It feels like it’s really getting out of hand and the language of the negative reviews seems really fake too. I just bought a game that got review bombed and it was fine. From the reviews it sounded like it was going to destroy my graphics card, corrupt my hard drive and be full of bugs. Luckily I watched some gameplay vids and it turned out none of those things were true.
I don’t even really read the reviews I just look at the aggregate score and if it’s overwhelmingly positive I just assume it’s fine.
I probably go and check the reviews only if it said mixed or negative.
I haven’t noticed it getting worse, and I think Valve is doing the best thing they can to mitigate it by way of recent reviews and the review graph. When you can see when a review bomb started, you can cross reference that date against news for that game in your favorite search engine. If the review bomb is truly frivolous, it will pass in no time at all.
They’ve also segregated reviews by language. So now when a single group starts review bombing (usually China, from the reports I’ve heard) the rest of us are unaffected.
But since the total sample size is much smaller due to language categorization, review bombing is much, much easier and impactful when it does hapoen for the speakers of the language the bombing is targeted at.
I think the point is that Chinese review bots are usually trying to dunk on Western games. It seems to be some brilliant new strategy they’ve come up with.
“If we poorly review Western games everyone will buy ours instead”, I’m sure it’ll work brilliantly.
The graph will also give you a note that the review behavior is unusual and that there may be review bombing going on.
I think the biggest problem is that when people are just browsing games, all that’s shown is overall and mixed reviews. They should add a similar indicator to that view of the game.
That’s good to know.
Sometimes, the only way for players to get the developer’s attention is by doing something drastic like that. Not always, but many times. Because developers and publishers think Steam Review Scores are important for game sales (and I mean, they are, but maybe not as much as they seem to think).
Sometimes this comes from players in a different language complaining about bad translation or something.
Review Bombing, the term, is almost used to discredit when people have negative sentiment for something, and does nothing to explain why players may be doing it. Sometimes it is warranted, sometimes it isn’t. But most people are going to read that term and think “Ah, its just a bunch of whiney children,” only to later feel frustrated at the things those negative reviews were talking about.
Haven’t really noticed any change personally. What game was it btw? Having a positive experience with a game that is being negatively reviewed doesn’t necessarily mean it was review bombed. Especially when it comes to bugs and technical issues, which often won’t affect every single player.
Didn’t want to mention the name of the game cos some might claim I’m stealth marketing for it or some bs like that.
Moderator here!
Feel free to reply to them with the game’s name, clear to me that there’s no ‘stealth marketing’ going on :)
Oh ok 🙂 It was Seafarer: The Ship Sim. A day after they launched they got a load of negative reviews that took them down to a “Mostly Negative” rating. That’s improved since then, presumably once more genuine reviews came in.
I have not seem this happening because I don’t check reviews when 99% of the time the reviews are spammed with people giving the most useless review that tells you absolutely nothing and tries to be funny but falls flat immediately after posting or a bot wrote it and it’s the most factually inaccurate piece of shit you’ll ever hear.
I honestly wouldn’t be too opposed to Steam making reviews possible only after refund policy to prevent abuse. Really try and keep the trolls away and bots away, at least from paid games.
Absolutely. Also, I’d love to make it a rule that you can’t start a review with:
“I really wanted to like this game but…”
Aww… Did you pumpkin? Are you SO disappointed that you don’t get to like a thing you wanted to like? That must be so rough for you. Anyone using that opener is immediately suspicious to me.
Last time I actually heard of review bombing was for Helldivers 2. So for me it feels like there hasn’t been a big public review bombing event in a long time, and reviews can filtered by country, time, and there’s warnings when there are unusual spikes.
So for me no I had forgotten about it, since it hasn’t made headlines in a while.
Influencers (mostly vod and twitch based) have increasingly realized the way to move up to the next “tier” (or to maintain it) is to lead a “movement”. It is the logical extension of every new generation’s “All those people on X were corrupt and unethical and lying to you. Us here on Y are here to speak truth to you and will never let our opinions be bought. So make sure you like, comment, and subscribe and make sure to use my affiliate code in World of Tanks”
In a lot of ways? Concorde broke the gaming world. It was a game that drew a LOT of hate for having “non-sexy” female models and also suffered from being incredibly “meh” so nobody felt a real need to defend it. But it let the chuds actually “cancel” a game. Which aligned well with all of the various reasons Black Myth Wukong became The Most Important Video Game To Ever Exist.
So now all the influencers who want their own armies to harass and torment anyone they consider competition are trying to get in on that. Lots of verbiage shifts from “Wow, this game is horrible because those devs hate you. Unlike me who loves you” and more “Wow, this game is horrible and those devs don’t deserve to exist and people need to know not to waste their money on this” that translate to Call To Action style movements.
Really well explained thanks! 🙂
Nope, because review bombing doesn’t exist on steam. You have to own the game to review it. A customer leaving a negative review is not review bombing.
I believe how it works is people buy the game, write the negative review and then refund it. Review bombing is not only definitely a thing but Steam have gone to great lengths to combat it, which would be odd if it was imaginary.
I have noticed it in a targetted fashion against certain games, especially when they are threats to large game franchises that make a lot of money.
For example one of my favorite games Operation Harsh Doorstop is quite regularly review bombed, ultimately I don’t see how people would be so consistently motivated to review bomb the game, attack the developer and attempt to spread drama on the discussion forum unless they are paid. I am not exaggerating, this is an entirely free moddable game (hence why it can be review bombed easier I guess) and it really makes no sense how vile some people are in the reviews. Sure the game is in early access, it has lots of rough edges but the core game is just fun… the way people talk about it in the reviews is truly mindboggling and I have played A LOT of games so I am not just being biased here because I like the game.
I can only conclude that there is a lot of money in multiplayer FPS games and the owners of IP like Battlefield, Arma, Squad and live-service trash games like Enlisted REALLY don’t want there to be a fun, free moddable alternative to their shit offerings.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/
You’ve just reminded me actually, there was a game I loved playing the demo for called “Truck World: Australia - First Haul” I saw back in June that got hugely review bombed (maybe by ETS2 fans?). “Worse than a mobile game” and “It’s way too red” were two I remember 🤣
Well at least we got Motor Town Behind The Wheel, I am not sure review bombing that game would be possible. The love is too strong and too pure.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369670/Motor_Town_Behind_The_Wheel/
Did they fix the cheater problem? I played when it first dropped on Steam, and good lord was the cheater problem bad. Spawning grenade explosions every frame on all player positions for the entire match was awful. I haven’t reinstalled since.
Good thing I don’t pay attention to reviews. Half of them are people whining about things that aren’t a problem for me.
What? Just sort reviews by most helpful and set it to a timeframe that is relevant for you.
I make sure to rate helpful reviews or leave them myself, so there are definitely people out there trying to help make the actually relevant, non-loweffort-meme reviews that contain illuminating information rise to the top.
I find them really valuable. Before buying a game, I’ll skim 10 or so reviews, both positive and negative, to find what it’s good and bad at. If the negative reviews are all stuff I don’t care about and the positive reviews excite me, I’ll probably get it. But if the negative reviews consistently mention something that’ll bother me, I’ll pass.
I honestly have never looked at the review section. I only get guides there because its practically the only place for some games
It’s not just you. Customer curated content in general on steam has gone drastically downhill over the last year or two.
Like review bomb mitigation can only go so far when the company refuses to block people from writing reviews that write enough off topic reviews.
The discussion forums are the same way, its all award farming ever since they released the ability to give steam points to people.
Review bombing is so stupid. Steam reviews have been garbage for a long time, you’ll barely find any useful reviews but they are diamonds in the rough. A lot of reviews are just people who shit all over things, try to be witty and whatever else. Then they’ll come over to your reviews and mark them ‘funny’.
