on Steam. After playing it for a half hour or so, I couldn't stand the game's performance(frame rate hitching/stutter). I asked for and received a refund due to the tech issues. I reviewed the game and gave it a negative review based on those problems. However, I mentioned in my review I would gladly re-buy and re-vise my review should Insomniac fix the issues. They patched the game and I rebought it and turned my review to a positive one.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Valve further tinker with the refund process. I do think it's a good idea but changes to playtime and the 14 day period need to be made. This would be a win for developers/publishers and hopefully fellow gamers as the reviews would skew towards actual issues and not possible vindictive agendas or whatnot.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Amazon lets you write reviews for things before they are even released.

Somehow, the world has not ended and commerce is able to survive.

Just stop reading Steam reviews at release if it bothers you that much OP.

Return policy on digital goods is always a complex balance. On Google Play Store, you can return an app up to 2 hours after you buy it. Then it becomes non-refundable.

 

[Hesh]

Much like the "This user received the game for free" tag I think Steam reviews should have a "This user refunded the game and no longer owns it" sort of tag on reviews, too. Pie in the sky would be Steam introducing a category system for "reviews" so that end users can tag them appropriately (because face it, the writers will just lie if it was up to them) as "informative", "entertaining", "technical issue only", "unrelated", "joke review/trolling/etc.", or "not helpful" and then further allow end users to filter the reviews to their preference. That sure would be swell.

 

[dhlt25]

although most of steam reviews are crap, I've found that the positive percentage is surprisingly close to my personal opinion about games, something about law of large number i guess.