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Microsoft/Turn 10 are apparently deleting negative Forza Motorsport reviews from the Xbox PC app

Boss Mog

Member
I am not following the game cause it doesn't interest me but how is it an 85 meta with 50% 1 star ratings on the app? Can anyone rate it even if they don't sub to Game Pass?
Look at this "100" review that counts toward the 85 metascore:

Forza Motorsport is one of the best accessible surprises in 2023. Turn 10 Studios’ dedication to disabled players is tangible as soon as one starts the game. It’s beyond refreshing to finally have a racing title that physically disabled individuals can confidently purchase knowing they will be able to successfully complete every race. And as the industry continues to acquire new accessibility knowledge and improve upon itself, Forza Motorsport should be viewed as the beginning of a new accessibility era.

So they're giving 100 not because it's an outstanding game but because it has good accessibility options. I mean that's great for disabled players, but those people make up an infinitely small percentage of purchasers so I don't think you should base your review around that unless you're doing it for virtue signaling brownie points.
 
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I thought the problems were mostly on PC. What's wrong with the Xbox version? I've heard the career mode progression is like a mobile game but that can easily be fixed.

The progression is nothing like a mobile game. At least, the grind isn’t. You can buy a car required for one of the cups and get it to level 20 minimum before you’re done with the cup, assuming you’re adequately driving. It’s been massively overblown, like 90% of the other issues with the game imho (on console anyway, haven’t played PC) 👍
 

Three

Member
I never trust review platforms from the source. Maybe amazon but thats it. Always use a 3rd party and honestly GAF is the best review source for videogames on the internet.
Amazon has had fake review brokers for years. It's not amazon themselves but the reviews there are tarnished too


Amazon have been in a constant battle with them and I think their latest weapon is to use AI to try and weed them out.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
As a Xbox fan, wouldn't you want better games?
no way whatever GIF
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Idk what's going on, but to be fair MS should have cleaned house years ago, the Xbox reviews have been a useless knee-jerk cesspool for ages no matter the game.

Disclaimer: I'm in a different region for reviews I guess, it's been worse than MC user reviews and yt combined.
 

Allandor

Member
Well that's a two sworded problem. On the one hand you have a game that's quite good (it might not be the best game of all times but still good) and on the other hand you have toxic communities
...
 

Three

Member
Well that's a two sworded problem. On the one hand you have a game that's quite good (it might not be the best game of all times but still good) and on the other hand you have toxic communities
...
??

So the xbox/forza community are toxic?

"you need to own this product to rate or review it"

Says it right there in the screen captures of the app. It's wild that you're trying to blame the people who paid for a product and gave their review. Who exactly are they being toxic to and why?
 

Roxkis_ii

Member
First we need games
then we need good games
Well, they did buy release 4 games this year.

Just werid that instead of seeing this news and being upset that criticisms of a game are being deleted instead of listened to, they turn it into everyone is bullying a trillion dollor company. That doesn't seem like a way of encouraging improvement, but justifing and encouraging mediocrity.


Just typing out trillion dollor company made me think. You would think having trillion of dollars would mean they have the means to do better, but maybe it's actually a hindrance in reality. They don't have a fail state, so they don't have to worry about fixing mistakes.
 

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
Deleted reviews means nothing if they are deleted for reasons like politics or profanity. I know that happens a lot because brand new Game Pass games that no one plays get crowded with weird shit early on. Every other review will be stuff like "Trump 2024" or "Biden sniffs children," etc... Also this game just released yesterday so that's probably part of it too.
 
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StereoVsn

Member
Yet again they were very selective about who they gave review copies to.




Due to the bugs, performance issues and general structure of the career mode the official Forza forum, the steam forum and the subreddit are bedlam right now.

The only saving graces for the game seem to be the newly introduced online system and the improvements they've made to the car physics.

I don't know what they were thinking in releasing the game in this state along with having a career structure/grind that wouldn't look out of place in a F2P mobile game.

It's easy to say they needed more time, but they already had 6 years so there's nothing to say that more time would have solved anything.
Oh wow. Another GamePass game that needs to get patches for the next year I guess.

Is wheel support at least better in the “new” engine?
 

StereoVsn

Member
Amazon has had fake review brokers for years. It's not amazon themselves but the reviews there are tarnished too


Amazon have been in a constant battle with them and I think their latest weapon is to use AI to try and weed them out.
I think when there are a few hundred reviews or more you can get a proper idea. It’s products with less reviews that can be sketchy. On Amazon at least.

Steam is quite reliable since people have to own the product to review and it has a ton of filtering options.
 

StereoVsn

Member
It's better but there's a catch, the default settings are worse than they've ever been (there are deadzones set up by default... On a wheel) so it requires you to do some tweaking and understand what all the settings do:


6 years…. *facepalm. At least options are there this time.
 
They are in their right to delete reviews from people who haven't played it.

Since the Xbox App only allows MS accounts, they can check this with a simple algorithm and delete them. If this is the case, I dont know.

But there IS a silver lining here.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
how much time to this knowledge has passed.
None of the major outlets has published anything about this ?
16-17 hours by now.

I don't have a lot of faith in current gaming journalists and media. Most are just mercenaries at this point and follow the money, swags, and exclusive insider access.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
They are in their right to delete reviews from people who haven't played it.

Since the Xbox App only allows MS accounts, they can check this with a simple algorithm and delete them. If this is the case, I dont know.

But there IS a silver lining here.
You can't leave reviews on the Xbox store unless you have bought the game.

So there is no justification of deleting reviews.
 

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
You can't leave reviews on the Xbox store unless you have bought the game.

So there is no justification of deleting reviews.
You can't make a blanket statement like that. I already stated earlier that there is justification for deleting reviews. You can report reviews for offensive content and I bet a lot of deleted reviews are related to this.

EDIT: Also, you can post a review if you just launch the game on Game Pass.
 
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DanielG165

Member
I don’t ever trust reviews from the direct source, and that goes for any company. Plus, despite FM having some glaring issues, especially performance being extremely rough on PC, we don’t know why these reviews were deleted. They could’ve contained content that didn’t have anything to do with the game itself.

As an aside, the best feeling track focused racing game on controller, even though it’s a wheel biased title, is ACC, no question. That is the standard imo.
 

tmlDan

Member
Now there's only 25 reviews on the standard edition, this seems legit.

Wtf is going on over there
 
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skit_data

Member
If this is indeed true and not some bug in their review system it's very embarassing and deserves to get called out even by the most toothless publications in gaming media.
 
You can't leave reviews on the Xbox store unless you have bought the game.

So there is no justification of deleting reviews.
Ok then that's just fucking low. VERY low.

I always supported the Microsoft brand since the OG Xbox (im a Burger King/ Pepsi/ Sega man, so I always went with the underdog).
But I never thought they would stoop THIS low.....

This will bite them in the ass in the end. Wow.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
You can't make a blanket statement like that. I already stated earlier that there is justification for deleting reviews. You can report reviews for offensive content and I bet a lot of deleted reviews are related to this.
Will such a large percentage of reviews be deleted because of offensive content? That doesn't make sense.
EDIT: Also, you can post a review if you just launch the game on Game Pass.
Yeah, and that makes you a paying customer if you're subscribed to Game Pass and played the game. That's also how you become a part of the "10 million players" count.

At that point, you will be well within your rights to leave a review.
 

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
Will such a large percentage of reviews be deleted because of offensive content? That doesn't make sense.

Yeah, and that makes you a paying customer if you're subscribed to Game Pass and played the game. That's also how you become a part of the "10 million players" count.

At that point, you will be well within your rights to leave a review.
A lot of reviews get deleted early on for offensive content. I see it all the time once reviews are unlocked for every Game Pass title. Also, if the average review score is still dropping, I doubt they are deleting only negative reviews. So yeah, I think you're jumping the gun right now with your assumptions.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed write a review. I was just pointing out that all people that launch the game can leave a review.

EDIT: Also, as far as total review numbers changing erratically. I wouldn't be surprised if reviews are taken down and edited for content and placed back up so the score remains.
 
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Drew1440

Member
Negative reviews are hate speech, #BeKind

Seriously though thanks to ChatGPT/BingChat many can easily create a detailed review to their own liking with minimal effort. Possibly Microsoft noticed a certain writing pattern with the reviews and took action.
 
I really, REALLY wanted this game. I wanted to play it, like it, praise it.......
I played it, didn't like it and certainly won't praise it.

Now seeing how scummy MS is muting the voice of disappointment, Im seeing them in a whole other light. It's not a good feeling.
Gamepass was one of the things I liked about them.

But I now know that Gamepass is the sole reason we get half assed games on the platform. Devs just don't give a shit when their game is free for the masses and only a select group will buy it.
Guess the good ol' "Beggars can't be choosers" are the words they now live by.

Since selling my XSX after playing FM8 and being gutted by what I saw and not using GP anymore, I can now look at it from an unbiased point of view.....
I will be keeping my One X, just for FH5 and FM7, but nothing more. Because those are DAMN GOOD games in their own right.

God I was an idiot.... It actually hurts a bit.

I blasted Sony multiple times for not having enough day 1 games on PS+ Extra/ Premium.
But now I see the reason why and it's actually a good thing. (Now eliminate the damn price hike Sony, ya greedy cunts!)
 
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Trogdor1123

Gold Member
Do we have a pc specific thread? For pc stuff in general. I thought we did but couldn’t find it. Sorry to be off topic.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
A lot of reviews get deleted early on for offensive content. I see it all the time once reviews are unlocked for every Game Pass title. Also, if the average review score is still dropping, I doubt they are deleting only negative reviews. So yeah, I think you're jumping the gun right now with your assumptions.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed write a review. I was just pointing out that all people that launch the game can leave a review.

EDIT: Also, as far as total review numbers changing erratically. I wouldn't be surprised if reviews are taken down and edited for content and placed back up so the score remains.
Editing the review content sounds equally bad, by the way.

No company should be able to edit the review content. Steam's method of automatically detecting and changing abusive words is extremely simple and easy and should be implemented in case a company is concerned about abusive language on their website.

Manually editing reviews is a BIG NO!
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Negative reviews are hate speech, #BeKind

Seriously though thanks to ChatGPT/BingChat many can easily create a detailed review to their own liking with minimal effort. Possibly Microsoft noticed a certain writing pattern with the reviews and took action.
As long as the reviews are from paying customers, this shouldn't be Microsoft's concern. Otherwise, it becomes a slippery slope.
 
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