Steam less liberal in respect to game dev's controlling forums

Recommended Videos

Jorias

New member
Dec 10, 2008
223
0
0
First off, sorry if this has been discussed ad nausium.

Anywho, so i am scrolling through the forums on a game called...well screw it im not gunna say what game it is im not gunna even mention it, and give them free advertising. Let's just say the game is in Early Access. This in of itself is likely to provoke some form of disgust to some readers. To be quite honest i am so damn pissed off at what steam is doing, i am even having a hard time expressing the exact problem in this post.

For Example (and im not going to mention names just for the sake of respect) Starforge, ya you might have heard of it somewhere. It's a game about single/multi player survival on a planet called "Atlas". The game was getting bad reviews about a year or so ago, so bad that i supposed sales for the game were dropping, the reason for the bad reviews is because the game was terrible to the person who reviewed the game...sounds like common sense to write a bad review about a game you didn't like right? Not to the developers of the game, they took these bad reviews so personal, they ended up tearing down almost every bad review both on steam, and on their own forums going as far as wiping some regular forum posters on their website from existence. This to me, is the single most damaging thing you can do for your reputation, sorry when you go "Kim Jong Un" on a person, i lose all respect for you. Why? why should anyone be too afriad to express their constructive opinion about something? why should anyone have to be angry, just because someone expressed a bad review about their product?

I know this is beginning to sound like a rant, but the bottom line here is that free market in this new day and age isn't always limited to what you spend your money on. It should also be about gathering information from others either by reviews, word of mouth, or some other form. Then selecting the best product for your need/want. Honestly, Steam should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen, and yes i understand that some reviews are more along the lines of trolling than being constructive..this is not what i am referring to. I agree with deleting, or closing forum posts that are considered trolling, however wiping someone off the face of you website just because they found your flagship product crappy, is not a good reason to do so.


TLDR - Steam top brass seems to find it ok to let Game devs, delete constructive negative reviews. This is bad, and is the opposite of a REAL free market.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
13,769
5
43
I disagree with devs moderating criticism and dissent since it indicates a huge lack of confidence in their product, but given the quality of discussion on Steam forums I really can't be arsed getting upset anything that happens there.

Bottom line is that you don't have any rights on a privately own message board. They can edit all your posts to say "I'm a poopyhead who molests kittens" if they want.

If you want to trash someone's game, just do it somewhere else. Hell, start a blog all of your own. That's the "REAL free market" for you.
 

SonOfVoorhees

New member
Aug 3, 2011
3,509
0
0
Steam is becoming the new Ubisoft/EA. :)Thing with these companies is that they can change the terms of use for the site. So if people moan they can just say you signed to say you accept that they will change comments if they want. So you are better off moaning on sites like this instead of Steam where keeping game developers sweet is important to them financially.
 

Adamantium93

New member
Jun 9, 2010
146
0
0
If I may play devil's advocate:

You admit that there are justifiable reasons that someone may want to delete reviews or posts, such as when one is trolling, harassing, or obscene.

Steam is a large company that sells thousands of games. In order to discover who is abusing the moderation tools, they'd have to read every review section of every game every single day to see if any constructive, negative reviews were taken down. That's millions of reviews, the majority of which will say something like "Game is not CoD, its the suckzors".

Its a negative side effect of a necessary policy. The alternative is to completely take away any moderation tools and let the populace run rampant.

This is like blaming the President if the guy at the corner drugstore rips you off.
 

Hairless Mammoth

New member
Jan 23, 2013
1,595
0
0
That's the one of the major areas Valve really needs to improve, the other being refunds. After all these stories of devs censoring negative criticisms, including going as far as to try to silence popular critics like Jim Sterling (Thank God for him.) and Totalbiscuit, you would think Valve would have already taken action, but they haven't done anything major the public has seen. Why do devs and publishers have so much control on forums ran by Steam? Is Valve too cheap to hire some moderators? The devs can do anything they want on their own forums. So, let the horrible ones have their little pretend dictatorships and never visit their own forums, but they shouldn't be able to silence legitimate arguments on Steam's forums.

One thing everyone needs to realize about public online reviews is you usually have to take them with jumbo spoonful of salt. Positive ones could be from fan boys who ignore flaws in a product, fans who have never experienced the particular item or someone paid to falsely inflate an item's score. Likewise, negative reviews can come from fan boys of a competitor and the paid shills trying to drop a score. Legit negative opinions are also more likely to appear since people love to take the time to complain more than praise. If a business can't understand that and tries to silence real criticism, they probably should grow up either listen to the professional reviews and rethink the quality of their products or hire a PR firm that can beat some sense into them. Valve needs to reign in these guys trying to sell game on their service.
 

Kevlar Eater

New member
Sep 27, 2009
1,933
0
0
I've a grave feeling the OP was referring to Dead State. Yep, the devs are acting like douchebags [http://i.imgur.com/akOfeIM.jpg?1] (that post got deleted from the forum), but it's their right and their forum, in the same vein that it's my right to let potential consumers know about what they're getting into and who/what they're supporting so they can make an informed decision, warts and all.
 

Sanunes

Senior Member
Mar 18, 2011
626
0
21
I do think that Valve needs to change how developers are handling their forums and for me I would think the best part would be a two-stage system. The developer has full control of their boards, but at the same time Valve would be notified if too many posts are deleted or locked to see if the developer is abusing the control they are given. Right now there is no oversight and it allows developers to abuse the system just like people are abusing the DMCA on YouTube.

I have seen too many developers just go out and delete posts because of what feels like "they don't like negative comments, no matter how accurate" and to me that is a big problem and actually one of the reasons why Steam is no longer my first stop for digital content.
 

Areloch

It's that one guy
Dec 10, 2012
623
0
0
So, just to clarify: Your complaint is that the developers are capable of deleting posts on their game's community forums, and some of them are abusing that fact?

So you're blaming Valve for steam's forums having basic moderation functionality.

Well then.
 

PhantomEcho

New member
Nov 25, 2011
165
0
0
Considering the quality of the average customer these days, I'm inclined to side with developers far more often than I am the kinds of trollish assholes hound forums belittling and taunting the game designers. A person sinks years of their life into a game, and some jackass with a chip on his shoulder comes around swinging his balls to and fro acting like he could do better? Fuck that guy. That guy isn't a customer you need. When the internet rushes to his aid IN RETALIATION for the very basic act of moderating a forum? Fuck those people too.

In fact, I would never go into business providing a product and allow the internet to talk shit about it on my company forums. You want to shit all over my hard work while contributing not a fucking thing to gaming? At least expend the energy necessary to take that shit out of my face. This is the kind of bullshit that CREATED the myth about 'entitled gamers', which sadly isn't quite as mythical as I used to believe. It's the same mentality I've watched running talented modders out of the modding scene, and it's the same bullshit mentality that I've seen run developers out of business. Not because these people are right, but because WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO SERVE THEM? Who wants to be beholden to a contemptuous, loathsome consumer base which will happily turn on you if your characters are too skinny, or too fat, or too black, or too blue, or if your game has some bugs that you didn't quite get worked out over the course of the THREE YEARS OF YOUR LIFE you spent working on this game for them to enjoy, or if your female characters' skirt is too long, or too short, or the physics are/aren't Newtonian?

Who the fuck wants to be the guy who has to dance that little dance around the consumer, only to have it all blow up in their face because that Fake Rage Machine they call 'The Internet' decided your number came up today? The hell with that. This is why I packed up shop and stopped working on mods for Bethesda games, and why I have absolutely no interest in ever getting into game design. Because it's not the gamers that are toxic. It's the internet, and all the freedom it's given us to be shitty horrible people without any consequences for our actions. Well these are the consequences. Developers are cracking down excessively and often needlessly on negative criticism because that kind of shit KILLS morale. You're going to see MORE and MORE developers STOP looking to their fans and consumers for information, because all it does is open them up to attack from all sides. And the moment they try to defend themselves, well here comes the 'Don't Censor Me Brigade' screaming "You can't silence us fans! We're entitled to our opinions."

You've brought this upon yourselves, internet. A lack of consideration for the human component of game design has led developers to start shielding themselves from your awfulness. Nobody wins in this. The companies doing it just get even more shit thrown at them, but now they've become insular and disinterested in having a real conversation with you about quality. Now they're open to the ideas of extremists, who want to paint gaming as some kind of toxic environment, or paint consumers as 'the enemy' in need of being destroyed. People can only take so much before they stop CARING about what shit comes spewing out of your mouth next, and start tuning you out.

It's the nature of humanity to swing from one extreme to the other. This is one area where finding some middle ground is really necessary.
 

Smooth Operator

New member
Oct 5, 2010
8,162
0
0
Free market matey is jungle law, as much as you are free to complain to all of your ability they are free to silence you to all of theirs, and the to the victor go the spoils.

Ideally Steam would manage this shit on their own providing a less biased environment, however while they might have a vast vault of money they are actually still a very small in number (around 100 people last they spoke about it). So they let the community of 50mil plus manage itself for the most part, only in extreme cases do we see them step in.
And I get that they can't babysit everyone, but it is their biggest failing none the less.