Superheated water is dangerous enough in a non-toxic form TBQH
May 6, 2016 10:14 AM   Subscribe

Steam's turned toxic, and Valve doesn't care. A tale of community vs. technological moderation.

Thankfully, the most recent target of the anger brigade is a big company that can probably take it.

Valve has also been called out in the past for their customer support (or lack thereof).
posted by selfnoise (57 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Most communities I'd argue for stronger moderation, but I'd question whether gamers should be allowed access to free text fields ever.
posted by Artw at 10:17 AM on May 6, 2016 [44 favorites]


"If that's not enough, though, there absolutely is a commercial incentive too; Steam may be dominant, but it's not the only option for either consumers or creators. There are far more sales to be lost from permitting abuse than from telling harassers they're no longer welcome."

I, like, desperately want this to be true but, from what I can tell, it's not. At all.
posted by griphus at 10:21 AM on May 6, 2016 [12 favorites]


Another thing Valve got right with the Half-Life series: the player character can't say anything.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:21 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Fuck rocket cars or nanotech, when do we get the Mouse Army?
posted by fullerine at 10:22 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


Isn't Valve one of those companies where employees define their own jobs or some such thing?

If that's the case, who the hell would volunteer to moderate? I know I wouldn't.
posted by SansPoint at 10:24 AM on May 6, 2016


It's the same thing that gave us the utter failure that is Greenlight and the outsourcing of making the Steam Controller work to users - Valve (and in particular Newell) feel that they can just algorithm and crowdsource any problems, instead of paying people to do important pieces of their business.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:28 AM on May 6, 2016 [4 favorites]


_____'s turned toxic, and _____ doesn't care.

Lil' all-purpose template y'all can freely use for anything game-related forever
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:35 AM on May 6, 2016 [7 favorites]


Valve (and in particular Newell) feel that they can just algorithm and crowdsource any problems, instead of paying people to do important pieces of their business.

The problem is that their feelings have been correct, so far. They've rather conclusively proved they don't need to do what the rest of us consider to be important pieces of their business because, currently, the only thing that would do is lose them money.

I don't think anything is actually going to happen about Steam unless people organize, and well this is what happens when they do.
posted by griphus at 10:38 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


How much people have experimented with restricted text communication? Blizzard used an obscenity filter in StarCraft, but then for Hearthstone restricted you to five words you could say to your opponent. But I would be interested in whether you could construct something restricted to express relevant in-game concepts, but that didn't allow you to say everything under the sun. Likely people would circumvent it and bully each other, but it would be interesting to design, and then see evolve.
posted by little onion at 10:39 AM on May 6, 2016


Oops, I forgot to put this in the OP. Valve actually changed their review system recently, but unfortunately it makes brigading even more powerful.
posted by selfnoise at 10:40 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


But I would be interested in whether you could construct something restricted to express relevant in-game concepts, but that didn't allow you to say everything under the sun.

Dark Souls online multiplayer is perfect. You can only communicate through in-game gestures like bowing, waving or some funnier/more obscure ones, and later in the game you can find a rock to throw on the ground that says 'hello' in this terrifying demon voice. It helps that each multiplayer session is only a few minutes long. (Technically there's also voice-chat you can enable, but as far as I know no one uses it and it's off by default).
posted by sonmi at 10:43 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


so is the main problem in the reviews section, or is there other forums on Steam for these gamerbros to abuse people? I'd throw out there that even the "good" user reviews are pretty shitty most of the time anyway and probably not worth your time. Not Apple Store bad ("DOESN'T WORK ON MY ZUNE - 1 STAR"), but still pretty bad. I'll usually wind up following the Metacritic links instead. These brigades are so fucking boring.
posted by Hoopo at 10:48 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


but then for Hearthstone restricted you to five words you could say to your opponent.

it probably took less than 24 hours for "I'm sorry" and "thank you" to acquire their infuriatingly passive aggressive meanings that somehow manage to convey even more contempt than the most blistering obscenity-laden trash talk when deployed in the right context

Dark Souls online multiplayer is perfect. You can only communicate through in-game gestures like bowing, waving or some funnier/more obscure ones

and you had three-man gank squads Well-What-Is-Iting you in unison, or some invader who stacked 300 levels on you Looking Skyward while your corpse dissolves like he can't believe how bad you are...

Naw, but yes, these are good in that they throttle out hate speech & abuse, but gamer assholishness will always find a way
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:52 AM on May 6, 2016 [7 favorites]


But I would be interested in whether you could construct something restricted to express relevant in-game concepts, but that didn't allow you to say everything under the sun.

On the really constrained side, Rocket League has a set of 16 pre-defined quick chat messages that are pretty good for basic playing-with-randos team and game communication and which are all you'll see from folks playing on console. I've found that system pretty satisfying as a difficult-to-abuse approach to a competitive online game.

There's also voice chat support (you better believe I never had that on) and general text chat support for PC players (which I really like 95% of the time and 5% of the time folks are horrible shitfountains), but both can be disabled to strip it down to just quick chat. And they have, thankfully, added player muting and reporting in recent months. No idea what the efficacy of reporting is, but I make a point of it whenever someone starts pulling the Edgy 14-Year-Old routine.

Of course, even with quick chat you can't get away from obnoxiousness; no one can throw slurs around, but if you put some time in playing with other humans it won't be that long until you get someone who responds critically to a missed save by just hammering on the "What a save!" button, flooding the chat window with sarcasm the only way they're able. To some extent you just can't unfuckerize people completely.
posted by cortex at 10:52 AM on May 6, 2016 [9 favorites]


Dark Souls online multiplayer is perfect. You can only communicate through in-game gestures like bowing, waving or some funnier/more obscure ones, and later in the game you can find a rock to throw on the ground that says 'hello' in this terrifying demon voice.

You can also use an item to drop a message on the ground, constructed from a list of keywords. These messages can range from useful ("Illusory wall ahead" in front of a secret passage) to frustrating ("Illusory wall ahead" in front of an actual brick wall). But by far the ones that bring the most joy to the game are either a) total nonsequitar or b) the classic message dropped by many NPCs..

"Try finger
But hole"
posted by FatherDagon at 10:54 AM on May 6, 2016 [14 favorites]


I'm increasingly of the opinion that any system/platform/whatever that allows for user-generated content and that does not include strong moderation is just deeply irresponsible. Like opening a factory that produces toxic waste by-products and not having a proper waste disposal plan. "Oh, it'll be too expensive or it's too hard or it'll put a brake on our growth." Too fucking bad. We don't accept companies dumping heavy metal-laden effluent into our waterways (i.e.: dilution is no longer the solution to pollution) any more either.
posted by mhum at 10:55 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is really interesting, because I just got a message from steam thanking me for reporting content that violates the Steam ToS.

I vaguely remember flagging some sort of racist skyrim mod several months ago.
posted by Karaage at 10:58 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Riot's done a good job of this because, I believe, Riot genuinely believes that it's the right thing to do. Therein lies the rub; I don't think Valve caresRiot's done a good job of this because, I believe, Riot genuinely believes that it's the right thing to do. Therein lies the rub; I don't think Valve cares"

Editing is hard too.
posted by Splunge at 10:58 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


Valve/Steam/Valve games are the PC gaming equivalent of Roadside Picnic. The alien developers dumped their software on us and have moved on to other things, and we're all scratching in the dirt and cutting one another's throats to exploit it.

I think Valve as a company has vastly outgrown Valve as a philosophy, and they need to quadruple in size and define actual work teams and actually try and address the hellscape their stuff has become but that entire idea is pure poison to the spirit of the company. I feel like even spinning off Steam from Valve Gaming would be a disaster, but when the alternative is business as usual, well, what else can you do?
posted by majuju at 11:14 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


There are still reviews on Depression Quest's page from September 2014 making "Five Guys" jokes about Zoe Quinn. Most have .1 hours played. Why even have a report feature on your review pages?
posted by almostmanda at 11:16 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


Valve/Steam/Valve games are the PC gaming equivalent of Roadside Picnic.
posted by griphus at 11:21 AM on May 6, 2016 [5 favorites]


srsly tho, is Roadside Picnic like a well-known SF short story in the English language?
posted by griphus at 11:21 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hoopo: "so is the main problem in the reviews section, or is there other forums on Steam for these gamerbros to abuse people?"

Every game also gets a discussion forum attached. I just checked the page for Depression Quest, and it's got one, so I'm going to use that as evidence that it's not optional, it's required. The developer does have the ability to delete posts in the discussion forum, but that seems a lot like Valve off-loading the work of moderating onto developers. And of course, deleting anything might get the steamers worked up over "censorship!!!" The reviews are visible from the main page of the game, while the forums you have to go looking for, and of course the developers aren't given the ability to delete reviews.

I have heard from developers who would love if they were able to use Steam as a storefront, but could opt-out of the whole review system, discussion forums, etc.

I know this is anecdotal, but I've personally never made a buying decision based on Steam reviews. Anything I've bought on Steam has been something that was recommended to me outside of the whole Steam ecosystem.

Allowing developers who don't want it to opt out would be really easy for Valve to implement, (much easier than moderation) but it would be an acknowledgement that people might need to find opinions on games from somewhere other than Steam.
posted by RobotHero at 11:24 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


griphus: Yes. It’s one of those foundational shorts that everyone else references. Also, in the gaming world, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was based on it.
posted by pharm at 11:24 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah I know about it via Tarkovsky's Stalker and STALKER both but I had no idea the short story was popular in the English translation
posted by griphus at 11:26 AM on May 6, 2016


re: limited communications, one of the funniest moments I had playing online was in L4D2 with two friends of mine (we all sucked, which to me is a requirement for MP fun) and when I was playing on the Carnival level, my character (Coach?) said guns here (automatic, when a character finds objects). The next thing I heard? One one them saying SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS. As I was missing on the action thinking it was a quiet place to search for gear.

Gaming communities are often rank - one of the reasons I mostly quit Steam was how I was spending an increasing allocation of disk space because Valve, instead of being a DRM validating and matchmaking tool, also wanted it to be a community. I don't even venture into GoG boards (other than looking for technical support or leave the occasional wishlist remark) because it's probably a very shitty place.

Also, for some reason, I think still censors "dick" in "Orchestral Dick Moves In the Dark" in a GRID screenshot where I'm pushing two opponents into a wall in a chicane. But apparently, being a dick to other users flies.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:29 AM on May 6, 2016


So wait, you people don't use toxic reviews coupled with "0.1 hours played" as a kind of endorsement?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:32 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


To be fair, the company who does sort this toxic shit out will probably make enough money to buy valve and force them to make HL3 or Hats or something.
posted by fullerine at 11:32 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


griphus: I don’t know whether the younger S.F. reading crowd (I’m past 40, I get to claim middle age at this point surely?) would have read it, but they might well know of it. There was a re-print of it in the S.F. section of my local bookshop, which suggests that it’s still being read & in people’s lists of “classic works of S.F.”
posted by pharm at 11:39 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


@PBO "Naw, but yes, these are good in that they throttle out hate speech & abuse, but gamer assholishness will always find a way"

I 100% agree that those are asshole moves (and I have raged at the 'look skyward + shrug' gesture combo a thousand times) ...but I think that is OK. I am fine with people being obnoxious pricks within the game framework. I just want to avoid misogyny/ racism/ hate speech.

One time, I was invaded in the Parish, and the invader had mastered the art of 'blocking on the ladder' , in such a way that I couldn't knock him off, and he would perfectly anticipate when i would lose patience and try to climb, or try to fire a bow, etc. He completely blocked my progress to the boss fight for 5 minutes. I hated that guy.

But I also had to laugh, because he was being an asshole , with no real-world consequences. He was lightly griefing me, and impeding my gameplay....but he wasn't making me want to nuke the whole planet from orbit, the way normal chat/game comments do.


Not sure if that is completely relevant.....but i apparently cannot pass up an opportunity to comment on dark souls.
posted by das_2099 at 11:43 AM on May 6, 2016 [10 favorites]


I dunno. Their new review system also does something I found really interesting yesterday while I was looking at a couple of games that had notoriously bad launches. It sorts out -recent- reviews separately.

A good example of this is the reviews on Arkham Knight, which are overall pretty negative, as it had a notoriously buggy launch. The recent reviews are mostly positive, instead.

Honestly, I think the game I've seen most recently that took an actual review beating that wasn't a AAA generic shooter factory was Darkest Dungeon, and I doubt those guys would say it was much factor in their actual sales.
posted by Archelaus at 11:44 AM on May 6, 2016


-- So wait, you people don't use toxic reviews coupled with "0.1 hours played" as a kind of endorsement?


Totally. I was thinking about building a tool to scan game reviews (and a different one for yelp reviews, and amazon reviews, etc) and try to build a function to weigh:

- individual review scores
- average score that reviewer gives
- individual reviewer hours played
- total reviews by reviewer

And determine whether that reviewer gets dropped from the calculations, or inverse-weighted (i.e. 1 star + .1 hours played + 'ethics in game journalism' = 5 stars)

But, it is easier to just look at metacritic scores for game descriptions that catch my eye. And then try a demo/ watch gameplay.

Not to totally derail : what is the current best resource for game reviews that aren't part of the asshole collective?
posted by das_2099 at 11:49 AM on May 6, 2016 [4 favorites]


I actually don't read reviews anymore; I think they've become pointless. I go to youtube or Giant Bomb, watch a let's play for ten minutes or so, and 95% of the time I know whether I want to play the game or not.

Also, given the current situation with Steam sales and Humble etc I typically buy games for 10 bucks or less, at which point why even stress?
posted by selfnoise at 11:53 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Their new review system also does something I found really interesting yesterday while I was looking at a couple of games that had notoriously bad launches. It sorts out -recent- reviews separately.

A good example of this is the reviews on Arkham Knight, which are overall pretty negative, as it had a notoriously buggy launch. The recent reviews are mostly positive, instead.


That's the whole purpose of their new review system, so that the frequently over-the-top and toxic initial reviews won't affect a game long-term. That's why Marvel Heroes changed its name to Marvel Heroes 2015, so they could wipe the review slate clean.

Of course Marvel Heroes returned as a surprisingly good free Diablo clone, whereas Arkham Knight is still a buggy piece of shit that still only works for people based on luck with PC components.

Kind of interesting that their solution is to acknowledge that gamers make shitty news-driven reviewers, especially with early opinions, and yet keep the reviews.
posted by graventy at 11:56 AM on May 6, 2016


It is possible to spend entirely too much time using Steam to play games without ever being more than peripherally aware that discussion forums, user reviews, etc exist at all. I seem to be in this position myself.

I'm not attempting to defend any particular online behavior, but I do wonder if the vast bulk of Valve's users/revenue simply doesn't participate in the social stuff. If perhaps cleaning up the social side just doesn't make any sort of business case because, large though the forums may be, they represent only a few percent of the customers. Valve has lately added a bunch of in-store metagames intended to increase customer socialization and engagement - maybe for a reason?

But I'm generally inclined to cut forum moderators a lot of slack for this sort of thing, not because I support toxic behavior but simply because the issue is so difficult. The hands-off nature of most forums is an important part of what makes huge, busy, useful forums economically possible. Unfortunately there are a lot of jerks.
posted by Western Infidels at 12:01 PM on May 6, 2016 [5 favorites]


das_2099: for PC-focused stuff, I am a big fan of Rock, Paper, Shotgun's critique and articles.

griphus/pharm: I'm thirty, learned about it via S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and first read it in a comp lit class at university so it's still used there. Also, incidentally, it's Steam's 13th anniversary this year...
posted by majuju at 12:03 PM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


I never write in those review sections for anything. I don't personally know anybody who does. Do you guys? I'm not all that insightful and I don't imagine anybody particularly cares what I think. I kind of wonder if those review forms kind of self-select for a certain personality type, even when not being abused in the manner addressed in the article.

I've seen enough interesting, off-kilter films get panned on aggregating sites that I've basically just stopped reading. I know what I like. I know some folks who like the same kinds of things and I talk to them about it. It's a shame to me that popularity metrics have become such a definitive metric of judging the success of creative media.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:04 PM on May 6, 2016


Not to totally derail : what is the current best resource for game reviews that aren't part of the asshole collective?

Polygon?
posted by pwnguin at 12:08 PM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Do you guys?

Whatever the complete and utter opposite of "I want to participate in this community is" that is how I feel about Steam being anything but the digital equivalent of a stack of video game CDs.
posted by griphus at 12:08 PM on May 6, 2016 [5 favorites]


Would that be the same Polygon that gave the last SimCity a positive review (so good Amazon delisted it) that I have used as evidence that the gamergaters could give a shit less about the quality of games journalism?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:25 PM on May 6, 2016


ha ha ha they revised the review no less than four times. It went from a 9.5 to an 8 to 4 to the current score which is 6.5.

It appears the original 9.5 review was based on a reviewer release in which things like "the server you need to connect to so you can actually play the game" were functional.
posted by griphus at 12:30 PM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Fair enough. I just found the silence on their initial review from the rage first rage often crowd telling. That EA duplicity played into the equation doesn't stun me.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:41 PM on May 6, 2016


Do you guys?

Not on steam, but I've recently made a conscious effort to start leaving frequent reviews on sites like yelp and amazon where I always read reviews but never left them - I figure if I fight to leave reviews even where I feel kind of "meh", I can do my part to fight against the distorted polarization in reviews.
posted by R a c h e l at 1:12 PM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'd also recommend Cool Ghosts and their podcast, although they trend more toward games and gaming discussion/philosophy than strictly "review every new game that comes out." If your tastes align, they're a tremendous resource for finding out what's actually fun to play, though.
posted by Scattercat at 1:30 PM on May 6, 2016


In terms of podcasts that talk enough about the mechanics of games to make me want to try things outside my comfort zone, I will toss out a recommendation for the truly excellent Crate and Crowbar.
posted by selfnoise at 1:32 PM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


I get a bit choked when I see a knee-slapping Scout Trooper on my Battlefront death cam, but man...that 1 in 20 moment when they step on my proximity mine as the hit the emote is pure joy.
posted by Kreiger at 2:02 PM on May 6, 2016


Dark Souls online multiplayer is perfect. You can only communicate through in-game gestures like bowing, waving or some funnier/more obscure ones

OK, I just got invaded by The Fashion Police.
Was at Pontiff and saw a Mound Maker duel sign for "The Fashion Police." Of course I summoned him, because a name like that is too good not to see what happens.

He shows up wearing a Leather set with a Lothric hood and does a full circle around me, inspecting my set. I'm not wearing anything too flashy, a Knight helm with Herald armor, complete with Silver knight leggings and nameless knight gauntlets.

He finishes looking me over and does a prostration gesture. I can tell he clearly doesn't approve, so I ready myself for a fight. But instead he switches into my set but dons a Lothric knight helm instead, which significantly looked much more sophisticated then the knight helm I had which revealed my collar. I follow his lead and switch out the two and realize that I look so much better than ever, and I give him a rightfully deserved dignified bow.

He applauded me, and then threw himself off a ledge...

TL; DR: Got invaded by Fashion Police, he gave me great fashion advice, then killed himself when he saw his work was done.
posted by straight at 2:06 PM on May 6, 2016 [45 favorites]


What is this idea that the review most relevant to me is the review most relevant to you, or the rating most relevant to me is the rating most relevant to you? That there is a singular community?

I don't know that the people is terribly complicated, but it has a few dimensions. The store should rotate to show the aspect appropriate to each person. It isn't much information, it can even be the aspect appropriate today not yesterday. The store doesn't have to be creepy and adaptive, it can use its words. What aspect of me would you like to see today?

There is a truth, but it is more than a single number. A little more. Two or three numbers.

I see the appeal of forcing everyone to play Strong Female Protagonist The Game, but it's not happening, and the anger it would cause would have some rightness to it. You can't force people out of their bubble. Tactics not reflex. You force it in their face and they react, save that battle for when there is something to win. Maybe there can be exchange at the borders. The people is a space, not compartments.
posted by pfh at 5:54 PM on May 6, 2016


But it's not even a matter of forcing people to play Strong Female Protagonist: The Game. It's if you try to sell SFP:TG on Steam, then you've got an extra thing to deal with.
posted by RobotHero at 7:34 PM on May 6, 2016 [4 favorites]


One nice thing [in this context] is Steam has identity, because you need that for money transfers. One account equals one person. No sockpuppets.

So the algorithmic problem of identifying the preferences of a person is pretty straightforward. If someone is vote brigading, we can easily place them on the SJW-MRA axis. Their reviews are easily classified, and also they can be guided toward a view of Steam that doesn't put games that require identifying with a female protagonist all up in their face all the time when it's not their cup of tea. This isn't a necessary fight.

Anyway, Steam is a near-monopoly, it needs to act like a government. It should have comfortable spaces for everyone. It shouldn't force people into those spaces, but it should have them.

I take your point that developing SFP:TG needs to be an attractive proposition. I accept this is a necessary fight, but I'm saying how to go about it requires a bit of subtlety, right now the machinery of Steam automatically goes out and picks a fight for these developers. A moderation system would be an attempt to win that fight. Maybe it would work, but those people would still exist, and now some of them that were on the fence are forever Enemies, and anyway the fight would just move outside of Steam and be even more unpleasant. We are all living in Japan, where there is no "win" there is just somehow ending a war. We're all in an Ursula Le Guin novel going in a big circle.

A good government doesn't say everyone should do one thing, a government lets everyone do their own thing. Freedom of speech, and freedom not to listen. Trust that people want to grow.
posted by pfh at 11:15 PM on May 6, 2016


Valve actually changed their review system recently, but unfortunately it makes brigading even more powerful.

It doesn't, though. In the short term the effect of brigading is exactly the same as it was under the old system (certainly not "more powerful"), but it used to be the case that if a game ever got brigaded the reviews from the hate brigade would be the only reviews displayed FOREVER because no random review without a large organization behind it would ever surpass the brigade reviews in "helpful" votes.

The worst case scenario with the new system is exactly the same as the old system, but now a game's page can at least recover after some kids decide to throw an organized temper tantrum. The prominence of the recent reviews means that a campaign of hate has to be really sustained to maintain the same kind of effect that used to only require a few hours of effort. Of course, Steam needs to figure out how to stop the brigading from being effective in the first place, and I think that's a problem that really requires people rather than an automated system to solve. They probably won't bother because it doesn't really matter in a business sense, in that nobody uses Steam reviews as a metric for purchasing decisions. It still matters to the creators in a psychological sense because harm can still be inflicted, but I don't think that really enters Valve's collective mind because they just see this whole thing from a business perspective.

I honestly think they should just pull the whole user review system down, because I doubt anyone would miss it and it's not doing anyone any good.
posted by IAmUnaware at 11:17 PM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


A potentially interesting fix would be to limit users to a set number of reviews. If they're at the limit, they need to delete an old review to post a new one.

I impose a condition like this on my twitter feed, I only look at the latest tweet of everyone I'm following. It's a great equalizer, and I'm also less anxious about keeping up with the feed.

Websites don't have such limits or filters, because it discourages people from spending as much time there. An interesting case where the interests of the website and users is in direct contradiction. It's a universal anti-pattern.
posted by pfh at 4:23 AM on May 7, 2016


So the algorithmic problem of identifying the preferences of a person is pretty straightforward. If someone is vote brigading, we can easily place them on the SJW-MRA axis. Their reviews are easily classified, and also they can be guided toward a view of Steam that doesn't put games that require identifying with a female protagonist all up in their face all the time when it's not their cup of tea. This isn't a necessary fight.

If you're imagining that the way this works is a bunch of MRA-types see a feminist game pop up in their Steam queue and are individually outraged and independently decide to write a nasty review, you don't understand what's going on.

Rather, a bunch of GamberGators over in some subreddit or other forum decide that a particular woman is an enemy of video games and decide to all go over and target her game's Steam page. The stuff you're describing about Steam refining who gets marketed which games wouldn't effect that at all.
posted by straight at 8:48 AM on May 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


A potentially interesting fix would be to limit users to a set number of reviews. If they're at the limit, they need to delete an old review to post a new one.

Instead of that, why not force developers to set a minimum time played (or set an unlisted achievement or tie with a in-game achievement like "reach 3rd level") before players can write reviews, or silently downplay the relevancy of reviews not meeting both criteria (the usual 0.1 hrs on record, no achievements) as they are either griefing or just hating on a game. For all that matters, I think reviewers should have to disclose the version, how long and how far they played the game. I've seen plenty of reviews across the years the reviewer wrote based on an early press demo, the promises of the developer (either features or bug fixing) or just spun a bunch of ad blurbs in his words.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:10 AM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


a bunch of GamberGators over in some subreddit or other forum decide that a particular woman is an enemy of video games and decide to all go over and target her game's Steam page.

The more coordinated they are, the easier they will be to classify as representing a particular viewpoint.
posted by pfh at 11:40 PM on May 7, 2016


I think the "minimum time played" especially if the dev sets what that minimum is, would not take off, same as why devs can't delete reviews. Valve is worried that some of the scuzzier devs will try to game the system in their favour. And then the few people who still have faith in the ratings system will lose it.

pfh, so you're talking about putting a lot more emphasis on "people who like this game also liked this game" kind of recommendations? If the person writing this review hated other games I liked, or liked games I hate, then maybe I don't care about their garbage opinion?

Though then you still have the hard part of new Steam users. If I've only ever bought one or two games on Steam, or not even that, there's not enough overlap to classify which reviews I'm likely to care about.
posted by RobotHero at 9:48 AM on May 8, 2016


I think the "minimum time played" especially if the dev sets what that minimum is, would not take off, same as why devs can't delete reviews. Valve is worried that some of the scuzzier devs will try to game the system in their favour. And then the few people who still have faith in the ratings system will lose it.

It's a catch 22, because without any limitations, they end up with reviews by people who didn't play enough of the game or rate/review according to an agenda (or just fanboyism), and considering how many games are free or can be purchased on bundles or with 75% discount, purchase isn't exactly a good gateway.
I doubt there's any ideal solution that can't be exploited by a bad actor. Valve itself will only fix this issue if they see a down trend in usage/sales, because right now they're more concerned in building their own walled garden, even if it's more Kowloon than Zen.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:03 AM on May 8, 2016


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