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Valve has a problem brewing with user reviews and bots

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Spotted by SteamSpy, it seems Valve is having an issue on Steam with bots giving out good reviews of games.

The game in question is ZombieRush, and it's pretty obvious too.

I could spot them almost instantly, same time played, same amount of products owned and reviews given out:
image

This game is absolutely rammed full of bot reviews. I fully expect the developer and their game to be removed from Steam for gaming the system in such a way and they should be.

This is the problem when you open up your store and allow pretty much anyone to get in. It doesn't state it on the Steam page, but the game actually came from greenlight. It wouldn't even surprise me if those same accounts are used to vote for the games on Greenlight too, in fact, I'm sure this probably happens.

Valve did say a while back they wanted to get rid of Greenlight for a more open system, but they haven't even been able to sort the issues out with this approach yet.

I don't think a walled garden approach is the answer either, but on all titles Valve should seriously do some checking.

It's not like Valve doesn't have the money to recruit staff to check on games that come into Steam. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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17 comments
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wvstolzing Jun 10, 2016
Quoting: zimplex1Valve needs to step up their game.

Nice avatar; is this memes?
mulletdeath Jun 10, 2016
I'm curious about what goes on in the heads of devs who do this stuff. What do you have to gain? It just makes absolutely sure any observant or informed gamer will never touch any of your products with a ten foot pole. Maybe I'm giving gamers in general too much credit, and they're not observant or informed at all. But for the most part people do seem to give a glance at the reviews.


Last edited by mulletdeath on 10 June 2016 at 6:14 pm UTC
Jarno Jun 10, 2016
As usual, only negative reviews tells truth.
Storminator16 Jun 10, 2016
I've seen a lot more of these for every game I checked out lately. I'm not sure the developers are doing this. As Cybolic said, I think this is just a general spam problem. Could be a hacker trying to make a point to Valve: really fix your reviews system.


Last edited by Storminator16 on 10 June 2016 at 8:08 pm UTC
0ttman Jun 11, 2016
Quoting: rustybroomhandle
Quoting: linuxgamerIs it worth it? The devs don't get (unlimited?) "free" steam copies or do they?

A dev can request as many keys for their game as desired.


I know a Developer creating a game they said Valve will only give them 500 steam keys.
rustybroomhandle Jun 11, 2016
Quoting: 0ttman
Quoting: rustybroomhandle
Quoting: linuxgamerIs it worth it? The devs don't get (unlimited?) "free" steam copies or do they?

A dev can request as many keys for their game as desired.


I know a Developer creating a game they said Valve will only give them 500 steam keys.

I am a developer with a game on Steam. I have created thousands of keys thus far for various things. Never encountered any limit.
Silas Mortimer Jun 13, 2016
I'm a fan of game reviewer Jim Sterling and he's been on a bit of a crusade about the problems with Greenlight and Valve's lack of quality control for quite a while and he makes a lot of very good points. I'm generally careful about what I purchase, but I've purchased a couple of games that I really hoped would be good from the screenshots but turned out to be terrible, half-baked garbage that I had to get a refund for. (Thank goodness for refunds, at least.)

Zimplex1: Love the avatar. That's one game I'd love to see a Linux port for, however terrible it is.
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