[MusicallyInspired]

 johnnythewolf, on 06 April 2019 - 11:14 AM, said:

Can you leave reviews on Epic Store at all?

Nope.

[PokeThePower]

 NightFright, on 06 April 2019 - 02:13 PM, said:

...what damage could review bombing possibly cause there now? Getting aroused about it seems exaggerated.

None. By the time you're being review bombed the actions you took to trigger it have already permeated public awareness enough that literally NOTHING you do will help except outright fix the concern (hard) or ZFG ignore them (even if you know you are in the wrong, and my advice for most people hit by review bombs). Every effort to "combat" it is guaranteed 100% to make your situation worse and just make the topic spread deeper and more broadly into arenas you have no control over and have less visibility into. The outrage will pass whether it was justified or not, but just shipping the game and not responding to the outrage is usually the best path (and what Battlefield 5 folks should have done, for example).

 necroslut, on 06 April 2019 - 03:15 PM, said:

It is honestly understandable that developers and publishers might take issue with review bombing, and it's predictable that some might even choose to leave Steam over it if some other opportunity comes along – and now it has.

The only developers and publishers who take issue with review bombing are ones who know perfectly well the motivation for the backlash is grounded in legitimate criticism which has no other outlet to be expressed... but don't consider adjusting their behavior or the product due to lack of patience, flexibility (due to agreements they are in that are to invisible to the customer), talent, or more and more often... lack of will to abandon their lazy activism that more talented people before succeeded with because they could package it into quality products where the value to the customer was primary.

Customer review bombing is not globally hated by developers even when they are the recipients of it. Sometimes it's merely "told you so" confirmation for what they've been trying to communicate to their peers warning that the project was veering off course.

[necroslut]

 JaccuseJuneJaccuse, on 06 April 2019 - 05:26 PM, said:

The only developers and publishers who take issue with review bombing are ones who know perfectly well the motivation for the backlash is grounded in legitimate criticism which has no other outlet to be expressed... but don't consider adjusting their behavior or the product due to lack of patience, flexibility (due agreements they are in that are to invisible to the customer), talent, or more and more often... lack of will to abandon their lazy activism that more talented people before succeeded with because they could package it into quality products where the value to the customer was primary.

Customer review bombing is not globally hated by developers even when they are the recipients of it. Sometimes it's merely told you so confirmation for what they've been trying to communicate to their peers warning that the project was veering off course.

Good points as usual. Honestly I was thinking more from a "tiny indie developer" perspective, but then those are generally not subjected to review bombing of any magnitude – I can't remember a single instance of it happening.

[johnnythewolf]

I can think of one: Revolution 60. It got so much unwarranted shit that I could not even use the Steam forum to ask a technical question without seeing my thread hijacked.

[PokeThePower]

Ahh indeed. For a *smart* indie who embraces the controversy as a path to eyeballs (and sympathizers to your goals) a review bomb can generally be pivoted into a positive provided you take the ZFG approach and provided the platform itself doesn't decide to remove you simply to get rid of the noise. Which is why ZFG and just keep making what you're making (unless you really did mess up) is almost always the best approach. Doesn't matter if you were offensive to the SJWs or the Dissident-Right, it's better to *stay* offensive to them than to try to reconcile.

For indies, unexpected attention can be a roller coaster ride, heh.
https://www.eurogame...s-are-exploding

We interviewed a guy who had an accidental hit on his hands. A couple glowing mainstream reviews sent far more people to his app than he ever expected to see or was prepared to setup the infrastructure for as a lone developer, resulting in his servers being down everytime they came back up for the first two days of the coverage, resulting in massive negative reviews. His attempt to handle the influx cost so much that by the time things stabilized he was too much in the hole financially to be able to keep going and he had to abandon it entirely and get a normal job. Granted, he made a bunch of mistakes that led to that situation but it's a case of *technically* unfair negative reviews, but not really, but kinda.

[PokeThePower]

Revolution 60
unwarranted shit
thread hijack

Most of the other folks around here are cuddly sweethearts, johnny 5, but some are immune to and recognize your wizardry plain and clear.

[necroslut]

 JaccuseJuneJaccuse, on 06 April 2019 - 06:05 PM, said:

Revolution 60
unwarranted shit
thread hijack

Most of the other folks around here are cuddly sweethearts, johnny 5, but some are immune to and recognize your wizardry plain and clear.

Haha, I didn't click the link... I thought it was that game about the Iran Islamic revolution.

[johnnythewolf]

 necroslut, on 06 April 2019 - 06:09 PM, said:

Haha, I didn't click the link... I thought it was that game about the Iran Islamic revolution.

The Iranian Revolution was in 1979.

As for the link, it is just the Steam page of the game. I played it some years ago; it was alright.

It is an example of a tiny indie developer becoming the target of a review bombing campaign that was definitely not motivated by legitimate criticism.

[necroslut]

 johnnythewolf, on 06 April 2019 - 06:18 PM, said:

The Iranian Revolution was in 1979.

As for the link, it is just the Steam page of the game. I played it some years ago; it was alright.

It is an example of a tiny indie developer becoming the target of a review bombing campaign that was definitely not motivated by legitimate criticism.

Well, if you pick a fight, don't be surprised if you get a fight...

[PokeThePower]

 necroslut, on 06 April 2019 - 06:19 PM, said:

Well, if you pick a fight, don't be surprised if you get a fight...

I didn't realize Lowtax had reviewed it...

Quote

Regardless, this game was apparently made by all females, which is nice because it proves gender equality exists and women are just as capable as men at creating utter garbage games. Now I don't want to be too harsh reviewing this game, because it could've potentially been a wonderful, award-winning game if only they changed every aspect of it and had another company develop it and the game was the complete polar opposite of what it is now.

His review brought me damn close to buying it so I could finally see it first hand for myself. Then I remembered all the technical problems reported and satisfied myself with a quick refresher via video.

[NightFright]

Steam has successfully applied the anti review bombing system to the Borderlands games. Their ratings have returned to normal. It's kinda historical since it's the first time Valve's new system has been used. So, Randy has officially NO reason to bitch about anything.

[johnnythewolf]

 necroslut, on 06 April 2019 - 06:19 PM, said:

Well, if you pick a fight, don't be surprised if you get a fight...

Huh? How am I picking a fight here?

[PokeThePower]

 NightFright, on 07 April 2019 - 01:53 AM, said:

Steam has successfully applied the anti review bombing system to the Borderlands games. Their ratings have returned to normal.

Sorta. This is what I see...

...and why I'm ok with Valve's approach currently (vs Epic's) because as a customer I can still be alerted ahead of time to any developer/publisher shenanigans I may or may not want to support depending on the context.

 NightFright, on 07 April 2019 - 01:53 AM, said:

So, Randy has officially NO reason to bitch about anything.

The industry is too far corroded for blue checkmark devs to stop bitching so long as gamers continue to not behave and keep somehow bizarrely having personalities that come up with ways to game whatever systems the industry comes up with in order to provide tangible feedback that blue checkmarks will actually notice. Going at the rock star ego (via public product perception) is one of the better ways to reach meaningful swaths of this cancer infested chinese and western central bank spend it as fast as you get it MMT inflation sustained bloated zombie of an industry.

[NightFright]

I am not a fan of review bombing, either. It's also done elsewhere, e.g. on Amazon when delivering an article took too long. Has nothing to do with the product, but people vote it down for that. If you are not happy with a business tactic, there are other ways to express your disapproval. Just don't buy, you just need to have the patience.

[----]

 NightFright, on 07 April 2019 - 04:51 AM, said:

I am not a fan of review bombing, either. It's also done elsewhere, e.g. on Amazon when delivering an article took too long. Has nothing to do with the product, but people vote it down for that. If you are not happy with a business tactic, there are other ways to express your disapproval. Just don't buy, you just need to have the patience.

Never let the mob decide anything.

[PokeThePower]

The mob isn't deciding anything when a product receives a large influx of positive or negative reports/thumbs/reviews. It is a realtime window into additional information relevant to many other customers.

I've been on the receiving end of review bombing that sucked a lot because it had nothing to do with the work we did. However their sentiment was correct and the people who were responsible for it were motivated to put in the work to make it right. Under the Epic approach, they would have simply disabled reviews.

It's by far one of the most effective mechanisms customers have to communicate with each other. It goes both ways, products get massive influxes of positive reviews because people want to show their support for something a company does that goes above and beyond the precise exact specifications of the product itself. That happens just as much. It's why Valve's approach is good. For most people who don't even know the feature got added they'll never know (but they also likely aren't reading reviews in the first place), and for others like me who want to know what the folks I'm spending money on are up to today... I get access to that information.

[Sledgehammer]

 NightFright, on 07 April 2019 - 04:51 AM, said:

there are other ways to express your disapproval.

What ways? Borderland case (same with Metro) is pure desperation and actually organic, it wasn't motivated by some journalist or some bizarre leader on twitter who had his own personal goal against Gearbox or something. People did this because they simply can't do anything about this anti-customer situation and are tired of this crap. Reviews is the perfect way to reach common people since the press, which is supposed to help customers, is working with companies and against the people, in many cases they actually encourage you to buy from anti-customer companies, even if a product is absolute dogshit. Although I don't believe they still capable of actual boycotts, that includes people who do review bombing.

Those people are simply on their own, that's the problem. They have no means to voice their concern and reach other people as well.

[Forge]

 Sledgehammer, on 07 April 2019 - 05:27 AM, said:

Those people are simply on their own, that's the problem. They have no means to voice their concern and reach other people as well.

https://dissenter.com/download

[Sledgehammer]

 Forge, on 07 April 2019 - 06:17 AM, said:

https://dissenter.com/download

That's not mainstream though and isn't as convenient as simple user reviews which cost you absolutely nothing to write and are seen by significant number of people. You could as well link duke4 which likely has way more people who cares about video games.

[NightFright]

The thing is publishers are going for the option that's most profitable for them. If it's inconvenient for customers, it's simply expected from them to suck it down and adapt. Exclusive deals are the latest abomination of our time and I hate it passionately. Epic is the company of masterminds who pulled the plug of one of the most promising community-driven projects since a while and now think they can beat Steam with exclusive deals and a crap launcher.

You can now say Valve are also bloodsuckers who dominated the market so far and could dictate their shares for adding new titles. Competition is a good thing. It may very well be - for publishers only though, not for consumers. We don't profit from this at all, but are expected to create dozens of accounts for dozens of clients. Just like for streaming services these days. It's inconvenient and expensive if you want to see/play all the highlights. A pity the industry doesn't get their act together and just has its own advantages in mind. Right now there isn't much players can do about it, and their rage is absolutely understandable.

[Forge]

 Sledgehammer, on 07 April 2019 - 07:11 AM, said:

That's not mainstream though

it is for alt-right nazis that have been de-personed off of other platforms.

[Sledgehammer]

I'd say not just profitable but the safest approach and this exclusivity deals situation showing this better than anything in my opinion. We came to the point when it's better to sell your game not to customers who may or may not make it very profitable (and even beyond expectations so it's a risk) but to another company with 100% guarantee of getting profit and covering all the losses, no risk involved. This won't last forever obviously since not even Tencent has infinite money and very big money is involved (plus they have yet to get huge customer base to justify the cost), but I hope it will cause significant damage to the western industry.

The only problem I see in this case is that those organic review bombings won't make any difference because people are still willing to forgive and buy the stuff from those companies, it's like they have goldfish memory or something. I know for the fact that people were doing everything they could to buy Metro on Steam to the point the publisher had to suspend Steam CD keys and from what it seems, barely anyone canceled their pre-orders for Steam version after what happened. The only way to do any difference is to boycott the companies and in theory those reviews are supposed to help that by spreading awareness.

 Forge, on 07 April 2019 - 07:32 AM, said:

it is for alt-right nazis that have been de-personed off of other platforms.

Basically for the people who more than likely already boycotted Western anti-customer companies, I suspect.

[Forge]

casuals don't care about user-reviews, they only want the latest in bright flashy lights to distract them from the daily mundane burger-flipping

[johnnythewolf]

This whole rivalry between Steam and Epic Store reminds me of the still-ongoing console wars.

[Forge]

[Jimmy]

In a world where game developers are only interested in exploiting consumers and extracting money from them, review bombing is the only way we can exploit game developers and extract money from them. Hollywood, game developers, and other media companies have earned this problem by virtue of their greed. It will only get worse for them.

Gas the elites, class war now!

[Forge]

casuals don't care where they get their BL3 from. Randy will still end up sleeping on a scrooge sized pile of money.

[necroslut]

 Forge, on 08 April 2019 - 11:06 AM, said:

casuals don't care where they get their BL3 from. Randy will still end up sleeping on a scrooge sized pile of money.

Casuals start to drop off if too much gets in their way. They certainly have no loyalty to Steam, but if handling multiple accounts and launchers start to become too much of a hassle they will start to really not care.

[Jimmy]

Necroslut gets it. Even though I hate that fat commie queer Jim Sterling, he is right that the majority of the industry seems obsessed with getting all of the money. We're reaching a singularity in their tactics though, the things they have to do to keep squeezing more and more dimes out of you will require inconvenience, and gamers will take a lot of shit; exorbitant costs, shitty repetitive gameplay, crypto-gambling, live services, etc etc. But once it becomes inconvenient, well people start to rebel. And they already are. Steam's loyalty lies purely in the fact that it just works and doesn't really cause any problems. Even people who hate it on principle still use it. It's the most successful DRM there is because it uses Vaseline. But the Vaseline tub is getting dry it seems.

[Sledgehammer]

 Forge, on 08 April 2019 - 11:06 AM, said:

casuals don't care where they get their BL3 from. Randy will still end up sleeping on a scrooge sized pile of money.

Casuals hate inconvenient things and Steam is the most convenient option on the market, thus we have what we have here. They won't buy BL3 or Metro from Epic store, but they will buy it on Steam and Steam only. Epic is the shittiest "mainstream" digital store, even fucking Ubisoft Launcher is better.