The Epic Games Store “Ratings and Polls” update

eonden · Jun 17, 2022

Wulfram said:
The point is the random selection. Tools are irrelevant, filtered garbage data is still garbage.

Random sampling is better than a twitter poll

Your random selection skews towards those that keep playing the game repeatedly and removes those people that didnt play less than 2hours (aka, the likeliest group to have troubles with the game in PC). Congrats, you ahve preselected a group that will be likeliest to vote the game higher than default (as it is done by design).

There is also the problem that random selection in this case would be more similar to a random cold call just after using a service and without any time of rest to think about it.

Forsaken82 said:
This is never true.

Review bombing is a terribly toxic method of trying to politicize or signal boost questionable decisions. for every 1 time it's to highlight the broken state of the game or the incredibly terrible boycott worthy culture the developer is a part of, there's 9 other times review bombing is used because people are just assholes.

We need a better way to exclude those other 9 times.

Which steam already does. Congrats on discovering that. I would also say that Review bombing is a very much ultra rare event (and in most cases when a dev calls somethign a review bomb what they mean is that they are just getting bad reviews which doesnt mean a review bomb).
There is also the issue of "we nuke the system to remove 0.01% of the times it can be used incorrectly" instead of you know, improving the system, which is what Steam has done for years now.

Forsaken82 said:
Ok fair enough, but my argument still stands.

There needs to be a better way because the current methods make it more of a joke than a meaningful way to boycott.

Do you even know how the current method works?

Vincent Grayson · Jun 17, 2022

I'm not the sort to generally review games I buy, whether it's picking a single score or writing actual text.

That said, I kind of like this idea. The random sampling seems like an interesting way to address the otherwise commonly useless user ratings on a game. Can't help feeling like even if this doesn't turn out to be a good solution, there's so many other ways to view a game before buying and/or get reviews, that I'm happy to see some random new thing being tried.

monstrousvermin · Jun 17, 2022

So that's why I got the pop up to review neon abyss.

It's a bit of a strange system. I do find steams reviews helpful. Not really the written reviews, but the positive tag and the separate all time and recent rating is nice.

Morten88 · Jun 17, 2022

This "review" system is probably the worst ever, how the hell would we ever know if a game is broken or not?

Dyle · Jun 17, 2022

I'm not of the opinion that just because Steam or any particular platform does it best that everyone has to do it like them, this seems like an interesting system that is worth trying out. Just going off of score alone seems too limited though, the people being sampled should be able to write a text review.

OtakuCoder · Jun 17, 2022

Needing two hours of playtime to give a review is a heck of a thing. Like, I've played Sonic '06 for about thirty minutes and I could tell you what I thought of that pretty decisively.

Also, if a game's broken then you might not be physically able to eke that time out.

Tuco Benedicto Pacifico · Jun 17, 2022

By the sound of it:

- You'll be offered a random chance to rate a game after any session of two hour of gameplay
- You won't be able to change your rating in the future
- You won't be able to comment on any specifics.

Sounds like a convoluted system that rewards games frontloading their best bits, among other things.

TeenageFBI · Jun 17, 2022

EGS innovating again. No thanks.

Fighting review bombing like this is silly and bad for customers.

Sidebuster · Jun 17, 2022

This seems like the kind of system where every game will have like a 4.6/5 star rating and it'll basically end up being meaningless.

Odinsmana · Jun 17, 2022

Sidebuster said:
This seems like the kind of system where every game will have like a 4.6/5 star rating and it'll basically end up being meaningless.

I assume that this system has been designed to get as many positive ratings as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some algorithm that used user data to pick out the people that would be most likely to give a positive review.

Siresly · Jun 17, 2022

**

Polls seem fine though?

tuxfool · Jun 17, 2022

Siresly said:
**

Polls seem fine though?

Not as currently implemented.

See the other posts on how it skews results through its selection criteria. Making "fair" polls requires rigorous selection of respondents. Which this does not, through lack of rigor in the system or through a deliberate intention to skew results.

Rosebud · Jun 17, 2022

People here so afraid of review bombing like Steam doesn't has stats to make it apparent or options to make it hidden, plus ignoring the times it's actually useful (bugs, performance issues...)

Epic's system is useless, for a 5 star rating you can just put the name of the game on Google

DeadlyVenom · Jun 17, 2022

Wow, I get to win the random chance to give my opinion on a product I bought. Thanks Epic. AND I get to not even use my own words for it. PERFECT. THANKS.

Gelf · Jun 17, 2022

User reviews without text just seem pointless. I can easily read if someone has written a review of worthless value to me and skip to the ones more relevant. A rating on its own of any game means nothing.

Nintendo · Jun 17, 2022

Looks good. We'll see how it works in practice.

Dakkon · Jun 17, 2022

What a shitty approach to reviews.

1) Review bombing is a non-issue on Steam for consumers, not only does Steam do a great job of detecting it and informing you about it, but you can easily filter the time period before the review bombing among other tools.

2) It's only a rating, with no way to infer reasoning. The important part of Steam Reviews isn't the overall score, but the individual information provided by the reviews.

You're still going to have people rating these games for being "too WOKE", except you aren't given the opportunity to see their reasoning and thus completely discount their review reason and move onto the next one.

Kyougar · Jun 18, 2022

Kentsui said:
Bringing the 'would you like to rate this app' popup from mobile games right into your gaming PC.

Also their review bombing protection sounds awfully like biased reviews fed by you by some kind of algorithm, which might not be the greatest, but they can spin it so they can look like the good guys so you know ...

The Poll thing seems like it could be fun /interesting.

Algorithm at work:

- if User gives mostly 5 stars, send more reviews their way
- if User gives mostly 1 stars, ban them from reviews
= "random" user selection for reviews

Randam · Jun 18, 2022

dex3108 said:
We've just updated the Epic Games Store

you work at EGS?

eonden · Jun 18, 2022

Randam said:
you work at EGS?

No, the OP text is word for word the info in the link.

Deleted member 93841 · Jun 18, 2022

eonden said:
Your random selection skews towards those that keep playing the game repeatedly and removes those people that didnt play less than 2hours (aka, the likeliest group to have troubles with the game in PC). Congrats, you ahve preselected a group that will be likeliest to vote the game higher than default (as it is done by design).

This. If the game straight up doesn't run or has such issues that it is practically unplayable, this means you can't warn other users about the issue.

I guess this is what the whingeing about "review bombing" gets us. Ironic, considering this is system is just making the ratings on the EGS less reliable, and review bombing is a massively overblown issue that actually happens rarely. In the last few years I've seen many devs and consumers talk about games getting review bombed, when the reality was that it was just games getting a lot of negative reviews for perfectly valid reasons, like Battlefield 2042.

Randam · Jun 18, 2022

eonden said:
No, the OP text is word for word the info in the link.

then he should have used quotes.

XR. · Jun 18, 2022

Zoop said:
when the reality was that it was just games getting a lot of negative reviews for perfectly valid reasons, like Battlefield 2042.

I wouldn't even call that a review bomb, since that's just people being dissatisfied with the game. The term review bomb is more useful for reviews that highlights some issues outside the scope of the game, which may not be relevant to most people.

Madjoki · Jun 18, 2022

Excluding those who don't like game (refund, less playtime, less sessions) from reviewing game seems like good way to get very biased scores.

I do like "polls" idea though.

Zoop said:
I guess this is what the whingeing about "review bombing" gets us. Ironic, considering this is system is just making the ratings on the EGS less reliable, and review bombing is a massively overblown issue that actually happens rarely. In the last few years I've seen many devs and consumers talk about games getting review bombed, when the reality was that it was just games getting a lot of negative reviews for perfectly valid reasons, like Battlefield 2042.

Whole review bombing label was always intended to silence user voice.
Games media, like Kotaku, always labels legit issues as review bombs, while there are much fewer legit review bombs (such as for inclusive content).

Deleted member 93841 · Jun 18, 2022

Madjoki said:
Whole review bombing label was always intended to silence user voice.
Games media, like Kotaku, always labels legit issues as review bombs, while there are much fewer legit review bombs (such as for inclusive content).

Yeah, honestly, I've never believed that review bombing is an inherently bad thing. It's just one way for consumers to voice their unhappiness in a time when it's harder than ever to do so effectively. It obviously sucks that games like TLOU2 was bombed for bullshit reasons, but it has worked to reverse some pretty bad (and even anti-consumer) business decisions.

Overall I think people also care way too much about what other people put in their Steam reviews.

jem · Jun 18, 2022

dex3108 said:
And for example if game has 3 stars without user reviews you don't know why it has 3 stars. Those 3 stars tell you nothing about the game.

Are people not capable of doing research outside of the store?

Hektor · Jun 18, 2022

jem said:
Are people not capable of doing research outside of the store?

way to miss the point

dex3108 · Jun 18, 2022

jem said:
Are people not capable of doing research outside of the store?

What's the point of rating system then?

jem · Jun 18, 2022

dex3108 said:
What's the point of rating system then?

It has exactly the same point as stuff like metascores except it's available as you scroll through the store.

Personally I think they're totally useless but for some reason people seem to care a lot about them.

Hektor · Jun 18, 2022

Weird, if i look at the metascore i see a bunch of professionally written reviews beneath, that give context to the score

Must be a bug on my end

PKrockin · Jun 18, 2022

Why should I care so much about review bombing? I click on Monster Hunter World, find a bunch of negative reviews bunched up on the first month, and see that apparently the online was fucked up at the time and people were upset about DRM impacting their performance. Then there was another review bombing attempt because that Milla Jovovich movie sucked, but Steam detected those reviews were unrelated so it hid them. I got relevant information from the helpful review bomb and an unhelpful review bomb got filtered out. Seems like Steam handles this perfectly for a consumer like me. I see a review bomb, I at least know there was some kind of controversy and I now have the option to look into whether it had merit if I care about the topic enough to do so.

I guess if I were a developer or publisher who wanted to push bad products and anti-consumer bullshit, yeah, I'd be very interested in stopping review bombing at all costs. Only allowing people who spent more than 2 hours playing would also be something I would love since that filters out a lot of people who bought the game but disliked it.

cvbas · Jun 18, 2022

Eh, the polls are a great idea and I think the review system is interesting -- Most Steam reviews I read feel like they were written by 13-year-olds so I don't think I'll miss the written aspect too much. A 5-star system is also a much better indicator of a game's quality than a simple "Yes/No" system like Steam's imo.

What I do get is the concern over broken ports. Maybe there could be a poll accessible to all users so they can rate the performance as "Poor/Good/Great" and then it would show in the Store page?

dex3108 · Jun 18, 2022

How does Fall Guys has rating when it's not out yet?

Or Saint's Row

GhostTrick · Jun 18, 2022

cvbas said:
Eh, the polls are a great idea and I think the review system is interesting -- Most Steam reviews I read feel like they were written by 13-year-olds so I don't think I'll miss the written aspect too much. A 5-star system is also a much better indicator of a game's quality than a simple "Yes/No" system like Steam's imo.

What I do get is the concern over broken ports. Maybe there could be a poll accessible to all users so they can rate the performance as "Poor/Good/Great" and then it would show in the Store page?

How is a 5 star system without any explanation a better indicator compared to a review with actual words and points ?

cvbas · Jun 18, 2022

GhostTrick said:
How is a 5 star system without any explanation a better indicator compared to a review with actual words and points ?

I mean, if you look for decently written reviews on Steam (no easy task) yeah, you'll have more information. But at a glance, "3.5/5" feels more informative to me than "85% recommend". It's basically the difference between Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and I've never liked RT.

Odinsmana · Jun 18, 2022

cvbas said:
I mean, if you look for decently written reviews on Steam (no easy task) yeah, you'll have more information. But at a glance, "3.5/5" feels more informative to me than "85% recommend". It's basically the difference between Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and I've never liked RT.

I genuinely always fin to-three helpfully reviews in the top reviews on steam. The useless ones are also really easy to spot, so it does not take long to find the useful ones.

It sometimes feels like some people take the unfunny meme reviews as a personal insult and can't get past them and just disregards the whole review system because of that.

Gelf · Jun 18, 2022

Odinsmana said:
I genuinely always fin to-three helpfully reviews in the top reviews on steam. The useless ones are also really easy to spot, so it does not take long to find the useful ones.

It sometimes feels like some people take the unfunny meme reviews as a personal insult and can't get past them and just disregards the whole review system because of that.

Agreed. They are supposed to be buyers guides, you really only need to skim read and find a couple of well written ones for the whole system to be of worth.

Atom · Jun 18, 2022

I love steam reviews. It's super easy to sort through the (often hilarious) memes, and the written reviews are generally some of the most no nonsense "yo here's the game and what it has going for it/not so hot" reviews out there, way better than traditional outlets when that's what I want. Plus they're basically the only way to get a sense of what you're getting into performance wise on PC. And the % positive impressions is I find generally a more useful metric than a number scale where everyone has different criteria for what constitutes an 8.

GrrImAFridge · Jun 18, 2022

As someone who games primarily on Steam, I consider the written component of its review system quite important. More than a few times has a game on my wishlist had "mixed" reviews but I nonetheless purchased it because the grievances raised in the reviews -- be they technical (e.g. performance issues on systems less powerful than my own) or creative (e.g. "Too many collectables!") -- weren't relevant to my situation/tastes. Are there stupid, pointless reviews? Yes. Are there instances of illegitimate review bombing? Sure. Do either occur to a degree that finding a useful review is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack? Not even close.

Personally, a rating system that divorces itself from context (and is restricted to users less likely to have had a negative experience, no less) is virtually if not entirely useless to me.

Lashley · Jun 18, 2022

dex3108 said:
How does Fall Guys has rating when it's not out yet?

Or Saint's Row

Incredible 😂

Truly worthwhile! Much better than standard reviews!

Especially if we avoid the 💣 !

Morten88 · Jun 18, 2022

dex3108 said:
How does Fall Guys has rating when it's not out yet?

Or Saint's Row

Lmao, why am i not surprised by this.

Commander Quackers · Jun 18, 2022

dex3108 said:
How does Fall Guys has rating when it's not out yet?

Or Saint's Row

you gotta be fuckin kiddin me

Lengualo · Jun 18, 2022

I don't get why anyone thinks review bombing is good. Review bombing is typically the result of a cohort of players having a tantrum about something specific or wanting to send a message to developers.

For end consumers who are trying to figure out whether they're wanting to buy the product it creates a confusing mess that they need to unpick. Its entirely negative and undermines the review average.

Letting reviews flow naturally is far more important if we want review scores to be useful in making buying decisions, which is the purpose of them.

I think putting a minimum playtime is unhelpful though, it rules out reviews from people who encountered serious technical issues that they shouldn't be having, and those who found the game an unpleasurable experience. Early DNF's can be legitimate.

The random selection pool from people who purchased the game is a good idea though because that helps to minimise campaigns. Also, I think being able to see a reviewers credibility is helpful.

Turnscr3w · Jun 18, 2022

I randomly got asked to review TD2 after playing for 10 hours. The pop up screen for the rating was very laggy, and I'm kind of meh on it. Like wtf does a 5/5 or 4/5 mean exactly ? What's the context of such a rating even? I gave TD2 a 5/5, but the game has a garbage story and it constantly crashes on PC, should I lower it to 3.5? Where am I supposed to mention technical issues that somebody might experience with the uplay servers?

It's very much half-assed, it actually reminds me a lot like the shitty google play store rating.

dex3108 · Jun 18, 2022

Lengualo said:
I don't get why anyone thinks review bombing is good. Review bombing is typically the result of a cohort of players having a tantrum about something specific or wanting to send a message to developers.

For end consumers who are trying to figure out whether they're wanting to buy the product it creates a confusing mess that they need to unpick. Its entirely negative and undermines the review average.

Letting reviews flow naturally is far more important if we want review scores to be useful in making buying decisions, which is the purpose of them.

I think putting a minimum playtime is unhelpful though, it rules out reviews from people who encountered serious technical issues that they shouldn't be having, and those who found the game an unpleasurable experience. Early DNF's can be legitimate.

The random selection pool from people who purchased the game is a good idea though because that helps to minimise campaigns. Also, I think being able to see a reviewers credibility is helpful.

Tnx to review bombing on Steam we got improved Batman Arkham Knight, modding back into GTA V, Improved Chrono Trigger, in combination with Reddit Ubisoft is stopped in censoring Rainbow Six Siege, Square Enix fixed Tomb Raider games after they implemented Epic Online Services...

GrrImAFridge · Jun 18, 2022

Lengualo said:
I don't get why anyone thinks review bombing is good. Review bombing is typically the result of a cohort of players having a tantrum about something specific or wanting to send a message to developers.

The ability to "review bomb" is good precisely because it allows customers to send a message to developers/publishers. A game being lambasted with negative reviews due to the addition or otherwise sly inclusion of DRM (e.g. Sonic Mania), exceedingly poor performance (e.g. Batman: Arkham Knight), removal of content or features (e.g. Destiny 2), etc. is entirely fair. There are, indeed, instances of childish review bombing (e.g. Borderlands 2's score taking a hit when Borderlands 3 was announced as an EGS exclusive), but such cases are few and far between and do not at all diminish the importance of allowing customers to properly express their experience with a given product.

For end consumers who are trying to figure out whether they're wanting to buy the product it creates a confusing mess that they need to unpick. Its entirely negative and undermines the review average.

Fortunately, Steam makes it easy to "unpick" instances of review bombing and, indeed, excludes them from the score by default.

Atom · Jun 18, 2022

dex3108 said:
Tnx to review bombing on Steam we got improved Batman Arkham Knight, modding back into GTA V, Improved Chrono Trigger, in combination with Reddit Ubisoft is stopped in censoring Rainbow Six Siege, Square Enix fixed Tomb Raider games after they implemented Epic Online Services...

Nier Automata got a patch
Not exactly review bombing but discussion board blowback led to Capcpom putting up the older builds of RE2/3/7 again
Hitman being taken off GOG for having always online DRM for core game modes and content.
Honestly review bombing does so much good on PC. You can almost immediately see if reviews are genuine, if they're from bad actors, if they are warnings about stuff not functioning etc, and Steam even gives tools to filter it out if you want.

cvbas · Jun 18, 2022

Turnscr3w said:
I randomly got asked to review TD2 after playing for 10 hours. The pop up screen for the rating was very laggy, and I'm kind of meh on it. Like wtf does a 5/5 or 4/5 mean exactly ? What's the context of such a rating even? I gave TD2 a 5/5, but the game has a garbage story and it constantly crashes on PC, should I lower it to 3.5? Where am I supposed to mention technical issues that somebody might experience with the uplay servers?

It's very much half-assed, it actually reminds me a lot like the shitty google play store rating.

I mean, what's the difficulty here? Like, it works like a regular rating system I'm sure you're familiar with. 5/5 being the highest score and 1/5 being the lowest?

If it has a shit story and crashes constantly I have no idea why you gave it a 5/5. Unless you really love all of the rest? It's subjective obviously, but the way a 5 point rating system works is no great mystery.

GoodGamerGuy · Jun 18, 2022

Review bombing is a good thing

Turnscr3w · Jun 18, 2022

cvbas said:
I mean, what's the difficulty here? Like, it works like a regular rating system I'm sure you're familiar with. 5/5 being the highest score and 1/5 being the lowest?

If it has a shit story and crashes constantly I have no idea why you gave it a 5/5. Unless you really love all of the rest? It's subjective obviously, but the way a 5 point rating system works is no great mystery.

Because it's a shlooter, and the story barely matters for people that play this genre. The crashing can be ignored, and it's really random, so I think it can be ignored by big parts of the playerbase. I just think it's a really good game, that's why I rated it 5/5.
The issue is that for a casual or a person that is unware, what the hell does a random number even mean? For me Wonderlands is a 3/5 or heck even a 2/5 game, and it doesn't have any of the issues td2 has.
On the Epic Store TD2 is rated 4.4 and Wonderlands is rated 4.6, what the fuck does this tell anyone exactly?
What's the performance, what's the end game, what's the gameplay loop, how long is the game, etc.

The Epic Games Store “Ratings and Polls” update

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