Reviews are one of the only weapons and Outlets that consumers have anymore. Especially a dire need because game journalism is so incredibly incredibly corrupt and inept. So the bitchy tone of this article certainly does track.
this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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If Amazon has shown us anything though, its that reviews can be bought and sold en masse. I'm not sure how Steam reviews are mitigating this, but I fear that it will be undermined soon
You have to have a copy of the game on Steam to review it. It will automatically say you got it for free if it's a key from Steamworks (given to the press usually). This means the costs of faking reviews would outpace the volume really early.
can't multiple people share an account and post individual reviews from it?
No, reviews are per account. A single account can post multiple reviews for the same thing (obviously)
Do you actually look at Amazon reviews and trust them now though? They may have proven they can pay to put them there, doesn't mean anyone cares about what they have to say... Though I'm probably overestimating the general population of Amazon shoppers
The individual review don't matter though, it's the mean star score that people glance at and then scroll by on
If it's on steam it isn't even really review bombing. Cause for steam reviews you have to own the game. So this is people who own the game giving a warning to potentially new people who might get the game about what's going on and a recommendation to not buy it. Usually review bombing is people who have never even played the game or consumed the media reviewing it bad to bomb it for whatever reason. So this definitely isn't that and they're just trying to shift the definition of review bombing to any kind of mass negative reviews for whatever reason.
The reason is to get paid by corps to wipe the bad reviews.
Yep cause the journalists make money through ads and game developers are usually the ones buying the ad space so they gotta do what the companies want or they might lose their advertising as punishment.
They are now trying to standardize reference to "review bombing" to try to frame it some nefarious and coordinated "campaign" instead of what it is... A bunch of actual people pissed off at your recent bullshit and responding in real time to express that disappointment and frustration.
Direct consequences of your actions.
Title sounds so sleazy and scummy and I want to read the article but I don't want to give clicks to slimeball who wrote this
Does looking at it on archive give the website a view?
Maybe they could join together and write an opensource Kerbal Space Program 2?