Should there be potential consequences for putting false info into a Steam user review?

[Zed Clampet]

Or what about making wild accusations that you have no proof for, like claiming the game is mining crypto in the background.

To be clear, the "consequences" I'm suggesting would be having your review deleted and then having your account put on review time out for awhile.

It's important because there are so many people who just believe anything and everything, and these malicious reviews are no doubt causing significant loss of sales to some developers.

 

[Pifanjr]

Or what about making wild accusations that you have no proof for, like claiming the game is mining crypto in the background.

To be clear, the "consequences" I'm suggesting would be having your review deleted and then having your account put on review time out for awhile.

It's important because there are so many people who just believe anything and everything, and these malicious reviews are no doubt causing significant loss of sales to some developers.

Some things that come to mind:

How do you determine someone put that misinformation there maliciously instead of them just being misinformed? I don’t think you can expect no one to earnestly fall for misinformation ever.

How are you going to enforce this? From what I understand (some of) the Steam forums are already a cesspit because of lack of moderation.

How do you even know something is misinformation? Do you just trust the word of the developer? Does a Steam employee need do a full technical investigation to verify each report?

 

[Frindis]

As far as I know, Steam already hides/removes posts or makes them less impactful if they break policy. An example of that is massive review bombings.

I think that people should be able to write what they feel like, as long as it is done according to the platform's rules, just like we do here. You could claim a game has naked women in it, while it does not. Are you being dumb or maybe trying to be funny? Sure, but other users will blast you for it, and you'll lose any credibility within seconds. Developers also have the option to clarify any misunderstandings or false information, which adds an extra layer of protection.

I'd rather have stricter rules when it comes to how game companies advertise their games, like showing cut content or building up hype on mechanics that are not being implemented. Stuff like making everything look waaaaay better than the released material or even the way a lot of companies leave their unfinished games with a big wad of cash. It's the game companies that kakapo people over year after year, not the other way around. They are the ones spreading the misinformation!

 

[Charagma]

"Both sides of the story". Most players do not even read the reviews. They will scan them but not read them in depth. In addition, if you have a virus on your system and it infected a game you are playing, who is to blame for the review since you as user will be telling what you found on your system.

A roach in a McDonalds burger does not mean the whole franchise is serving roaches on their burgers, yet the roach review will proceed.

It is however the store's responsibility to resolve the issue. If the game distributor or creators had aftersales service and resolve the problem that specific bad review could turn out to be a goldmine (Turn that frown upside down). I deal with all my clients directly if there is a problem. I do not send someone to go do my dirty work. I get up, go to my client, get my client happy and resolve the issue he or she had. Unfortunately, the only customer service still in existence (Outside) is the one where the customer is getting things done by himself.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I'm somewhat surprised by the European contingent's push for "anything goes" free speech. You cannot just say whatever you want, and all of these people who are just making up accusations are actually setting themselves up to potential law suits. When your BS is a contributing factor in a studio failing, you think you shouldn't have any repercussions for that? You simply can't argue that.

 

[Charagma]

I'm somewhat surprised by the European contingent's push for "anything goes" free speech. You cannot just say whatever you want, and all of these people who are just making up accusations are actually setting themselves up to potential law suits. When your BS is a contributing factor in a studio failing, you think you shouldn't have any repercussions for that? You simply can't argue that.

Agreed on the repercussions. If the middleman does what the creator pays them to do most of the reviews would be resolved. Having a problem, someone responds to your email (With a smile), spend some time with you to resolve the issue and "Bob's your Uncle".

Think this is a two-way street problem that starts with the middleman being paid do perform certain duties.

Steam has a great forum and community. Most of the things I have read there is problems and solutions done by the community, not by steam or the creators but by the community.

Earlier someone said that Steam is merely selling the licenses. If I have a problem with a product (Any product), I take it back to where I bought it or go to the place, I bought it for after sales service.

Good example here.....

7 Days to Die started off I think in 2012 on pre-access. There where thousands of updates until final v.1 got released, I think last year. Steam just updated every time a new update came out, which in general is a good idea until your system specs cannot make the cut anymore and the Title you paid for is now unplayable. Steam has their money, and you have nowhere to go to get the problem resolved. Asking Steam for assistance, they will tell you it is not their problem. Going to Fun pimps, they will refer you to where you originally purchased your game. The same goes for ETS2. Problems started from around Going east with people not being able to play the game they paid for because the update was done via steam.

Creates bad blood between Creators and gamers because neither steam nor Fun pimps will assist to resolve the problem. End of the day unhappy Steam customers giving bad reviews to good creators.

Thus, fully agreed on that there has to be consequences but first you need to resolve the source of the problem. See where the problem is coming from and fix that first before rebuilding the community that supports them. I myself have issues with steam. Only reason I still have steam is because of titles I purchased that I cannot replace via "paid" piracy due to specific version numbers. Else I would have steam deleted a very long time ago.

LMAO see what happens when you get me going about Steam. Most of this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Good Idea, good platform, bad management resulting in unhappy paying customers.

 

[BeardyHat]

I'm somewhat surprised by the European contingent's push for "anything goes" free speech. You cannot just say whatever you want, and all of these people who are just making up accusations are actually setting themselves up to potential law suits. When your BS is a contributing factor in a studio failing, you think you shouldn't have any repercussions for that? You simply can't argue that.

I'll toss my hat in with them (but I want it back, I like that hat).

I get what you're asking for and many reviews are eye rolling, but I have no idea how you prove any of this, as people are allowed to be stupid and uniformed on the Internet.

The line where you start taking action seems pretty ephemeral, not to mention a slippery slope. We can't give game devs the ability to take action, as we've seen how those things go when one of them is high and mighty. Valve can't earnestly look at every review, play every game and determine if something is a lie or not.

I just think this an "up to the user" kind of thing. I see lots of games with negative reviews that are clearly misinformed or a game just isn't to their taste so they leave a bad review, etc. Obviously as more informed users, we are aware a game is probably not a virus or mining crypto and yeah, we're probably in the minority, but if you want to combat that it's likely on you to comment on that review and call them out.

I don't feel like I have a good answer, but policing these things just doesn't feel realistic for many a reason.

 

[DXCHASE]

But then how would all the rage baiting youtubers get their views if they didnt see someone spreading their lies?

 

[BeardyHat]

They'll find something else to rage about. Rage and controversy gets clicks. They could rage about how having flowers in your yard is woke and get millions of views.

 

[Charagma]

But then how would all the rage baiting youtubers get their views if they didnt see someone spreading their lies?

It sells.

Marylin Manson was asked why he dressed the way he did and made the weirdest music videos. His reply "It sells"

So Youtubers just jump on the band wagon of where they would get the most hits. aka Gaming. Whether it is Microsoft solitaire, Candy crush or Oblivion remastered. Everyone plays games. They will get a view if they mention anything game related.

Actual Gamers do not care about reviews because what I like is something you might not. We pick a genre, pick something that has a nice trailer and pay. The problems we sort out after the purchase by modding to what we wanted it to be. Some do not see it that way. They will blame the creator for something they were not able to resolve. Hence lies that the youtubers get is simply gamers that had nowhere to go to resolve an issue.

 

[Zed Clampet]

111

I'll toss my hat in with them (but I want it back, I like that hat).

I get what you're asking for and many reviews are eye rolling, but I have no idea how you prove any of this, as people are allowed to be stupid and uniformed on the Internet.

The line where you start taking action seems pretty ephemeral, not to mention a slippery slope. We can't give game devs the ability to take action, as we've seen how those things go when one of them is high and mighty. Valve can't earnestly look at every review, play every game and determine if something is a lie or not.

I just think this an "up to the user" kind of thing. I see lots of games with negative reviews that are clearly misinformed or a game just isn't to their taste so they leave a bad review, etc. Obviously as more informed users, we are aware a game is probably not a virus or mining crypto and yeah, we're probably in the minority, but if you want to combat that it's likely on you to comment on that review and call them out.

I don't feel like I have a good answer, but policing these things just doesn't feel realistic for many a reason.

It's really not that difficult. I'm not saying that because FlyingGamer21 said there was no skill system when really he just didn't notice it in the 10 minutes before he refunded the game, that FlyingGamer21 be punished in any way. I'm also definitely not saying that the developers/publishers have any control over this.

What I'm going for are the obviously malicious attempts to soil a game's reputation. These are pretty rare, but I stand by my opinion that they need to be addressed. As users we could report them and then Valve could investigate it.

And, no, you can't leave comments on most reviews.

 

[Charagma]

111

It's really not that difficult. I'm not saying that because FlyingGamer21 said there was no skill system when really he just didn't notice it in the 10 minutes before he refunded the game, that FlyingGamer21 be punished in any way. I'm also definitely not saying that the developers/publishers have any control over this.

What I'm going for are the obviously malicious attempts to soil a game's reputation. These are pretty rare, but I stand by my opinion that they need to be addressed. As users we could report them and then Valve could investigate it.

And, no, you can't leave comments on most reviews.

If you can get a creator or even steam to investigate and proof their side, half the battle is won. There will be 50% less bad reviews if we can get either the creator or steam to start resolving it. With that added it will then give the creators a true indication of problems to fix in their next update.

If we can do it that route, I will back you up on it 100%. We just need someone to talk or report to and get better answers as to what we are getting now.

 

[Zloth]

How the frak did I miss this topic!?

Yeah, I've seen this happen. I've posted before about a review saying a game was sending personal information to Epic and the only evidence for that was that the game had Epic's equivalent of the SteamAPI dll as part of the installation on Steam. Fellow conspiracy theorists up-voted the review and it became the top review for the game!

And, no, you can't leave comments on most reviews.

The game developer can, which helps in those "didn't notice the skill system because they only played for 10 minutes" situations.

Proving malicious intent: does this matter? The review is spreading false information. That's what you're wanting to stop.

The big problem I see is verification that the review really is wrong. It's easy to see that my example review is bogus *IF* you know what a DLL file is for. What about claims that would be hard to verify even for computer tech experts without spending days testing??

Still, don't let perfection get in the way of the good and all that. If it is pretty easy for Valve to see a popular review is flat-out false, they should yank it and look at the other reviews the user has made with suspicion, too. If there's a bad pattern there, yank'm all and block the user from reviewing.

P.S. It looks like my example review is now gone. I did report it, but Steam never sends anything back but 'we have reviewed your request and taken action' without even telling you what request they are talking about, so I have no idea if they yanked the review or if other people who know better down-voted it into oblivion.

 

[JCgames]

What about all the reviews that claim "this game won"t run on modern systems"

I see this all the time in game reviews. A gamers buys or builds an expensive computer, but hasnt a clue about how to config the thing to play games. Then spams reviews about how horrible the game is with constant crashes or wont start or any number of complaints like the game wont run or what ever... 98% or the time its the persons config. Or a "this game is broke because every other game i play works"

Or listen to some conspiracy theories on how its bad to update your bios, or drivers. ( though if my comp is running fine i wont update vid driver unless they have a security patch or a specific game gets an update that i play, but thats another topic)

Some person was complaing about a game i was enjoying and saying lots of what i would call rather misleading things so i clicked on his reviews and i think i went down a consperiacy rabit hole. 300+ reviews at 1k words per sounds impressive, but i had to look far and wide for anything remotely helpful.

Besides the ideological retotoric they were filled with, they also had tons of stuff like this game harvests your data and this game wont run on modern systems or this game wont get past 5fps ect. most of the games he had these complaints i know either me or my friend that has an even newer system win 11 5000 series runs them with out issue. I swear a good 25 had those types of things , and i barely scimed half of them.

You'd think a gamer that has 100s of games would atleast have the basics of configging down. Sure a 10- 20 year old game might take a small tweak and i agree that companies should do a little more work keeping this up to date, but this is one of my huge pet peeves.

 

[JCgames]

A roach in a McDonalds burger does not mean the whole franchise is serving roaches on their burgers, yet the roach review will proceed.

Fun fact people eat on average of 2lbs of insects in processed food a year.

The funny part its often more healthy than the food they are comsuming, as its basically all natural protien

 

[Zuruchon]

Misinformation shouldn't be condoned on any platform because some people might not verify before believing.

False reviews also destroy the reputation of developers and make them lose clients in the future.

There should be some level of sanctions, like the removal of the reviews, and those found guilty should be warned. Suspension of the account might follow if it persists.

 

[mjs warlord]

On steam discussions pages their is a guy called A#E#A#E A#E#I#A# and he is well known for posting and trashing bad stuff about new games that the big companies release . Some of his rants are so long it is obvious what he is doing. One game dev once posted that he targets them every time they release something new.
The guy is so dumb that he has his profile open you can read all the trash he has posted , he owns dozens of games and with the exception of a few he has spent around 10 minutes on most of them and never used around 75% of them so as @Zuruchon i have to ask why steam has not removed his posts/reviews or even suspended his account.

 

[Zuruchon]

On steam discussions pages their is a guy called A#E#A#E A#E#I#A# and he is well known for posting and trashing bad stuff about new games that the big companies release . Some of his rants are so long it is obvious what he is doing. One game dev once posted that he targets them every time they release something new.
The guy is so dumb that he has his profile open you can read all the trash he has posted , he owns dozens of games and with the exception of a few he has spent around 10 minutes on most of them and never used around 75% of them so as @Zuruchon i have to ask why steam has not removed his posts/reviews or even suspended his account.

No system is perfect, there will always be some lapses. But have you tried reporting this guy to Steam support? Steam needs our help to keep the community clean of junk.