Valve has updated the User Review system in response to "Review bombing". - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE]... In the end, we decided not to change the ways that players can review games, and instead focused on how potential purchasers can explore the review data. Starting today, each game page now contains a histogram of the positive to negative ratio of reviews over the entire lifetime of the game, and by clicking on any part of the histogram you're able to read a sample of the reviews from that time period. As a potential purchaser, it's easy to spot temporary distortions in the reviews, to investigate why that distortion occurred, and decide for yourself whether it's something you care about. This approach has the advantage of never preventing anyone from submitting a review, but does require slightly more effort on the part of potential purchasers. It also has the benefit of allowing you to see how a game's reviews have evolved over time, which is great for games that are operating as services. One subtlety that's not obvious at first is that most games slowly trend downwards over time, even if they haven't changed in any way. We think this makes sense when you realize that, generally speaking, earlier purchasers of a game are more likely to enjoy it than later purchasers. In the pool of players who are interested in a game, the ones who are more confident that they'll like the game will buy it first, so as time goes on the potential purchasers left are less and less certain that they'll like the game. So if you see a game's reviews trending up over time, it may be an even more powerful statement about the quality of work its developers are doing.[/QUOTE] [URL]http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1448326897426987372[/URL] tl;dr: They talk about the problem of review bombing and that sometimes it's outside problems that don't have anything to do with the game itself, talk about some previously considered measurements like temporary review bans or deletion of review bombs and in the end decided to go and add more insight options for customers to see the history of reviews for games. You can now view histograms for the games and see distortions while directly viewing reviews of that specific period of time and therefore get a better understanding of the background of the game.

How to make Valve actually do something for once these days: review bomb Dota 2. A feature that should've already been there when they added scores, added only because people are (rightfully) pissed about Episode 3. I wish Steam had legitimate competition. Maybe then Valve would get off their lazy asses and actually meaningfully support it.

[QUOTE=Damjen;52700036]How to make Valve actually do something for once these days: review bomb Dota 2. A feature that should've already been there when they added scores, added only because people are (rightfully) pissed about Episode 3. I wish Steam had legitimate competition. Maybe then Valve would get off their lazy asses and actually meaningfully support it.[/QUOTE] [t]https://jelman.me/sharex/2017-09-20_11-23-01.png[/t] this is dota 2's graph btw And if you want to see hilarious, GTA 5 [t]https://jelman.me/sharex/2017-09-20_11-24-54.png[/t]

[QUOTE=Damjen;52700036]How to make Valve actually do something for once these days: review bomb Dota 2. A feature that should've already been there when they added scores, added only because people are (rightfully) pissed about Episode 3. I wish Steam had legitimate competition. Maybe then Valve would get off their lazy asses and actually meaningfully support it.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure other developers nagged them as well as their games got review bombed because of things outside of the games.

Valve is literally Hitler now. Silencing people who are pissed about companies' shitty actions is not okay. I really need to get out of the habit of giving them more money, fuck them.

[QUOTE=Antimuffin;52700043]Pretty sure other developers nagged them as well as their games got review bombed because of things outside of the games.[/QUOTE] I'm sure they did. For years. Don't kid yourself, Valve did it only now, within less than a month after Dota 2 was bombed because it's them finally being affected.

[QUOTE=Laserbeams;52700046]Valve is literally Hitler now. Silencing people who are pissed about companies' shitty actions is not okay. [/QUOTE] They aren't, though? What the hell. They don't change anything to the current system, they only give customers more options to view specific reviews in specific periods of time when big review bombs happened so they can directly see what caused it.

[QUOTE=Laserbeams;52700046]Valve is literally Hitler now. Silencing people who are pissed about companies' shitty actions is not okay. I really need to get out of the habit of giving them more money, fuck them.[/QUOTE] Yep, they've been silenced by being shown in context and with more information available to customers.

Reviewbombing is still gonna hurt a lot, just now you'll be able to see the progress and, if you want, the gradual downfall of a game published by a dev whose recent actions rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. It's neat - you can read reviews based on, say, before a major update, and compare opinions before and after.

[QUOTE=Laserbeams;52700046]Valve is literally Hitler now. Silencing people who are pissed about companies' shitty actions is not okay. I really need to get out of the habit of giving them more money, fuck them.[/QUOTE] The only bad habit you need to get out of are your reading skills, buddy

[QUOTE=Laserbeams;52700046]Valve is literally Hitler now.[/QUOTE] valve killed 6 million half-life fans in their combinetration camps

[QUOTE=Rowtree;52700077]valve killed 6 million half-life fans in their combinetration camps[/QUOTE] Nova Prospekt is real wake up sheeple

This is really neat. Really cool to see analytics exposed to customers.

[QUOTE=Damjen;52700036]How to make Valve actually do something for once these days: review bomb Dota 2. A feature that should've already been there when they added scores, added only because people are (rightfully) pissed about Episode 3. I wish Steam had legitimate competition. Maybe then Valve would get off their lazy asses and actually meaningfully support it.[/QUOTE] are you unironically shitting on valve for solving the issue in the most sensible way possible

Really helps you understand some of the weird shit too, like seeing a game that has 'overwhelmingly postive' but is currently 'mixed' so you look at the graph and it's only mixed because it's had 1 positive and one negative review in the last 2 weeks.

yeah let's just break each other's automerge that's fine EDIT: anyway, this somewhat doubles as purchase volume history since, as a rule of thumb, about 1 in 100 people review their game, this is generally true most of the time across all games (cept of course review bombs)

[QUOTE=Drury;52700109]yeah let's just break each other's automerge that's fine EDIT: anyway, this somewhat doubles as purchase volume history since, as a rule of thumb, about 1 in 100 people review their game, this is generally true most of the time across all games (cept of course review bombs)[/QUOTE] Just in case you didn't know. [url=https://steamspy.com]SteamSpy[/url] already has very accurate sales statistics for almost all Steam games. They randomly look at tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of Steam profiles each day to generate that data.

Unless it's done for shitposting/meme reasons, review bombing has honestly been a very useful thing in terms of games on Steam that constantly update and change, especially Early Access titles. It's good at letting consumers know if something is going wrong with the game, or if there's something the developers or publishers are doing that just isn't ethical. It's also good for letting said developers and publishers take notice of how the consumers really feel, giving them a chance to change things. I'd honestly say that if it wasn't for the review bombing of GTA V earlier this year, we'd still probably be in a sticky situation with modding it. Now we can only hope Bethesda will follow suit by tweaking the Creation Club and making it better (they aren't going to kill it). As for Valve, don't expect them to listen to your cries for Episode 3/Half Life 3. The day we probably get that is probably the day when Steam as a platform starts to die off, and that will take many many years if it even happens at all.

It's so weird thinking that only a few years ago valve were the angels of the gaming community

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

[QUOTE=Hobo4President;52700403]It's so weird thinking that only a few years ago valve were the angels of the gaming community[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Megadave;52700409]You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.[/QUOTE] I don't get it. This is a win-win situation for everybody here. Valve didn't change anything and only gave further options on viewing game reviews. What the fuck are these comments about.

[QUOTE=Antimuffin;52700417]I don't get it. This is a win-win situation for everybody here. Valve didn't change anything and only gave further options on viewing game reviews. What the fuck are these comments about.[/QUOTE] Just an off-hand comment about the fact it took valve to be fucked over by something to be proactive yet 4 years ago 'they could do no wrong'

[QUOTE=Hobo4President;52700433]Just an off-hand comment about the fact it took valve to be fucked over by something to be proactive yet 4 years ago 'they could do no wrong'[/QUOTE] Except the "review bombing" over Half Life 3 left like no dent in their overall reviews for Dota 2. I'm absolutely baffled that people are turning this into a bad thing against Valve

[QUOTE=Antimuffin;52700417]I don't get it. This is a win-win situation for everybody here. Valve didn't change anything and only gave further options on viewing game reviews. What the fuck are these comments about.[/QUOTE] It's people hating on Valve because they didn't release any game that they like for more than 6 years. They pop in every thread about Valve.

[QUOTE=pedrus24;52700443]It's people hating on Valve because they didn't release any game that they like for more than 6 years. They pop in every thread about Valve.[/QUOTE] Big assumption, mate. I don't care about half-life so I can't be mad at them for not releasing ep3. Just pointing out how it's funny they turned from the angels of gaming to public enemy number 1 within a few years.

[QUOTE=Hobo4President;52700449]Just pointing out how it's funny they turned from the angels of gaming to public enemy number 1 within a few years.[/QUOTE] We are talking about the same hatred toward Valve. I wasn't talking about you specifically.

[QUOTE=Hobo4President;52700449]Big assumption, mate. I don't care about half-life so I can't be mad at them for not releasing ep3. Just pointing out how it's funny they turned from the angels of gaming to public enemy number 1 within a few years.[/QUOTE] To the majority of people who use Steam they're still one of the best companies out there whether people want to cry over Half Life 3 or not, allowing users to see reviews during different periods of time is only a good thing and to think it only happened because all 5 Half Life fans downvoted Dota 2 is a joke, if you actually use the histogram to check the only major game found so far this year that was actually affected by "review bombing" was GTAV over the modding fiasco.

[QUOTE=Drury;52700105]are you unironically shitting on valve for solving the issue in the most sensible way possible[/QUOTE] I'm shitting on them taking years to add something that should've been a part of the scoring system from the start.

[QUOTE=Damjen;52700504]I'm shitting on them taking years to add something that should've been a part of the scoring system from the start.[/QUOTE] What a healthy and reasonable attitude to have

if anything, this will show more of when a dev became a shithead. Such as making the game pay2win when it wasn't before