Steam's new BS review changes, if you didn't buy directly from steam...

[Elixer]

Then your review is NOT counted.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/24155/

Changes To The Review Score
As a result of this, we are making some changes to how review scores are calculated. As of today, the recent and overall review scores we show at the top of a product page will no longer include reviews written by customers that activated the game through a Steam product key.

Customers that received the game from a source outside of Steam (e.g. via a giveaway site, purchased from another digital or retail store, or received for testing purposes from the developer) will still be able to write a review of the game on Steam to share their experience. These reviews will still be visible on the store page, but they will no longer contribute to the score.

This does mean that the review score category shown for about 14% of games will change; some up and some down. Most changes in the review score category are a result of games being on the edge of review score cut-offs such as 69% positive or 70% positive. A change of 1% in these cases can mean the difference between a review score category of "Mixed" and "Positive". About 200 titles that only had one or two reviews will no longer have a score at all until a review is written by a customer that purchased that item via Steam. In all of these cases, the written reviews still exist and can easily be found in the review section on that store page.

What a load of crap.

 

[Yakk]

Valve probably complying with publishers fighting grey market keys, and taking the opportunity to slowly close the walls to their games garden one small bit at a time.

 

[lupi]

Nothing to do with that, all about publishers not wanting mob mentality reviews turning a product into a pile of pooh. This way only those that paid for it can count lessening things like the arkam pillage.

 

[Newbian]

If you look you can see you can select between steam reviews and cd key reviews even if one doesn't add to the actual overall score.

There are a few posts on their forums showing multiple games with 90%+ reviews from cd keys and this is one of the reasons as it's clear the system is being abused.

I honestly can see steam going after 3rd party selling sites more as this is competition, a lot of it are shady sites that buy in cheaper regions and resell them, and if steam wants to cut them off completely it could get nasty then but hey it's their service and steam would force them to use their bandwidth / services to host the downloads instead of them doing it.

In either case you are using steam and they can say if you are allowed to use their services and when buying a 3rd party cd key why should they consider you a legit customer?

 

[Elixer]

They could have made the "free" keys have a different format than "non-free", but, they took the easy, lazy way out.

 

[Newbian]

They could have made the "free" keys have a different format than "non-free", but, they took the easy, lazy way out.

The only thing I see here is that would require more work and as these people that buy cd keys are not customers of steam directly so why should they do such work?

In either case this is more of a way towards steam cutting out the reselling of games outside of their service as they have for awhile now and it removes their competition and while it may hurt the few legit sites that do this like humble bundle it helps steams financial end.

I honestly am surprised they have accepted these types of sites for so long and still continue to do so.

 

[Artorias]

You failed to quote the main reason behind the change.

We know this review score has become a valuable shortcut for customers to gauge how well the game is matching customer expectations. But the review score has also become a point of fixation for many developers, to the point where some developers are willing to employ deceptive tactics to generate a more positive review score.

The majority of review score manipulation we're seeing by developers is through the process of giving out Steam keys to their game, which are then used to generate positive reviews. Some developers organize their own system using Steam keys on alternate accounts. Some organizations even offer paid services to write positive reviews.

 

[Newbian]

You failed to quote the main reason behind the change.

Here is a clear example of this issue from one of steams posts about this abuse:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/518100/?snr=1_5_1100__1100

 

[Elixer]

In either case this is more of a way towards steam cutting out the reselling of games outside of their service as they have for awhile now and it removes their competition and while it may hurt the few legit sites that do this like humble bundle it helps steams financial end.

If these were Valve games doing this, then, they can do whatever, but, since now, basically all publishers must use steam, they are stuck.
Why should Steam be the only one to sell games, and not the other places?
So, Amazon, GOG, GameStop, Green Man gaming, Direct 2 Drive, Newegg, Best Buy, Target, and all the other retailers are all lumped in with CDkeys? CDkeys (and other places like them) are still legit, they are selling a product, the keys are legit, otherwise Steam wouldn't allow them.
All this does is skew the reviews on Steam, sites like Metacritic will still have the same reviews as always.

You failed to quote the main reason behind the change.

That is a BS reason, devs can still give people $$$ to buy the game on steam, for their positive review.

Here is a clear example of this issue from one of steams posts about this abuse:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/518100/?snr=1_5_1100__1100

And? The dev could give people $$$ to buy the game on steam...

 

[nakedfrog]

Are they still going to have the Metacritic score listed?

I mean, ultimately... hard to give a crap about it one way or the other.

 

[zinfamous]

My expertly honed BS meter when it comes to fake online reviews leaves confident enough to know that this won't impact me in any way. But if it does manage to filter out the BS paid-reviews and nonsensical 0 star reviews from butthurt fans that will never purchase "because!", then I guess this could save me some valuable time.



(and by valuable time, I mean fap time)

 

[WhiteNoise]

And? The dev could give people $$$ to buy the game on steam...

I doubt they would do that. If they offered me money to buy a game I'd take their money and buy something I want. It would make more sense that they would gift the game through steam under an alias.

I for one am okay with what steam has decided. Sounds like a good plan to me.

 

[Newbian]

If these were Valve games doing this, then, they can do whatever, but, since now, basically all publishers must use steam, they are stuck.
Why should Steam be the only one to sell games, and not the other places?
So, Amazon, GOG, GameStop, Green Man gaming, Direct 2 Drive, Newegg, Best Buy, Target, and all the other retailers are all lumped in with CDkeys? CDkeys (and other places like them) are still legit, they are selling a product, the keys are legit, otherwise Steam wouldn't allow them.
All this does is skew the reviews on Steam, sites like Metacritic will still have the same reviews as always.

Remember that their competition, uplay and origin, do not offer reviews like steam does as far as I recall so if you want to be upset you should be upset over them not offering the same quality of service that steam provides.

Steam has every right to do as they see fit with how they handle reviews as it's their service.

As for 3rd party sites / stores selling the games and cd keys why should steam provide their customers every right as steams customers as this is something most places do not do obviously.

No one is forcing games to use steam only but the problem is these publishers save money by placing their games on steam and get bigger profits because of the customer base on steam yet you want steam to cover all of the hosting cost and as you have seen for awhile now steam is trying to recuperate some of it's cost by doing such methods and they have every right to as a business.

 

[Craig234]

I don't buy the 'they have the right to do anything they want' argument as a response to the topic of what the right thing for them to do is.

You have the right to buy a famous work of art, and then destroy it. It doesn't make it right. These extremists, legalistic, arguments about property rights are misguided.

Argue the topic on the merits of the issue, instead of saying the only issue are Steam's property rights.

That's how service and public interacting companies should operate, not based only on the claim any action is fine since it's their property.

 

[Elixer]

No one is forcing games to use steam only but the problem is these publishers save money by placing their games on steam and get bigger profits because of the customer base on steam yet you want steam to cover all of the hosting cost and as you have seen for awhile now steam is trying to recuperate some of it's cost by doing such methods and they have every right to as a business.

How are they recuperating anything, you think people will pay more for a game, just because it allows their review to count only on Steam? It basically amounts to a review tax.
I think most will buy the game at the lowest price possible, and the reviews on Steam will be skewed from other sites that supply reviews.

 

[nerp]

Sounds good to me. I wish stores did this so bogus reviews were eliminated.

 

[NoSoup4You]

A total non-issue, who pays attention to Steam reviews anyway? Well, actually I guess it makes sense during the first couple days after release to see if it's an awful PC port. Personally I lend zero credence to anything a mouth-breathing Steam reviewer has to say, and Steam is within their rights to have their "Steam user review score" actually be represented by people that purchased the game from Steam.

 

[Newbian]

A total non-issue, who pays attention to Steam reviews anyway? Well, actually I guess it makes sense during the first couple days after release to see if it's an awful PC port. Personally I lend zero credence to anything a mouth-breathing Steam reviewer has to say, and Steam is within their rights to have their "Steam user review score" actually be represented by people that purchased the game from Steam.

Especially as steam doesn't make money from purchases outside of steam yet people are getting upset thinking they are not being treated right as customers yet they are not customers of steam when they do this.

 

[Craig234]

Especially as steam doesn't make money from purchases outside of steam

You sure?

 

[sandorski]

Makes sense to me.

 

[Newbian]

You sure?

If a site sells the game on their own site but uses steam to host the game and sells it there also steam only gets money from the games bought on steam and not the 3rd party website.

Granted the shady sites that buy keys from different regions and resells them is different as steam makes some money but not what they and the devs should.

The steam mods have confirmed it in various posts dealing with this topic and if you look before you would see it also as the game devs themselves create the cd-keys and import them for steam to accept if they sell in both areas.

My only concern is some of the mods are saying that these 3rd party sites selling in both areas is something that should not be tolerated and this may be another move towards only letting game companies sell on steam if they expect steam to host the game for them.

 

[Anteaus]

I don't understand what the issue is. All reviews are still recorded and public. Steam is not censoring anyone. They are simply restricting contribution to the overall metric, which in reality is generally a poor indicator of the overall quality of the product anyway. There are a number of places to get quality reviews of games. Some of you are acting like Steam is crushing your freedom of speech or something. Personally I think they should remove that number completely and force people to actually read the reviews. I think things were so much better before Metacritic.

I wish that when I went to the movie theater, the Rotten Tomato metric would be displayed next to the film I want to watch, but no, I need to actually make some effort to find out ahead of time if its worth the money. This is no different.

 

[Smoblikat]

Who cares? Reviews are useless, either watch gameplay videos or find a way to try the game out before you buy it.

 

[XiandreX]

My expertly honed BS meter when it comes to fake online reviews leaves confident enough to know that this won't impact me in any way. But if it does manage to filter out the BS paid-reviews and nonsensical 0 star reviews from butthurt fans that will never purchase "because!", then I guess this could save me some valuable time.



(and by valuable time, I mean fap time)

I agree completely

 

[cronos]

I'm all for this. For the reasons already stated by multiple people above.