Are fake reviews a thing?

[Papillon]

Back to the original post....  lol

 

I don't like that use of misleading names was done in order to cause confusion, that's not a good approach if you are not happy with the game.

But at the same time, they do have a right to post a review.  They should use their own real pseudonym, not something made up from an NA player.  But still everyone who buys the game has the right to one review for that copy.  If it's 10 copies, he buys rights to 10 reviews.  It's an exchange of money for that right, so no wrong was done there.

If I buy two computers from a single manufacturer, the mfg does not have the right to tell me I only get one of them warrantied or serviced.  I get both of them, they are individual transactions.  Same with these reviews.  But again, it does appear like a poor way to go about it, with a name apparently there to cause confusion for the reader.

[Georg Fromm]

@Privateer, do you think you are that important? The game has never really been overwhelmingly good reviews. Now the DEVS have made a important decision and a lot of players are not happy with it. Where exactly is the problem now? You are free to praise the game

Edited April 19, 2019 by Georg Fromm

[Socialism]

1 hour ago, Georg Fromm said:

@Privateer, do you think you are that important?

If you've fought him.....he kinda is a big deal.

@--Privateer-- unintentionally started this thread of salt, but his original point still stands.  Fishy reviews impersonating other game users is a shitty thing to do and I think we can all admit that the ban finger (justly or un) has been very active lately....it's natural for him to want to stay well clear of any itchy trigger fingers.  

Overall I think looking at 6 iffy reviews is doing a disservice to the community and efforts really should be made to figure out why so many reviews have been mostly negative over the past 2 years and in particular, asking guys with thousands of hours why they left a thumbs down.  Instead we just dismiss things as bridaging or review bombs...rather than address the elephant in the room. 

Here's a similar thread from 2+ years ago when the game started trending mostly negative.  This was before the Global server drama and the SORRY review bomb.  Reviewers still echo similar sentients....  It appears that things haven't really changed.

 

Edited April 19, 2019 by Socialism

[Socialism]

2 hours ago, Koveras said:

Today we had 0 PBs, tomorrow we have 1 PB. I remember a time when I could pick and chose which port I wanted to screen at, just to find some PvP action, now it's becoming as rare as spotting a player in OW. But then again, I'm being overly critical here.

Remember this?

Cheap ships, lot's of content and hundreds of players involved in battles.  

c

[--Privateer--]

4 hours ago, Georg Fromm said:

The game has never really been overwhelmingly good reviews. Now the DEVS have made a important decision and a lot of players are not happy with it. Where exactly is the problem now? You are free to praise the game

I created the topic to inform players that this was happening, I posted it in the News section as a heads up.  I didn't know it would turn into such a salt mine. The topic isn't about ALL the negative reviews, just these 8 or 9 which use the names of players who may disagree with what is being attributed to them.

I have not reviewed the game yet myself, although I do appreciate the invite. I think I'll hold off the praise a bit longer though, since the game is subject to change greatly in the coming weeks. If rare woods become significantly more common I'll definitely leave a glowing review. 😁

4 hours ago, Georg Fromm said:

@Privateer, do you think you are that important?

The only person who seems to have an inflated sense of self importance is the person posting 8+ reviews where the rest of us only post one. They seem to believe their opinion is worth more than ours.

Edited April 19, 2019 by --Privateer--

[Nelsons Barrel]

23 minutes ago, springby said:

OP & van der Decken i salute you, epic solo tanking spoiled noobs. Fake reviews is indeed a thing, not just in NA but all over Steam. This is also partly why many big companies have moved their products over to Epic's store. 

Everyone shouldnt be allowed to write a review. Many shouldnt be allowed to play Early Access Alpha games, because they play it as if its a full release and then start to cry when game develops in a direction they disagree with. 

I wish there was a Gaming License, only people with a certain level of gaming license would be granted to write reviews and play certain EA/alpha titles. Devs could set the level of license req. to test. But it will never happen, because majority of online users in 2019 are unexperienced pre-teens and their voice is far too great. 

Nobody forces game developers to go early access (especially through steam store). Thats the risk you take to make money with an unfinished product. People pay, people play and people will review, while you earn cash. If you want your product to be reviewed when its finished you should simply consider to release it only when its finished. 

Blaming an unknown group as the bad guys because they review an early access title that you like is pretty simpleminded.

It's kind of cute that you guys consider 6 reviews already a review bomb for a game that has 110 recent reviews and a total of 4051 reviews. How many of those are now actual alt accounts? Does that amount impact the overall rating that much? Don't forget, as many as negative reviews there are, there are the same amount of unhelpful oneliners that give a thumbs up just to 'counteract' the impression of a negative bombing. Those should be seen with the same judgement as negative ones.

[admin]

2 hours ago, --Privateer-- said:

I created the topic to inform players that this was happening, I posted it in the News section as a heads up.  I didn't know it would turn into such a salt mine. The topic isn't about ALL the negative reviews, just these 8 or 9 which use the names of players who may disagree with what is being attributed to them.

I have not reviewed the game yet myself, although I do appreciate the invite. I think I'll hold off the praise a bit longer though, since the game is subject to change greatly in the coming weeks. If rare woods become significantly more common I'll definitely leave a glowing review. 😁

The only person who seems to have an inflated sense of self importance is the person posting 8+ reviews where the rest of us only post one. They seem to believe their opinion is worth more than ours.

Thanks for reporting it

Captains. Remember that this report/discussion is not about the content of the reviews. It is about player/moderator impersonation.

Impersonating others is against the rule of Steam EULA and Game and Forum rules (rule 15) and we issued full or partial chat or game bans for impersonation before.
https://store.steampowered.com/online_conduct/

@van der Decken   Thank you for providing additional information on the account name changes.

Topic moves to tribunal. Issue is under investigation!
 

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, admin said:

Thanks for reporting it

Captain. Remember that this report/discussion is not about the content of the reviews. It is about player/moderator impersonation.

Impersonating others is against the rule of Steam EULA and Game and Forum rules (rule 15) and we issued full or partial chat or game bans for impersonation before.
https://store.steampowered.com/online_conduct/

@van der Decken   Thank you for providing additional information on the account name changes.

Topic moves to tribunal. Issue is under investigation!
 

Is it possible too remove all reviews at release?

[Beeekonda]

No, reviews will remain. BUT, they will be marked as Early Access Review

[captain smile]

Guys who report bad the game, dont forget that its Game Labs baby, they do it the way they like . If you want to have a game you like to see start a Company and create a game ...

And people who have enjoyed the game for more that 1k hours and put a bad review cause they get gank or what ever  just stopping new players to enjoy the game ...

I hope after the game realease all the previus reviews will be erased .

[AeRoTR]

1 hour ago, Nelsons Barrel said:

Nobody forces game developers to go early access (especially through steam store). Thats the risk you take to make money with an unfinished product. People pay, people play and people will review, while you earn cash. If you want your product to be reviewed when its finished you should simply consider to release it only when its finished. 

Blaming an unknown group as the bad guys because they review an early access title that you like is pretty simpleminded.

It's kind of cute that you guys consider 6 reviews already a review bomb for a game that has 110 recent reviews and a total of 4051 reviews. How many of those are now actual alt accounts? Does that amount impact the overall rating that much? Don't forget, as many as negative reviews there are, there are the same amount of unhelpful oneliners that give a thumbs up just to 'counteract' the impression of a negative bombing. Those should be seen with the same judgement as negative ones.

Spot on! 

This point of view is exactly same with mine. 

Make it an EA out of steam and do not worry about reviews. But you are in steam, selling the game for a good price, plus lot's of dlc, plus alt. selling approved. So people aside from sinking hundred or thousand hours into the game, they have paid some good money with dlc and alts, when things do not go well for them, they react big. This is very normal. People are reviewing the development process which they are paying for. 

Imo every alt. who can play the game and we even see some hundred hours on alts, have every right to leave a review on steam, bad or good. 

Main problem with NA steam reviews, game took too long to finish, still. Many big changes happened back and forth. So players started to play this game like a finished product and got upset with big changes and during long development. 

My honest feeling, game did not improve for a long time, I do not know the reason! 

Suddenly improvements started to come ui/missions etc. but also big chances to what players did not think to be broken. So overall this is the summary of steam reviews. The reviews is not about the game, it is about development process and decisions during development. 

 

[captain smile]

7 minutes ago, AeRoTR said:

Spot on! 

This point of view is exactly same with mine. 

Make it an EA out of steam and do not worry about reviews. But you are in steam, selling the game for a good price, plus lot's of dlc, plus alt. selling approved. So people aside from sinking hundred or thousand hours into the game, they have paid some good money with dlc and alts, when things do not go well for them, they react big. This is very normal. People are reviewing the development process which they are paying for. 

Imo every alt. who can play the game and we even see some hundred hours on alts, have every right to leave a review on steam, bad or good. 

Main problem with NA steam reviews, game took too long to finish, still. Many big changes happened back and forth. So players started to play this game like a finished product and got upset with big changes and during long development. 

My honest feeling, game did not improve for a long time, I do not know the reason! 

Suddenly improvements started to come ui/missions etc. but also big chances to what players did not think to be broken. So overall this is the summary of steam reviews. The reviews is not about the game, it is about development process and decisions during development. 

 

Guys you forget how much money does steam takes from what you pay ... But actually yes , why not put it on Epic Games store ?

[z4ys]

1 hour ago, AeRoTR said:

Main problem with NA steam reviews, game took too long to finish, still. Many big changes happened back and forth. So players started to play this game like a finished product and got upset with big changes and during long development. 

My honest feeling, game did not improve for a long time, I do not know the reason! 

 

A lot of EA games that i bought before and shortly after NA went EA itself are now about to leave its status or are still EA with way less progress than NA. Not because someone dislikes the content doesn't mean there is no content added to the game. NA is in my experience the most frequently patched and developed title of them all. On top its the most community involved title which ofc has the downside of back and forth development.

Just remember the rvr flag mechanic. As we had it it was abused to shit to avoid fighting. it got rightfully removed. half a year later people started to cry and demand for its return. To me it looked like the brain capacity of a fly. Ofc due  such things we have this back and forth. Our demands were always tried to be pleased by devs in one way or an other.

Sure subjectively speaking you can say there is no development that meets your expectations but objectively speaking we have a lot of development progress.

Edited April 19, 2019 by z4ys

[Barbancourt]

9 hours ago, Koveras said:

 

Today we had 0 PBs, tomorrow we have 1 PB. I remember a time when I could pick and chose which port I wanted to screen at, just to find some PvP action, now it's becoming as rare as spotting a player in OW. But then again, I'm being overly critical here.

W

I

P

E

as soon as the W-word is rolled out the activity stops and everyone waits

 

 

[Sir Texas Sir]

58 minutes ago, captain smile said:

Guys you forget how much money does steam takes from what you pay ... But actually yes , why not put it on Epic Games store ?

Steam takes like 33%.  I refuse to use Epic and keep buying games that they have exclusive from the developers directly (so far only ubisoft games).   I don't like there practice to at the list moment bribe to have exclusive rights.  If they did it to have rights along with steam that would be a different story, but they are at the last moment all ready did it with two big titles that switched toe epic only exclusive after they paid out 1 million or so when the product was all ready on pre-sale on steam.  So yah screw that crap.

As for the reviews I went through to see if my name was listed. If I was any of the names make sure to report it.  This account is my only one that uses the same In game name as my steam name.   There is a reason I haven't made a review and I'll save it for release when it happens.

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

11 hours ago, Papillon said:

I don't like that use of misleading names was done in order to cause confusion

It's a bit more than that. The negative review bombing is nothing less than an attempt to ruin the game by driving possible buyers away. There is no way of excusing that, also not by "deserved criticism" of the current game development.

Fun fact on the side: review bombing impersonators had to buy the game several times anew, so were actually giving money to game-labs in their efforts to drain their income. :P

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

1 hour ago, springby said:

dayz standalone, 5 years and just changed to beta from alpha. 5 years guys. the amount of whine from the community throughout all these years, some people think it take 1-2 years to develop a shelf life videogame. 

It could be far worse. Only have a look at Mount & Blade Bannerlord comment section of their weekly dev blog. It's the most negative example of whining complaining kids you could imagine. 7 years of development and some restart meanwhile.

[AeRoTR]

@z4ys I mean there was a pause at development.

I mean they were may be developing many things but we players did not feel the change aside from balancing and tweaking mechanics. 

So it felt like a finished game with some shortcommings. So people were playing not testing. 

I love the game like all who spend time here on forums. But I am not blaming negative reviews. 

Hope the reviews to be wiped after release, expecting NA to be over %70 rating if some easy but important things get tweaked. 

[z4ys]

1 minute ago, AeRoTR said:

@z4ys

So it felt like a finished game with some shortcommings. So people were playing not testing. 

agreed, compared to all my other EA games NA is the most stable running and over all the time finished looking game. For an EA title the complexity of gamemechanics is enormous giving a feeling of an almost/finished product. For me it shows the quality and love gamelabs delivers with all their games/products.

therefore its easy to forget that we just play an EA game and that we have to act accordingly.

[van der Clam]

13 hours ago, Koveras said:

I think the definition of 'shitposting' is rather arbitrary but as I wrote - I don't really care. As far as I'm concerned forumbans is just a new, albeit negative, way to communicate. What I do care about is numbers ingame and they've been deteriorating for the past two years. Now you can claim that's me being overly critical, but steam charts doesn't rely on my input. The OP claims the accounts that has reviewed the game is 'fake' - I say they are 1 account each making 1 review. Ppl may disagree with their reviews, and honestly I can't really see the point in them - who in their right minds would read those and make an informed decision on wether or not to buy the game? But to extrapolate from that a general trend of 'review-bombing' or inferring that all negative reviews are per definition fake is grossly misleading and takes the eye away from the ball, the issue that should be close to the heart of every single NA player still in love with the game - how to improve the game so the game becomes fun once more.

Today we had 0 PBs, tomorrow we have 1 PB. I remember a time when I could pick and chose which port I wanted to screen at, just to find some PvP action, now it's becoming as rare as spotting a player in OW. But then again, I'm being overly critical here.

Just curious, has there never been anything updated in this game that people could have positively review bombed? Or is it just nature for people to review bomb only when something bad happens to them? I guess that's a sociology study.... And to your last point, do you think review bombing has helped or hurt the game population? Your quote down below is great. I wish more ppl would continually update their review of the game for each patch. I did not know we can alternate a review up or down depending on our mood. I thought we can only make comments on our reviews.

11 hours ago, Georg Fromm said:

@Privateer, do you think you are that important? The game has never really been overwhelmingly good reviews. Now the DEVS have made a important decision and a lot of players are not happy with it. Where exactly is the problem now? You are free to praise the game

I'd love to see a chart history of the game's review. I have no idea how to find that.

6 hours ago, springby said:

OP & van der Decken i salute you, epic solo tanking spoiled noobs. Fake reviews is indeed a thing, not just in NA but all over Steam. This is also partly why many big companies have moved their products over to Epic's store. 

Everyone shouldnt be allowed to write a review. Many shouldnt be allowed to play Early Access Alpha games, because they play it as if its a full release and then start to cry when game develops in a direction they disagree with. 

I wish there was a Gaming License, only people with a certain level of gaming license would be granted to write reviews and play certain EA/alpha titles. Devs could set the level of license req. to test. But it will never happen, because majority of online users in 2019 are unexperienced pre-teens and their voice is far too great. 

edit: btw i have upvoted all your reddits regarding your great detective work. 

I believe every purchase deserves the right to make a review, I just feel reviews should be better formatted. Force multiple choose quetion that ask good questions like "Do the devs update the game?", "Do the devs fix bugs in a timely manner with patches?", "Do the devs hold a gun to your head to make you buy DLC?", things like that. For people to answer actual questions rather than just flood the reviews with bs.

BTW, TY for the upvotes, but let's not try to "influence" the mass's opinion of me. lol

3 hours ago, Koveras said:

I think the average is 8-10 for MMOs but that not withstanding, I write reviews on the basis of wether or not I can recommend the game in the current state, and I update those reviews if a patch makes an update needed. As for the impersonation of others: That's just cowardice in its purest form.

+3

[Slim McSauce]

9 minutes ago, van der Decken said:

I'd love to see a chart history of the game's review. I have no idea how to find that.

https://gyazo.com/25815087df995a3758d2b9d99e34d613

[Nelsons Barrel]

27 minutes ago, van der Decken said:

I'd love to see a chart history of the game's review. I have no idea how to find that.

Steam itself shows you a graph of that.

[toblerone]

7 minutes ago, Nelsons Barrel said:

Steam itself shows you a graph of that.

It shows that the negative reviews started prevailing on good ones since january 2018 and never inverted the trend until now.

Edited April 19, 2019 by toblerone

[Powderhorn]

I wonder why the person decided to impersonate me, instead of any of the other moderators?

This just proves that I'm the favorite.

[toblerone]

10 hours ago, Powderhorn said:

I wonder why the person decided to impersonate me, instead of any of the other moderators?

This just proves that I'm the favorite.

or maybe you warned/banned him