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[Rosa Lilium]

A couple of issues:

- This won't stop review bombing when the game has just been released.
- Valve is again refusing to mod their community. How about banning/suspending people from reviews when they are putting slurs and harassment in their reviews?

 

[Gaogaogao]

reviews were a mistake

 

[GinoFelino]

reviews were a mistake

Reviews? Fuck no

User reviews? Oh hell yes

 

[tuxfool]

Honestly a solution to review bombing would be to some kind of adaptive flood control. It should allow an influx or a spike in review submissions but sustained review bombs ought to be curtailed. There is absolutely no value in getting a spike in thousands of reviews all saying the same things.

If people want to have a conversation about the reasons for their unhappiness, reviews aren't the place to do it.

 

[Nzyme32]

A couple of issues:

- This won't stop review bombing when the game has just been released.

- Valve is again refusing to mod their community. How about banning/suspending people from reviews when they are putting slurs and harassment in their reviews?

The intention is not to stop review bombing - simply to show what is happening over time. By large majority, any game is not review bombed indefinitely.

Very true that any game that is review bombed at launch will be much harder to gauge since you have no prior context in the histogram - but you very easily can look into this, then actually go ahead and READ the reviews and decide for yourself.

 

[so1337]

This is a pretty brilliant solution. For example, the graphs for both Firewatch and GTA5 show a distinct anomaly of sudden negativity and from there it's pretty easy to extrapolate if the reasons for it are petty review bombing or legitimate criticism.

Not bad at all.

 

[TimeEffect]

They need to ban accounts from reviewing when they clearly abuse it

 

[Nzyme32]

They need to ban accounts from reviewing when they clearly abuse it

With 100% certainty, days later Valve are accused of censorship. Furthermore it is incredibly hard to judge this in many cases. Very clear hate speech etc is currently as with almost every other user review system on other sites. You can report it and there are mods that look at it, but they are all pretty impotent at stopping an internet mob from behaving as they do.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

With 100% certainty, days later Valve are accused of censorship.

So? It's their platform.

Very clear hate speech etc is currently as with almost every other user review system on other sites. You can report it and there are mods that look at it,[...].

That's weird then that the literal Nazi groups people report are still around. As well as the pedophile ones. Or was that where it ended? With them looking at it.

 

[Eolz]

That's really cool.
It's a shame that Valve always waits for some big issue before doing something though.

 

[Van Bur3n]

The intention is not to stop review bombing - simply to show what is happening over time. By large majority, any game is not review bombed indefinitely.

Very true that any game that is review bombed at launch will be much harder to gauge since you have no prior context in the histogram - but you very easily can look into this, then actually go ahead and READ the reviews and decide for yourself.

Informing oneself is too much work for some people.

 

[Hektor]

They need to ban accounts from reviewing when they clearly abuse it

If you start banning people for clearly abusing it, you won't stop the abuse.

The abuse will just become more subtle.

Right now, you can very clearly tell who's abusing it, meaning everybody who cares can just ignore those reviews that complain about a pewdiepie DMCA in a Firewatch review.

If bans start occuring for those kind of review, people will instead just cover their review by making it about the game "Shit game, shit story, 2/10 would not play again" which would make it ultimately harder for everyone to discern real negative reviews and abusive negative reviews.

 

[Nzyme32]

So? It's their platform.

Which is then not a platform that is providing a review system that I actually want - one where I can see all the data and use my own brain, read reviews and make my own choice. If you want an arbitrary score that you arbitrarily trust, there are plenty of sites for this already - Valve is not the bastion of reviews, and nor is any other singular source.

That's weird then that the literal Nazi groups people report are still around. As well as the pedophile ones.

What part of my quote has not already pointed this out. Let me say it again:

Very clear hate speech etc is currently as with almost every other user review system on other sites. You can report it and there are mods that look at it, but they are all pretty impotent at stopping an internet mob from behaving as they do.

 

[meerak]

So, I am the #1 person telling people to research what they buy but looking at Reviews-Over-Time charts and graphs is not really what I had in mind lol.

I can't wait to see shit like "Highest Average Review Score Over 1 Year!"

To be fair, it's very logical for how games are today (constantly changing) but yeah. As far as I know, the only way reviews are used in Steam is to sort that column. They're gonna need to add some filters.

 

[diaspora]

IMO it needs a word/tag cloud too. Basically if a lot of reviews contain "sjw" you can know that they ought to be dismissed.

 

[MartyStu]

How does this help? It only visually organizes when it starts getting review bombed and does nothing to discourage or prevent it.

If a game looks good to me, but the review average is low, I can now easily find out WHY, and WHEN people started to sour on the games.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Seems fine. The more you can empower and contextualize user feedback over time, the better.

I wish sites like Amazon and the iTunes app store had this for of feature.

 

[TemplaerDude]

This should have been added a long long time ago. Glad it's finally happening.

There are a lot of things, simple and complex, that Steam has been lacking for a very long time now.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

What part of my quote has not already pointed this out. Let me say it again:

Not trying at all != impotence

It's called negligence.

For reference there's a gay-bashing group from 2011 with an icon of scat porn. It's been reported dozens if not hundreds of times. The only way it can possibly continue to exist is them doing literally nothing.

 

[ScaryShark]

I like that I'm now going to have a visual record of every gamer tantrum.

 

[Jobbs]

Am I the only one who thinks most, or at least many people only glance at the summary? "Mixed" "Mostly positive" "Mostly negative" etc -- That's what I'd be most worried about with my own game on the store, and the histograms are nice but the impact of "mixed" or "mostly negative" seems like it'd be felt regardless if you can click around, investigate, and learn the truth. I mean, in a case like Firewatch, you could already pretty easily click around, investigate, and learn the truth. It took me a minute of reading the recent reviews to realize they were being bombed for the PDP thing. The histogram wouldn't have changed anything for me.

 

[finalflame]

IMO it needs a word/tag cloud too. Basically if a lot of reviews contain "sjw" you can know that they ought to be dismissed.

Or, to some, that it should not be dismissed.

I'd personally most likely dismiss any reviews referring to "sjws", but the entire point of providing data and tools is for people to make their own decisions on what is important to them. Instead of removing reviews that are clearly part of a review bomb, Valve is giving users the tools to make their own decisions with regards to what matters or does not matter to them.

In the most recent case, a bunch of childish PDP supporters review bombed a game because the company took a stand against against someone who has a track record of racist behavior. Perhaps next time, users will review bomb a developer that expresses racist views. In both these scenarios users are placing reviews due to factors extraneous to the game itself, and you can use the histogram to pick out the negative review spikes, read those reviews, and decide if those grievances are important to you.

I mean it says all this in the blog post, but it seems worth reiterating for all the people here who seemingly refuse to actually read it.

 

[Wulfram]

Which is once again useless - it's like saying you are going to make mandatory voting, and the "silent" groups that did not want to vote are going to be asked to vote. The result is largely either they decline / opt out, or when forced provide garbage data in protest or because they didn't care ("the polls are always wrong" with poor polling). This provides no change against whether data is garbage or not or if review bombing is collected or not (ie those with a position of hate against again for non related game reasons eg politics not represented in the game).

If you actively ask people, keep the question short and easy to answer and maybe offer a small incentive, I think you could get a considerably higher response rate than the current wholly self selecting rubbish.

Maybe it doesn't work, or at least would take too much hassle to get to work. In that case the best solution would be to stop pretending that steam user reviews are representative of anything and instead show them as the purely anecdotal evidence that they are, without an overall number.

And your system is not also "garbage data" by the same logic!? You have a data set full of both valid and invalid data, the histogram gives you a far greater understanding of this, but certainly still demands you pays some context to the time of the reviews and then actually READ the reviews submitted to determine for yourself what is "garbage" and what isn't.

This is far far superior to an arbitrary score or a random sampling with no context and timeframes to follow.

There's no valid data in the current system

 

[Khrno]

No, but you can make a new acocunt, buy the game, write the review, return the game, and let the account linger forever.

Quite a few "there is 1 product in this user's library" reviews up on the firewatch stuff.

The Histogram thing is nice, but it still misses. It would be nice if it worked a bit more on a time bell curve for weird spikes. Right now they're filtering the 11th tot he 16th, but this all started a few days prior to that.

This could easily be surpassed, the 1 game thing, by spending $1 an x amount of times, I know many people wouldn't actually do it, but for some 10 or 20 dollars is nothing. So you buy 20 bundles from Bundle Stars, there are some with 40+ games for just $1

So even adding a "user must have 10 or 20 games" barrier to the reviews, would only cost a dollar (more if involving drive bt accounts)

 

[Nzyme32]

Not trying at all != impotence

It's called negligence.

For reference there's a gay-bashing group from 2011 with an icon of scat porn. It's been reported dozens if not hundreds of times. The only way it can possibly continue to exist is them doing literally nothing.

Absolutely - but I can easily define this same "negligence" and many companies unethical levels of effort in this regard for many companies.

Links to said groups?

Can't say I am looking for this stuff so I don't see it, but I'd hapilly report such groups. I know that reporting works on the basis of users and groups being taken down and messages being sent confirming this has been removed thanks to the reports that were sent - though how delayed these issues have been, I have no idea.

 

[Nzyme32]

There's no valid data in the current system

Pretty much all my friends that I know that provide reviews on Steam are insightful and trusted by me - that's valid to me. I don't give a shit if someone else doesn't trust them or not. I can easily read a review and decide if it is reasonable or not - I can look at the same user and look at games I have played and if they have reviewed them and then see if we hold similar values. None of this is hard for me, and it becomes valid to me.

Your opinion is not everyone's opinion objectively and vice versa, so this is a complete pointless argument

 

[elyetis]

So if we abuse enough aspect of steam will they finally release the new steam UI to fight it ?

 

[Nzyme32]

So if we abuse enough aspect of steam will they finally release the new steam UI to fight it ?

Considering this feature was already partly implemented before these latest "review bombings", this isn't the case. Also they have been pointing to review updated pretty consistently. The next one is already mentioned:

It's quite possible that we'll need to revisit this when we move to personalized review scores, where our prediction of your happiness with a purchase is based upon the games you've enjoyed in the past.

 

[rudger]

This seems like a good solution. It also looks like they are marking when these bombardments occur. I wonder if later they could add user commentary on why the review spike occurred...and then let people rate those. So much data on data about data!

 

[paperspace]

⁣

 

[PillarEN]

Frankly if you don't put in the time like this gentleman here then you really haven't actually played said game.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/251870/reviews/?browsefilter=toprated&snr=1_5_reviews_

 

[Stumpokapow]

I wonder if this actually empowers review bombers.l by highlighting the conspicuous recent change rather than its relative proportions versus the historical norm.

 

[a916]

I like that I'm now going to have a visual record of every gamer tantrum.

Also this haha.

 

[luulubuu]

What I read here:
Nice to see Valve considering this issue deeply and on all levels, and providing a solution that empowers people to inform themselves better, rather than some half-baked "quick fix".

And then I read the GAF thread:

Come on, what the fuck?
Did you read that blog post? What exactly would be a not "half assed" solution in your opinion, which also doesn't have any of the other drawbacks of all the solutions explored and ultimately rejected by Valve?

Yes, Valve caters their solutions to making sure that people who want to inform themselves (or want to buy a particular game, or in general, want to make their own decisions) have powerful tools to do so.

That's what makes their platform different. I would argue it is what makes their platform great.
If you want a platform where decisions are made for you instead, there are plenty out there.

First of all, chill because this is not a personal attack and of course I'm talking about what I do think about this.

This is a solution, another solution would be automatically drawn back the reviews from people who have a toxic pattern, I guess that would take a lot of moderation and that's a thing Valve doesn't have at the moment.

I have no really interest in Valve after all the stuff that happened with the gambling or some of their politics, so when I say "half assed solution" is because this looks like what they always do, just a middle ground to solve a bigger problem.

Not so long ago, there was a email sent by Valve saying "Well, we can't really do anything to stop you from being harrassed" and I quote "It's like throwing gasoline to the fire" does that sound like a solution? No really, not to me

And I repeat, I talk about my opinions and all my opinions are mine, so sorry if you didnt understand that I don't represent a huge amount of players? I mean ???

And yeah, don't tell me to use another platform just because I disagree in some aspects of it, just don't.

 

[Jobbs]

I wonder if this actually empowers review bombers.l by highlighting the conspicuous recent change rather than its relative proportions versus the historical norm.

Maybe, but as long as the summary ("mostly positive" or whatever) can still be downgraded by bombing, people will still bomb. The histograms simply won't make a difference because most of what matters is that summary.

 

[Nzyme32]

Maybe, but as long as the summary ("mostly positive" or whatever) can still be downgraded by bombing, people will still bomb. The histograms simply won't make a difference because most of what matters is that summary.

Not at all - you always see the summary of the total and then most recent. If there is a discrepancy, I want to know why so I can then make a decision. The histograms provide a quick way of seeing what is happening and focusing on the reviews from that period that I can then READ, judge for myself and then include or exclude them from the results and see the difference.

If you only want to look at just the most recent score and ignore the full score and never look for context - then you will always be ill-informed, whether that is on Steam or every other outlet you look for reviews through as they can all be manipulated in various ways.

First of all, chill because this is not a personal attack and of course I'm talking about what I do think about this.

This is a solution, another solution would be automatically drawn back the reviews from people who have a toxic pattern, I guess that would take a lot of moderation and that's a thing Valve doesn't have at the moment.

I have no really interest in Valve after all the stuff that happened with the gambling or some of their politics, so when I say "half assed solution" is because this looks like what they always do, just a middle ground to solve a bigger problem.

Not so long ago, there was a email sent by Valve saying "Well, we can't really do anything to stop you from being harrassed" and I quote "It's like throwing gasoline to the fire" does that sound like a solution? No really, not to me

And I repeat, I talk about my opinions and all my opinions are mine, so sorry if you didnt understand that I don't represent a huge amount of players? I mean ???

And yeah, don't tell me to use another platform just because I disagree in some aspects of it, just don't.

He's pointing out that your statement makes no sense in light of the logic and reasoning explained in the blog post, which goes step by step on why they chose this over other solutions. "Other platforms" I'm sure means other review outlets, game services, if you find this system so egregious compared to other systems, which imo are even more easily gamed and manipulated even with any scale of moderation. there are plenty of alternatives you can go to if you don't want this. Many folks like me want exactly this - lots of data and the ability to dig into it and read actual customers reviews, then decide what we think by ourselves

 

[Dreams-Visions]

First of all, chill because this is not a personal attack and of course I'm talking about what I do think about this.

This is a solution, another solution would be automatically drawn back the reviews from people who have a toxic pattern, I guess that would take a lot of moderation and that's a thing Valve doesn't have at the moment.

I have no really interest in Valve after all the stuff that happened with the gambling or some of their politics, so when I say "half assed solution" is because this looks like what they always do, just a middle ground to solve a bigger problem.

I think his issue here -- which is a fair one -- is that you by your own admission are disinterested in being objective in your opinion on this matter. Your issue with Valve's past actions/inaction are what drove your comment rather than an actual review of the current iteration of action taken on the current subject at hand. It stands as a comment without any alternative solutions or suggestions to improve their approach. A comment which appeared to have failed to read the associated article and is summarily devoid of any value to the conversation.

Your past dissatisfaction coloring your opinion on unrelated matters looks like a shit post. And from your own long response here, you're basically admitting that it was a shit post. I'm sure you don't enjoy seeing threads riddled with drive-by shit posts, so you shouldn't feign surprise that others don't enjoy reading them just because they came from you. Even through this post, you offered no meaningful thoughts; just a long-winded defense of your shit posting, which nobody should care to read. Because the thread isn't about you.

Fair?

 

[luulubuu]

In the end, this is just add more steps in the user end, it won't prevent it to happen, it will just show a record of the reviews and that's it.

If you are out of the loop, going through those bars to "investigate" what happened it will only restrict potential costumers because "too much work" instead of curating curatos or manage their community, they are just adding more stuff in between to ... I don't really know.

 

[Jobbs]

Not at all - you always see the summary of the total and then most recent. If there is a discrepancy, I want to know why so I can then make a decision. The histograms provide a quick way of seeing what is happening and focusing on the reviews from that period that I can then READ, judge for myself and then include or exclude them from the results and see the difference.

If you only want to look at just the most recent score and ignore the full score and never look for context - then you will always be ill-informed, whether that is on Steam or every other outlet you look for reviews through as they can all be manipulated in various ways.

There was already a separate summary for recent and overall since long before this feature. I think if they [review bombers] negatively affect the summary then their job is done. I have a low opinion of the average customer's willingness to put effort into something like this (not just in Steam, but in everything) and I am inclined to think the summary will inform their decision heavily regardless if they have the ability to dive into the stats by clicking around. If you're expecting the average customer to dive into the stats to make a decision you've already lost.

 

[Par Score]

Oh my god.

Valve.

Not all problems can be solved by data and algorithms! This is a complete joke.

I wonder if this actually empowers review bombers.l by highlighting the conspicuous recent change rather than its relative proportions versus the historical norm.

It's practically designed to do just that:

Note how the review bomb is highlighted, and that you can Exclude the reviews from the bomb or choose to View Only those reviews from the bomb.

Why even include that second option unless you want to encourage and facilitate this behaviour? Why? Why include something so incredibly, stupidly counter productive to your professed intended outcome?

 

[Lashley]

Pretty decent fix imo

 

[luulubuu]

I think his issue here -- which is a fair one -- is that you by your own admission are disinterested in being objective in your opinion on this matter. Your issue with Valve's past actions/inaction are what drove your comment rather than an actual review of the current iteration of action taken on the current subject at hand. It stands as a comment without any alternative solutions or suggestions to improve their approach. A comment which appeared to have failed to read the associated article.

Your past dissatisfaction coloring your opinion on unrelated matters looks like a shit post. And from your own long response here, you're basically admitting that it was a shit post. I'm sure you don't enjoy seeing threads riddled with drive-by shit posts, so you shouldn't feign surprise that others don't enjoy reading them just because they came from you. Even through this post, you offered no meaningful thoughts; just a long-winded defense of your shit posting, which nobody should care to read. Because the thread isn't about you.

Fair?

Eh, I did offer more content to my "shit post" because now giving your take is shit posting it seems, and I guess you didnt read into it or either the tweet I linked, that's fair since you seem very trigger happy to jump into asumptions.

However, as I said before, this is not going to prevent stuff, it will just add more steps in the user end, or that's what I interpreted by the the article, since it looks like my opinion is important for you, I will get you back with a solution, even if it "painted by past actions" which, in mu opinion, is important to take into consideration.

Fair?

Not at all - you always see the summary of the total and then most recent. If there is a discrepancy, I want to know why so I can then make a decision. The histograms provide a quick way of seeing what is happening and focusing on the reviews from that period that I can then READ, judge for myself and then include or exclude them from the results and see the difference.

If you only want to look at just the most recent score and ignore the full score and never look for context - then you will always be ill-informed, whether that is on Steam or every other outlet you look for reviews through as they can all be manipulated in various ways.



He's pointing out that your statement makes no sense in light of the logic and reasoning explained in the blog post, which goes step by step on why they chose this over other solutions. "Other platforms" I'm sure means other review outlets, game services, if you find this system so egregious compared to other systems, which imo are even more easily gamed and manipulated even with any scale of moderation. there are plenty of alternatives you can go to if you don't want this. Many folks like me want exactly this - lots of data and the ability to dig into it and read actual customers reviews, then decide what we think by ourselves

There are better ways to express what he intended without inviting me to use another platform with is just hilarious.

However, yeah, for people like you or me who likes to dig in what happened yeah, this data could be useful, but putting into some perspective, I don't think, and I'm talking about me and my inner circles, this won't help a bit because some people are out of the loop or doesn't really care about what happened and since this, by what I understand, gives even more window to bomb, people will just only see bars and/or won't investigate in their own what happened.

I think is a pretty valid statement, and thanks for your break down of his message and the problem my post, or "shit post" could cause, most folks here took it as it was, but I have no problem to say that I should give more insight into it. My bad.

 

[danm999]

Would work well for big patches or updates too. You could see a timeline of how a game improved/devolved.

 

[Rosa Lilium]

What the heck?

 

[Nzyme32]

In the end, this is just add more steps in the user end, it won't prevent it to happen, it will just show a record of the reviews and that's it.

If you are out of the loop, going through those bars to "investigate" what happened it will only restrict potential costumers because "too much work" instead of curating curatos or manage their community, they are just adding more stuff in between to ... I don't really know.

What you are asking for is ignorance. A system where you are given an arbitrary score you choose to believe, that magically requires no effort or reading. A purchasing decision within the space of time to look at one number - which to me is absolutely ridiculous in light of all the many ways being discussed through which any review can be manipulated.

It took me a total of 1 sec to see there is a discrepancy between recent and overall reviews for a game, 5 secs to then go to the histogram and see a highlight of anomalous results. With another sec I can highlight just these odd reviews and spend 30sec more reading just those reviews and easily see what is happening. My purchasing decision would usually take much longer than this anyway, and this to me is beyond trivial. Again - there are plenty of review services and platforms that give a lazy approach to reviews to suit anyone else.

 

[Yukinari]

The review bombing for GTA5 and Sonic Mania are the few instances where im like "yeah i can see why youd do that"

 

[Portugeezer]

Good, people used to review bomb whenever a publisher did something that upset them, didn't actually talk about the game.

 

[luulubuu]

What you are asking for is ignorance. A system where you are given an arbitrary score you choose to believe, that magically requires no effort or reading. A purchasing decision within the space of time to look at one number - which to me is absolutely ridiculous in light of all the many ways being discussed through which any review can be manipulated.

It took me a total of 1 sec to see there is a discrepancy between recent and overall reviews for a game, 5 secs to then go to the histogram and see a highlight of anomalous results. With another sec I can highlight just these odd reviews and spend 30sec more reading just those reviews and easily see what is happening. My purchasing decision would usually take much longer than this anyway, and this to me is beyond trivial. Again - there are plenty of review services and platforms that give a lazy approach to reviews to suit anyone else.

Not ignorance, either magic, just curated. I don't think is that hard to understand that if you make a community and you want that community to grow healthy, you should add some moderation and curation.

Yeah, it tooks nothing and less to check why, but I assume you are inside of the industry and you care about this, some people don't and, I repeat, talking from my experience and personal evidence, people won't care and will see just "red" so maybe don't pursache the game.

Of course my solution is not the solution, because if it was, I'm sure people at Valve would plugged it in or thought about it already, so maybe this is not half assed but a step into a further curation, giving the user the choice is vital, maybe making it a bit more simple would be great.

 

[Nzyme32]

The review bombing for GTA5 and Sonic Mania are the few instances where im like "yeah i can see why youd do that"

Sonic Mania and denuvo / DRM issues are perfectly valid to me as reasoning to express upset, but it is nice to filter as I see fit to look beyond this.

With GTA V there are two big periods. The first was with the modding mess, and that to me is valid. I would want to know of that situation and if I was using mods and ran into that, I would also change my review to an negative one - ie I would not recommend the game.

I didn't follow the more recent blip, but I'll take a look at it later since it sounds like an interesting case to look at

 

[KScorp]

This seems like a great feature.

Users now see that there was a review bomb. Users can then read reviews specifically from that period to see what was going on. Users can then decide how much weight to give to the bombers.

Review bomb occurs due to something completely unrelated to the game? Users can ignore/exclude it.
Review bomb occurs due to something "terrible" happening to the game? (Features removed, awful support, devs abandoned it in unfinished state, etc) Well great, now users can see that the review bombing is actually very relevant to the product!

So basically, I don't think this feature "empowers" bombers. It empowers users, who can now choose to empower bombers.