this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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Or they are putting pressure on platforms to block "review bombing". That probably won't work on Steam, so it's kinda of a moot point.
Why? Steam has come out and labelled legitimate criticism of games a 'review bomb' in the past. They're more than happy to bend over for big publishers like this.
They added a feature that changed what review score you see based on a preference to see what may or may not be review bombs, I can't remember exactly what it's called, but I haven't seen them react to so called review bombs since.
https://kotaku.com/superhot-game-gets-review-bombed-after-removing-depicti-1847352470
This was in direct response to changes in the game, any negative reviews because of changes made to the game are legitimate reviews, not a 'review bomb'.
https://kotaku.com/valve-says-it-will-remove-off-topic-review-bombs-from-s-1833332643
Of course Steam is the arbiter of what they deem 'off-topic'
The "Store content policy" option made it so Valve doesn't have to manually do anything about "review bombs" or review bombs, which is a very Valve way of handling it.
Bringing up incidents from 3 or 5 years ago kinda solidifies that point, they put it up to the algorithm and don't manually get involved.
They even say in that article, as an update, that they aren't removing reviews. This function lets a user decide what they consider relevant, without removing reviews, and most importantly for Valve means they don't have to manually do anything.
They still could, but again you found articles from years ago, they wanted a solution that requires less work for them and stopped the headlines, and that seems to have worked.
Your claim was that it never happened, this was just a single well known example of it happening.
Also it isn't fully automatic. Valve claims that people are involved 'evaluating it', and the result of the evaluation was that reviews were not counted.
I never claimed that it never happened? A single well known example and also the only one you provided, from half a decade ago.
Yeah, no one at Valve, the same people that won't even make their games playable without a massive community uproar, is reviewing any of these. That being something which directly affects there reputation as a company and there bottom line through crates/keys, instead of there reputation as a storefront to publishers. The article even mentions Valve's addressesing this was a reaction to devs salivating over EGS having opt-in reviews, more so than them actually caring about publishers
Also in the same article, they describe the option I've been referring to. You are still able to see the marked reviews reflected in scores if you wish.
If you want to review bombs or "review bombs", you can still do so on Steam, and the score will reflect your preference for that, as opposed to EGS where you may not be able to see any reviews if a publisher doesn't want you to.