Valve have made some steps towards trying to improve their reviews system, so let's take a look. See the news post here for the full info. It should cut out people gaming the system, but it's not great news for developers in reality.
They added in review result customization to give you more options, here's Rocket League for example:
One massive change, is that the review system will no longer include scores from people at the top of a store page (the Recent and Overall marks) who got their key from outside Steam.
To be clear, you're supposed to still be able to review the game if you gained your key from outside Steam, but it just won't affect the total score.
They have done this to reduce the amount of developers who abuse it. I actually wrote about that issue here. Developers essentially generate a ton of keys, and use bots and fake accounts to make good review scores on crap games.
It's good to see them take steps to stop this happening. Valve say they will be ending their relationship with developers who do this kind of abuse—good!
So now developers can't throw out keys to people for a positive review. While the review will still be shown, it won't be included in the overall score.
The major problem here, is that anyone who provides a Steam key for something like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, direct sales, Humble Store etc are no longer included in the overall score for the game. This will hit smaller developers harder, and already has judging by a lot of concerned developers in my twitter feed today.
Considering the amount of games that have done crowdfunding, this will be quite hard on them.
Valve are going to need to be careful here, and may have to backtrack a little as there could be a storm brewing from unhappy developers. Good intentions, but not the best way to deal with it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
They added in review result customization to give you more options, here's Rocket League for example:
One massive change, is that the review system will no longer include scores from people at the top of a store page (the Recent and Overall marks) who got their key from outside Steam.
To be clear, you're supposed to still be able to review the game if you gained your key from outside Steam, but it just won't affect the total score.
They have done this to reduce the amount of developers who abuse it. I actually wrote about that issue here. Developers essentially generate a ton of keys, and use bots and fake accounts to make good review scores on crap games.
It's good to see them take steps to stop this happening. Valve say they will be ending their relationship with developers who do this kind of abuse—good!
So now developers can't throw out keys to people for a positive review. While the review will still be shown, it won't be included in the overall score.
The major problem here, is that anyone who provides a Steam key for something like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, direct sales, Humble Store etc are no longer included in the overall score for the game. This will hit smaller developers harder, and already has judging by a lot of concerned developers in my twitter feed today.
Considering the amount of games that have done crowdfunding, this will be quite hard on them.
Valve are going to need to be careful here, and may have to backtrack a little as there could be a storm brewing from unhappy developers. Good intentions, but not the best way to deal with it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
0 Likes
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: HoriAnd that's why they implemented the refund system, without questions asked for games recently bought and little play time. It's basically a demo for all steam titles.Quoting: tmtvlIt's a shame demo's aren't quite as prevalent as they once were, I kinda prefer those over reviews to find out whether or not to buy a game.So true! Demos are great if you want to get a "first person" impression of the game. Even if the reviews are accurate, everyone has different tastes, maybe it's the most positively acclaimed game on Steam and I still don't like it for some reason.
The most important thing it would be to test / benchmark the game. Many game nowadays release with serious compatibility issues, be them either software or hardware incompatibilities. Trying a demo will give you an answer as to whether the game will run on your system, thus not only spare you some wasted time, the stress and half the disappointment, but it would also reduce the number of refunds by quite substantially.
Currently the only way of answering those really good and noble questions, is to get a pirated copy of the game, which is not "noble" at all. It's ok if you buy the game afterwards but it's still a shady way of doing things, especially since there's Steam Refund to save your bucks in case the worst case happens and the game is a complete "garbage" for you.
0 Likes
Quoting: khalismurAnd that's why they implemented the refund system, without questions asked for games recently bought and little play time. It's basically a demo for all steam titles.I guess, although there's the added hurdle of having to pay upfront, going through the whole process, and getting the refund as steam wallet funds regardless of your payment method (unless I'm mistaken). I'd rather have a no-nonsense demo instead.
0 Likes
Quoting: ElectricPrismI wish they would require a minimum play time in order to leave a review - or even esteem reviewers who have completed 50% or 100% of the game.
Which minimum time should that be? There are games where I know after a short time (an hour? somtimes less!) that I won't like them. So I should be forced to waste time in order to be allowed to write a review?
Last edited by Eike on 14 September 2016 at 12:18 pm UTC
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me