Is it me or does it seem like review bombing on Steam has become so much worse recently?

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Novamdomum@fedia.io⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

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.

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echodot@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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 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.

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- Novamdomum@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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 disappointing 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.
  
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supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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.

I can only conclude that there is a lot of money in 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. …steampowered.com/…/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

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- Novamdomum@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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 🤣
  
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  - supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Well at least we got Motor Town Behind The Wheel, I am not sure review bombing that game would be possible.
    
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- RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Novamdomum@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I honestly have never looked at the review section. I only get guides there because its practically the only place for some games

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Lfrith@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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Fyrnyx@kbin.melroy.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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'.

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Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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shiroininja@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Good thing I don’t pay attention to reviews. Half of them are people whining about things that aren’t a problem for me.

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- supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Novamdomum@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Really well explained thanks! 🙂
  
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PonyOfWar@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Novamdomum@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - PerfectDark@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Moderator here!
    
    Feel free to reply to them with the game’s name, clear to me that there’s no ‘stealth marketing’ going on :)
    
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ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- frongt@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - count_dongulus@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- Novamdomum@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That's good to know.
  
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- EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The graph will also give you a note that the review behavior is unusual and that there may be review bombing going on.
  
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