Review Bombing - Making Your Voice Heard - Extra Credits
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- Sometimes a game flops. And negative reviews are inevitable. But with the rise of aggregate review sites came a new way for consumers to let studios developers know just what they think: review bombing. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of reviews on the internet.
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For the next game episode, could you do a episode about adds for games and other things like mobile adds. Mostly the growing problem of raid shadow legends and what it is trying to do. Like Ornn from league of legends says, let your work speak for itself.
Didn't the Firewatch Dev threaten to copyright strike PewDiePie not just call him out?
Glad you guys changed your minds on loot boxes.
Yeet
im tempted to become a big patreon just to hear you trying to pronounce my name 😁
Imagine being scammed on copper and then having to engrave your complaint on a stone.
Actually Cuneiform was written in soft clay tablets which were then fired in a kiln.
Still easier than a complaint to the IRS. . .
I heard the rosetta stone was some sort of tax document, maybe about exemptions from taxes.
Hey, if you take the time to kiln-fire your complaint, it might at least be worth reading.
@@takatamiyagawa5688 It's more or less a summary of extensive tax cuts to the Egyptian priesthood and temples, and various ceremonial honours they gave the king in return. King Ptolemy V basically had to buy the priests' loyalty with this.
The PC version of Monster Hunter World: Iceborne got this real bad because their anti-cheat implementation used so much CPU processing that it caused a massive performance drop, and on weaker systems it was rendered unplayable because of it. Within the same day Capcom addressed the issues, apologized, and immediately started working on a fix which came out a few days later (or a week? I don't remember. It was very soon).
On one hand, it's fantastic that players' voices were heard and addressed, but on the other hand, no one really changed their reviews so its overall Steam score is still far lower than it should be for such an excellent expansion that you can tell a lot of love and effort was put into.
One more reason for the publishers to be absolutely sure of what they are putting out
@@filipe2338 thing is, people want games "NOW!"
@@GiordanDiodato I think Nintendo is a pretty good argument against that. They regularly delay games, and are the oldest player in the field still doing quite well for themselves.
@@GiordanDiodato Most are willing to wait. For example, a huge majority of the community understood the need for the delays of Cyberpunk 2077, a highly anticipated game.
This is why Steam also has a "recent reviews" section where you can see newer reviews, in a case like this where a game WAS bad but no longer is bad.
"Cheated By A Copper Dealer"
Copper Dealer is a VERY generous way to phrase it. Ea-Nasir was a con man and a scoundrel.
Well this proves reincarnation is real.
"The game's publisher, Electronic Arts-you know, everyone's favorite!" Not gonna lie, that made me laugh out loud!
I thought they said Electronic Farts.
EA bad gib upvotes
At the time, wasn't EA mostly liked?
@CommandoDude EC touched on that before: ruclips.net/video/Mh3FN3YCwYk/видео.html . On one hand, it sounds inspiring that some people at Electronic Arts might have seen the potential of computer games as an artistic medium all those decades ago. On the other hand, it seems a little depressing that EA is now more known for producing the least artistic of games. At least there are plenty of well-known indie and smaller studio releases using games as an artistic medium to great effect.
i remember times EA games were amazing
You are are saying "we humans" a suspicious amount of times... *narrows eyes*
Hello my fellow human being. How goes the solar cycle spent in your personal torture chamber of water and carbon known as a body?
Ageny smith get em
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, NOTHING TO BE WORRIED ABOUT FELLOW HUMAN, MOVE ALONG, WE ARE ALL HUMANS HERE.
I used to be a human like you, but then I got a human in the knee.
בני אדם
I've written "2 Player Rated M 2D Fighting Farming Sim" down in my games todo notes (0:11)
I'll try and make it for a game jam 😂
Gunnar Clovis Can’t Wait to see
Poultry Kombat?
Dragon Ball FighterZ but the characters are actual fruits and vegetables that you plant and raise lol
You and a friend try to plant crops but your crops keep on getting attacked by hellspawn
@@sanfransiscon So they're just saibamen then? :p
"Never underestimate your audience. They are generally sensitive intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment." - Cameron Mitchell, Stargate SG-1, "200"
"The audience isn't going to know the difference. They love: 'weapons at maximum.'"
- Martin Lloyd
@@winters1942 Reverse the polarity!
A person is smart, but people are dumb
Then again, the box office for 4 or 5 Michael Bay Transformers movies (I've lost track, honestly).
Though Bumblebee was amazing. Thankfully, Michael Bay was let nowhere *near* that one.
hahahHAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!
At 0:11 the release date is Walpole’s birthday
WHAAA WAS IT WALPOLE???
Good catch!
Who could've possible review bombed the game???
Walpole. It was Walpole.
A recent funny example of this was the switch version of AI: The Somnium Files getting review bombed by one person because they disliked how a few characters were handled. The fans in the discord for the writer of the game posted positive user reviews in an attempt to counteract this. Eventually Metacritic removed all the reviews from the same IP address, which got rid of all the negative reviews while keeping the positive ones the fans left. As a result, this relatively obscure visual novel is now the highest-rated Switch game on Metacritic by user reviews.
6:10 : no more signs
10 seconds later: the poor cat is relegated to holding yet another sign.
28.09.2021 - Genshin Impact is experiencing the full spectrum of this.
Okay, I need to know where that cuneiform tablet is now. It needs to be presented in a museum for all to see.
"The world's first recorded complaint"
A big step forward in our development as a species.
It's in the British Museum. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
Well, it's the first recorded review... that has survived. For all we know, there could have been many more before this, but we don't see them because they all used thermal printed receipts... 🤣
I think there also needs to be something of a distinction between review bombing and a game getting loads of negative reviews because it was bad.
I often heard about the "review bombing" of Fallout 76 and Anthem, for example, but when I looked into the reviews the vast majority did not come from angry fans who just wanted a single player game; they where about the game being a glitchy, boring disaster.
I've never played Anthem (though I maintain you don't have to play a game to know its rubbish), but the reviews of Fallout 76 where absolutely accurate in my opinion.
Reeeee! bullying!
How dare you not like our stuff. If you don't have something nice to say then don't say anything. Always be positive. Just have total faith and loyalty to the creator. You must be a loser to complain about video games instead of real life problems. Etc.
Review bombing can epically suck as a creator. My wife had some success as an indie children's ebook creator on Amazon before they bowed to the big publishers, but we had attack reviews from one particularly nasty individual (we think it may have been a shill account from another creator trying to discredit our work, but can't be sure). We reached out to Amazon and had some of the reviews taken down (the ones with actual swearing... in a children's book review), but one stuck. A single review, but because it was the first review, that particular ebook never sold much at all, despite others (even in the same series) doing pretty well. It can suck to be on the receiving end of these things.
If it's an indie creator, think about being kinder than you would to the likes of EA, because it hurts the little guy more.
Well if it actually sucks it sucks, dont think about being kinder, just be honest. ALso just because a series is doing well doesnt mean every episode is a masterpiece
Yeah I hate faceless entities more than individuals and their small group of friends most of the time. So I probably am already following your advice
especially when they are using predatory microtransactions, those need the most support
@@erikole211 theres no reason to be an asshole, not a valid one anyway. The original point still stands.
Sadly, it's because they know they have power when reviewing indie products that they don't hold back. Their goal is to destroy out of revenge. They want results in the midst of their irrational anger, they couldn't care less how their death threat affects the developer's mental health. It's appalling how monsterous people can act over such silly insecurities.
Metacritic is too easily abusable to be considered an accurate player reviewing tool, but I'll still take any Steam review with a decent playtime as valid.
Steam's anti-bombing countermeasures can be seen as overbearing when you factor in how (almost) every person has paid for the privilege to leave said review.
reforged was valid and deserved what it got.
While it is true people can write a negative review for a game for any reason after they bought it, high amounts of reviews that are irrelevant to the actual quality of a game aren’t helpful either. If a review bomb is related to something fundamentally wrong with a game itself, then that is acceptable. On the other hand, review bombs that exist in response to drama with one of the developers, isn’t valid because a review is about a game, not the outside lives of developers.
Steam reviews will be far more useful when they don't get rated up for being 'funny'.
There is still the contradiction I see in many Steam reviews when the person doing the critique has 200+ hours in the game and says that the game is horrible. That always leads me to question why did that person keep playing?!
@@andersonandrighi4539 I guess you could make arguments about how it's a game only fun with friends or it's a person protesting an update that made the game worse.
Wasn’t there a recent incident where one dude review bombed a JRPG because he had a crush on one of the characters?
You're thinking of AI: The Somnium Files, which was an adventure game, not an RPG. But yes that is a thing that happened.
Apparently he was mad that the character either wasn't as important as the trailers implied or was a victim in the story? Either way, pretty dumb
@@Arkegox I believe Tales of fans review bombed Tales of Zestiria because of what happened with its main heroine. (essentially she wasn't playable for very long... like... 4 or 5 hours, maybe?)
@@GiordanDiodato oh I was going off the previous comment that said this was in reference to AI: The Somnium Files
AI: The Somnium Files, so good even its negative reviews are praising how emotionally invested you can get in the characters.
"Fast forward to 2008, and a game called Spore" literally sent me like thousand-yard-stare flashbacks. The first online community i was ever a part of, and boy was it a mess.
Especially with all the people creating inappropriate things. Eeewww.
0/10 can't believe mat made Zoey hold a sign for 6 minutes wow never watching again
oh, I get it xD you are, like, asking to not pay attention to your comment by rating 0 out of 10
vintprox
Only a sith deals in absolutes.
@@vintprox that's not what the 0/10 meme is about at all
@@theSato who speaks about a meme? It's literally the reference to point made in this video: if you just rate 0/10, barely anyone interested in product will pay attention to such a review
(Huhu, yeah, only sith acts in absolutes: then those who also rate 10/10 are siths as well xD)
vintprox just
The interesting bit about spore creatures is... that no matter how wacky you make them they figure out how to walk and not fall over. So that is a accurate description I guess. ;)
(The procedurally generated creature editor was a marvel and really what makes the game. I still like the game even with is severely lacking gameplay just due to how awesome the editors where)
Sadly, they never allowed commercial use of the creatures you produced. I really wanted to make a small indie game with those.
still had some limitations sadly. i wanted to make a giant land-whale creature with two strong arms that dragged it's exceedingly long and fat body along the ground. buuuht due to the game physics, it's tail always kinda awkwardly floated in the air behind it. Shame.
There might actually be a market for that. A game that has similar quality like spore but is build more as a playground for use created content. Think of it like trying to make the gameplay it self use created content. The adventure expansion sort of was doing that. But in a very limited fashion. Tricky to pull off however. But Warcraft 3 did wonders with it map editor and there have been other games that embrace the modding scene to. You would likely have to bundle it with some sort of actual game to. But that can work as a tutorial piece for the true purpose of the game.
I loved that game, especially making creatures and vehicles.
This has to be the best EC episode I can recall watching. It was well written, animated, and voiced, and the coverage of the subject matter was both thorough and nuanced. I'm amazed at how well the team navigated what can be a divisive topic at times. Great work.
I believe in this, please do express your opinion. But please, don’t be a bully. We are just people who have an issue, we are not Karen from the supermarket getting the last roll of toilet paper.
People will move on to new companies "who respect them and their time more"... but EA has been on top for so long that I really doubt that. :/ It might not be how we want the world to work, but precedent speaks in favor of being shitty to your costumers, as long as you are a already a big company with lots of money for advertisement you don't have to worry about respecting the fanbase anymore... Complaining about something but continuing to buy/play it over other games, just shows the company they can ignore the complaining.
Sooner or later every king falls off his hill. Some just need a bigger push.
2:55 : No, cough into your _elbow!_ (You're wearing a long-sleeved shirt, so you actually have one.)
CORONA CORONA!!! 💀💀💀😷
...Yah confuse people, course it will reform to current events.
Cough and then lick everything in sight*
I'd say the Firewatch dev example may not be the best one. PewDiePie indeed did a Very Bad Thing and rightfully took his public lashings for it, but Sean said he was going to attack Pewds by using DMCA takedowns to try and attack his channel.
I would say abusing RUclips's systems to attack someone is far more underhanded than the public expressing their displeasure though one of the few outlets they have.
Regardless of what you think of pewdiepie, the creator of Firewatch was abusing copyright to go after pewdiepie and anyone with a negative opinion of the game. He was trying to set a dangerous precedent of developers having complete legal control of the conversations around their games and using the pewdiepie controversy as an excuse
well, pewdiepie did use racial slurs
@@fozzcraft2575 Moron
@@fozzcraft2575 so?
"Reviews" (rants) I dislike the most: "I gave the game a 0 because I think the average should be a 7 and not a 9"
That has nothing to do with reviewing a game. If you think, it should be a 7, give it a 7. If you give it a zero, you just expose yourself as a bad-behaved child.
Feels like it only compounds how useless the 1/10 metric is because gamers as a community have turned scoring connotations to be a metric of 7 through 10
a n i m e
n
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@jocaguz18 what do you mean by "Steamshitsphere"? I find that most of the games on steam (recommended, discovery queues, etc...) usually seen that they would be fun, if not for me, but for someone.
The Boi I really like your optimism and respect for obscure indie game. Most indie games that slip under the radar have heartbroken creators who would love to hear you say that to them. All they see is a commercial flop, so for someone to have a positive reaction to their game would make their day.
Just to let people know, games are made by real human beings and developers do have feelings and would like to improve. Not every game company is as greedy as EA, so if you have criticisms that you what the developers to hear, please be polite and tell them that you are willing to help them improve. Thank You~
It's easy to demonize others when you have anonymity. I doubt any of this outrage would happen if there was a more personal aspect to reviewing a product. That and most gamers have no clue what it's like to develop a game so they assume the creators are just evil and lazy and exactly like EA. Despite the fact that even EA is made up of good human beings simply doing what they're told for their paycheck. Not to excuse EAs actions, but there are plenty of decent people in said company.
It may be just me, but I have the feeling that user reviews have lost value due to bombings, orchestrated campaigns and the like. I used to rely on them a lot because they felt like actual opinions I might share (as opposed to analysis by a professional, which is valuable but somthing different), but now I often ignore them because most AAA tv series, movies or videogames have been subject to boycott, counter boycott and counter counter boycott even before release. And like I said I have a feeling that AAA companies are starting to deal with some of them as nothing more than a nuisance, a part of the job.
Review bombing is a double edged sword. It can make the company listen either directly or through convincing other players not to buy, hurting their sales. But it can also make them ignore review bombings as hateful idiots who aren't who they're selling to. Bomb wisely people.
Or you know, not bomb at all and just give an actual review.
@@nodtomodley9114 Sometimes a game is like hiroshima you don't want to drop the bomb, but if you don't the company won't change.
"People have the right to have their legitimate complaints heard."
So what decided if the complaint is legitimate enough or not? Do they need to have at least X number of hours played?
I think a far better summary would be,
"If there is something you feel is wrong, say something about it, at the very least you may find your not the only one."
"No need to scream, review bomb or be hostile about it. Just say it as clearly as you can, what is wrong and what you would do if you could to address it."
While dangerous, review bombing definitely serves as a great red flag. It's saved me quit a few things.
Angry people on the internet are a blessing and a curse.
Nintendo has had that happen to several games recently, all of them top sellers now, while there are legitimate issues in some of these games, most of the review bombing is by disgruntled fans who didn't get what they wanted or were hyping themselves for (not stuff the games themselves promised oddly enough) or by players who just generally dislike anything Nintendo. It's sad as the actual complaints that can be easily resolved issues are getting egnored because of people acting out of spoiled privilege being bullies.
it's different if the devs say they're offering something and it doesn't happen, but when a dev says they're unable to add a feature and will at a later date they don't deserve to be bullied for being honest with the players... sims 4 flashbacks are abound here as a case in point: due totime constraints they couldn't add features into the game and said they'll add them after release as they hadn't been able to fully debug them by the publishers deadline...and fans went ballistic, calling them names and other horrible things, when all they did was be honest and let players know the missing stuff was to be patched in for free when they got the bugs sorted. It's a real shame, as this responce to developers who love the franchises they work on makes them less willing to be upfront with fans about what's happening behind the scenes. Pokémon sw &sh has same problem, but the awkward communication between Japanese and English has made it more difficult - and no, it doesn’t give fans the right to abuse the game producer on twitter on photos of his wedding. That's a new low and makes me disgusted in my own fanbase.
A perfect example of this is Bethesda with Fallout 76 and how they ignored players so much now almost everyone in my gaming circles sees them as bad as ea
Hell I’d say they are even considered worse than EA since EA’s Battlefront 2 was turned around for the better while Fallout 76 was further driven into the cesspool of scummy industry practices
They had a very large goodwill buffer caused by Skyrim being many players's favorite game at the time, and burned it all up with Fallout 76. Without that goodwill, you can see that their in-house products haven't been great in a while.
They're being carried hard by Arkane and id.
People were willing to overlook the flaws in their games because those flaws weren't seen as malicious. Somehow Bethesda games had accrued a reputation for being "quirky" in their ineptitude, like a friend who's got their eccentricies but they're still your friend... but then that friend robs the house of a blind widow, and you don't want to put up with their bullshit anymore.
Imagine if Pokemon Sword and Shield got review bombed for not including maractus?
It happened, sadly it didn't worked
Imagine if they got review bombed for just being bad games
@@noahhastings6145 that's just called being reviewed
by just watching the ign review, I can tell that the review was not honest at all
Who cares about Maractus! They didn't include Ekans! Ekans is snake spelled backwards. Its the perfect pokemon
I never understood why I couldn't see spore in my library after installing a few times, makes sense now
Except that in relation to video games, companies have heard the complaints loud and clear, and refuse to do anything or even allowing themselves to get worse because of loopholes that exist in consumer protection laws.
Like bad net code?
When I complain about a Game, I try using constructive criticism instead of nagging.
It's when the companies constantly ignore my complaints that I start to get frustrated.
My problem with it is that it is too often used to reflect criticisms that aren't material to the product being sold. In a non-games example, look at what happened to the founder of The Honey Pot, where completely inappropriate and racist reviews were left that had everything to do with the race of the founder from people who'd likely never tried the product. This damages the brand through none of the issues you mentioned above, and might not be important to some consumers when evaluating a purchase.
I’ll never understand the Death Stranding review bombs
Although I agree with most of the video, my one major hold up is with the idea all players who poorly score a game need to deeply and precise explain why. Don't get me wrong, telling people to think about these things before they review something is a great practice, but the bottom line is, not everyone is as influential or well spoken as certain people tend to be.
Developers will never have the time to actually read through 10k+ multi paragraph detailed breakdowns, vastly ranging in quality. What they can do however, is read a handful of well crafted, thought out, and written critics of their product, then look at the huge number of down votes or dislikes backing those feelings up.
I defiantly agree however people should cut out the more mmm.... edgy humour and insults, and leave the vocalization of their criticisms to ones that are primarily constructive in nature. This could be said for all industries, but especially the game one. This is an industry that exists to provide entertainment, and even art. Keep the severity of their actions contextualized to the world around you, there are companies and people who's actions have far greater negative effect, perhaps direct your energy their.
As part of the more reasonable part of the community that tries to properly express and care for video games and the quality they have: I much appreciate that this video was made from a middle point of view, not condemning gamers like a shapeless bulk of anger and unconstructive swearing while also recognizing some of the problems and less "ethical" side of the things some publishers/indies indulge on
I was honestly expecting another "defense of loot crates" or "playing as Nazis will make people follow their horrible ideology" style video. I was pleasantly wrong and I'm sorry for automatically assuming the worst.
It is absolutely reasonable to request that people put time and effort into a review, whether positive or negative. It's meant to be a platform for constructive criticism, and what's constructive about "boo, itz bad"? And thank you for likewise tackling the industry for simply ignoring their customer's wishes and continuing to shell out swill.
* coughcough * EA * coughcough *
...This coulda gone down real bad. I'm glad it didn't, and that we managed to make our way through the episode about Review Bombing *without* prompting review bombs.
I want to use the occasion to bring awareness to the horror game Devotion, made by a Taiwanese game company and a well crafted game with that. This game, who received very positive reviews, was a victim of review bombing: when an easter egg poking fun of a murderous dictator was discovered, mind slaves thrashed the entire game with so many very negative reviews on Steam that it was taken DOWN, straight up censored out of the Internet. The studio took away all download links and apologized in self-censorship in a democratic part of the world.
i think that was mostly papa south mongolias doing more so than any group of individuals
For anyone else interested in this game and it's history Super Eyepatch Wolf did a PHENOMENAL video on it and I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely intrigued.
You're talking about " Winnie the pooh", aren't you.
Spot Emmitt Nervend 3 times in this episode!
I'm surprised there wasn't a mention about review bombing for console exclusives. It's annoying to see because there is nothing valid about the criticism since they haven't played the game.
It's funny how people hate console exclusives but not PC exclusives. Really that shit is just unjustified.
@@PoggoMcDawggo Some games only make sense on PC, like an RTS or CRPG. When a console exclusive makes sense, like motion control games exclusive to the Wii for example, it's not nearly as controversial. When a game is made exclusive solely for market reasons, it's natural that people feel cheated.
I like how you wanted to skirt the loot boxes mention like we don't remember.
Positive review bombing happens too. I know you touched on it but it happens when social networks have two groups warring over a piece of content. It's especially bad when one side of the war is given special treatment (not being moderated) over the other (getting mass deleted). Rotten Tomatoes is a great example of that.
This reminded me of the national Dex backlash. There were better ways to voice our complaints rather than sending the devs death threats.
The hate towards Cyberpunk was completely idiotic.
A strong majority of the complaints were petty and illegitimate.
You had people complaining about the title's name, people complaining about their own health issues, people complaining about the trailer killing off someone.
Yep
Prediction before watching: EC will talk about Review Bombing initially from the consumer side of things and why it happens before ultimately arguing that review bombing is bad and we should all stop doing it.
Update: Hm. Way more reasonable than I anticipated. Pleasantly surprised on that one.
The reputation of review bombing really goes down when it’s for stupid reasons like ‘women in my videogame? OUTRAGEOUS’
Yea that happens a lot these days. That's why I don't like review bombing in general. Too many toxic assholes clutching their pearls over insignificant things.
or those who complain about it being a "walking simulator"
...when 99% of games are walking simulators
@@electricangel4488 ok conservaturd
"Check out my ClayFighter sprite comic on Geocities."
Jesus... called out.
RUclips Recommendations: We cool?
Extra credits,1k vids: Yeah, we cool!
Oversimplified, 14vids: Dude , Uncool :(
Oversimplified is great and all, but they've been only been doing it for 3 years. Though one point in OS's favor is the percentage of Views to subs is much higher than EC's. Oh and OS has more subs.
well 38 million views on a world war 2 video is really good
And 1 million views on 380 war videos is better than that ;)
Is this a riddle
Toonrick12 plus, Oversimplified doesn’t push out new videos very often.
"Moh wuhk." Well played. Made me chuckle.
Good video, but was hoping you would touch on a few more examples of bad review bombing, like when players try to maliciously bring down a game’s metacritic score a la Breath of the Wild and Fire Emblem Three Houses, or when players review bomb simply because a popular game isn’t on a system they like, such as Astral Chain.
or Cory in the House, which is the opposite.
I read the title as “Review Bombing: Making Your Voice Extra Heard”
One problem that can come from review bombing is how a game’s review score is impacted in the long run, even if most of the game’s problems are fixed.
Take for example Battlefront 2 EA, it was a game that was bombed for very good reason on release, as the pay to win lootbox system was atrocious. But now that system is all but gone and the game’s current state is fun and something even better than what I expected, not to mention it still is getting constant free updates that add a lot. Much of the negative reviews don’t give an accurate picture of what the game is like and people who might really enjoy the game could be turned away by problems that don’t exist in the product they are buying.
That's why Steam implemented recent ratings and overall ratings
meh, it still deserves to fail. The tactic of putting in pay to win systems and then patching them out is getting more popular. Middle Earth Shadow of War did this too and people fell for it hook line and sinker. You make a faulty game on purpose, screw over your player base, drain your whales and then pretend you're the good guy for fixing it.
Releasing broken games and fixing them 2 years later is not something to be admired
Bi$harp I am not saying that you should, it is just that people looking to buy a game don’t really care about an issue that was only present at launch. These issues should be definitely mentioned, but it really doesn’t matter much to new players coming into the game, since all they are looking for is if the game they are going to play currently is fun or not, not if it was fun or not fun in the past.
I'm reminded of the time a restaurant took the #1 spot on tripadvisor for restaurants in London through fake reviews. It was called "The Shed at Dulwich", and it cast itself as ludicrously exclusive and hard to get a booking for, while in reality, the reason it was hard to get a booking was that it didn't even exist.
"Humans, or at the very least, GLaDOS pretending to be one" Isn't that how Valve does everything nowadays?
Finally! I hope more video games get the proper exposure that they deserve
As someone who had to go to Arbitration over stalking and harassment that a particular developer encouraged and supported as a way to silence criticism of their dodgy practices (Portalarium, and one excessively unhinged backer and an RMT in their community, see my video channel), and said company didn't even turn up to the Arbitration but continued to claim they were part of the system even though I had the legal paperwork showing they got booted from it, this video from EC is well meaning, but doesn't grasp just how stacked against the individual the process is...
Firstly, the media won't pick up the story unless it's one with a large enough audience, and doesn't cross any ideological boundaries; I have plenty of responses from reporters who would have liked to have covered my experience, but couldn't get it past their editors due to relative smallness of the company involved, and the fact that Richard Garriott is still beloved by many, even though he's long since checked out of actual game development. Add on top of that the desperate and obsessive gaslighting that goes on when lunatics target you online; you have to be very, very careful you don't have your name blackened before the media discovers you... but the first thing the lunatics do is try and shut down your ability to respond; I had the RMT in Shroud attempt to shut down my Steam account (and more) by using his real name on Kotaku, then using quoting him under it elsewhere as evidence I was stalking HIM, relying upon the Mods there not knowing it was his public user name at Kotaku (and not taking the time to check). My insane stalker in the meantime was forging claims of sexism, racism etc and trying to pretend to be me on other forums... You've got to somehow stay squeeky clean to have a chance of being heard.
Even if you get coverage, the story then has to go viral for it to have any chance of gaining enough public pressure to get the company to act. Lootboxes in Battlefront did because everyone is sick of EA (And I've worked for them, so I agree!) and Star Wars is a huge franchise. But compare that to the Mobile market now, where tiny companies with throwaway products have turned the entire system into a nightmare because no one was paying attention until it was far, far too late.
Now as mentioned, I have a lawyer I can name and paperwork I can point too; I've offered to give it to Steam to show how "look, they clearly have a deliberately false EULA claiming coverage they don't have any more", but without any of the above, nothing is done. Why defend one truthful user, when there's still money to be made from misdirecting hundreds more?
And that's before you even get to the difficulty of locating and prosecuting someone sending rape and death threats through the actual legal system...
The EC video above doesn't condemn people for review bombing, indeed expresses a lot of understanding of why people do it; but misses why people are so angry about it; I can only imagine how many people have TRIED to do the right thing through the gaming industry as is before me, and been equally frustrated and powerless. It's all well and good expecting people to be polite and decent in their criticism, until you've seen the toxicity and absolute lack of concern when you do.
I wasn't involved in the firewatch review bomb, but it wasn't because the dev came out against pewdiepie. It was because he had abused the DMCA to take pewdiepies lets play of his game down under false pretenses. I think its important to not oversimplify that to the point of obscuring the intention; you made it seem like the review bomb was pro slur, when it was really anti abusing copyright.
When publishers or developers make it impossible for people to give you feedback in more accessible ways, only YOU are responsible for having your product review bombed. Unless it’s actually unjustified review bombing, which then I feel for the developer.
6:23 No. Another sign. You betrayed her.
So, which EC member can wrestle?
You can tell when Nick has done the art for an episode when there's a wrestling shout out. - A
EC wrestling tournament when? My money's on Zoey. Definitely Zoey.
1:15 Start laughing. Ad before the video was a "Will Wright Teaches Game Design and Theory - MasterClass".
Same here. I wonder if he covers that DRM problem in that series?
Because the crew at EC have connections to the games industry, I expected them to take a more principled stance against review bombing, but instead they took a nuanced stance talking about it's positive and negative aspects without trying to demonize anyone side in their entirety. Well done Extra Credits.
2:19 Nice one with that clock *λ*
2:19 - 2:40 . I guess we know why Fallout76's steam reviews magically became mostly positive in a day:
And sometime are review bombs kinda… dumb?
If I remember correctly was there a review bomb of the original Darkest Dungeon during early access, when they added corpses and heart attacks as a feature.
People review bombed it because "I don't like change". :/
I don't think the firewatch pewdiepie bombing isnt entirely fair. A lot of people had problems with firewatch retroactively enforcing copyright strikes and setting a dangerous precedent. And not because the firewatch dev was going after pewdiepie
You forgot to mention the Boarderlands 2 review bombing on steam after they threw people under the bus
I gotta ask, what happened there?
@@GiordanDiodato essentially the publisher decided to go exclusive on the Epic store, people didn't like it and the Gearbox ceo decided to be a bitch and insulted the player base so the players review bombed all Boarderlands games amd DLCs.
This whole topic reminds me of the Dynasty Warriors 9 Hate-Train-Hype.
The game had issues when published on PC and a few on Consoles during launch. Some of us in the Koei Tecmo Community were trying our best to explain the issues, but most of our reviews were buried underneath a slope of Hate commentary that didn't even provided any insights on the problem.
Most of the comments within the first month of release were just people barking and swearing up a storm about issues already taken care of.
It was just uncalled for and blew something out of proportion for no reason at all.
Regarding the intro here's Banksy on Graffiti (in the specific context of vandalising adverts):
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
F*ck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs."
Another issue with review bombing is that sometimes people who didn't think the game was that bad will deliberately give it a higher score than they think it deserves in order to "balance out" the negative reviews. This can lead to the responses to a game seeming a lot more polarized than they really are.
Nowadays it feels like review bombing is the only way to get the attention of certain companies. And even then they usually hear only a part of our complaints.
then you have problems
@@GiordanDiodato orrr that company has problems
You know, part of that could be because a lot of people don't bother to voice complaints where the devs can see it.
Rather they vent on forums where its convention for them, even when the company has their own, or have an official Twitter account.
That hop on the podium and head pat animation was the cutest thing EC has ever animated.
Make sure to give an honest review, but be polite but firm if there is an issue.
The only reason for review bombing to exist is because companies deliberately close all communication channels with their players. Just explaining the issues normally does not work, many studios just dismiss it. But review bombing directly affects their bottom line, so it has an effect. This is the result of the relationship many AAA publishers *choose* to build with gamers. If they want better ones, they need to take the initiative to build bridges.
I can't believe you didn't mention the best part about the cuneiform complaint: It wasn't the only complaint discovered. In fact, it wasn't the only complaint towards that merchant discovered. And all of the tablets were discovered in a building that is believed to be the merchants HOUSE. So either this man was just a terrible businessman OR he liked saving the complaints made against him which would probably make him the world's first recorded troll.
No man's sky is a case study in understanding reviews
Valve's somewhat extreme anti-review-bombing measures draw a lot of flak, but I think in many cases, it's because people want to use reviews as a platform for *any* opinion about a game, not just reviews, and it frustrates them to feel they can't. The thing is that a review is an analysis, be it brief or in depth, of the quality of a game. It's an accounting of what you liked or didn't like about the game itself. Others can use this information to help gauge the likelihood this game is one they would purchase. If, for example, someone posts a negative review of a game based on, say, something its publisher did on social media, then they haven't actually written a review. They've written a call-out post, dropped into the hole where a review is supposed to go. It's like writing to a company's technical support department to complain about its business practices. And if a "review" isn't a review, it has no place being included among reviews. That's not to say these complaints are inherently unjustified in any way, of course. It might be a perfectly fair thing to call a developer or publisher out on. But it's still a misuse of a system that damages its usefulness and purpose.
And to those who would protest, "Then where else am I supposed to make myself heard?" Not Valve's problem. No one's obligated to let someone else paint a message on the side of their house because that person can't figure out anywhere else to display it. Now, all that being said? This is all, perhaps wrongly or naively, assuming that Valve really is consistent in applying this system to separate sheep from goats. If a review arrives as part of a wave of wider sentiment towards a game, and it truly is a review that actually examines the game unto itself, and gets cordoned off, then that's a misapplication of this solution, and the defensibility of the system falls apart. Is that routinely happening? Not that I know of, but I can't defend it if it is.
1:06 : Too soon... Riot Games closing down all their League of Legends forums and deleting the archives... >
Hope that isn't about to happen with twelve years of forums for Star Vault's Mortal Online. They're planning on coming out with Mortal Online 2, and it's possible they'll want a 'fresh start' to all the conversation about them.
To be fair, the boards barely worked at all and was mostly just low-effort spam and low-effort complaints. Any real discussion was on reddit and the champion specific subreddits.
@@leetri : Closing them makes sense... but completely removing the archives too? The cost to maintain them is close to nothing. And especially controversial in removing them after the whole Pendragon Dota-Allstars forum archive deletion years ago. Just a weird move from Riot and something that destroyed so much awesome information out there.
That Leetri Guy Yeah this is what people missed about that. League's subreddit isn't an amazing avenue for voicing things, but the official forums were *awful*. It felt like all of the later top-level posts was pure shit-taking, and I get people get upset, but many just boiled down to "waah why can't everything be perfectly balanced and then leave it", not realizing that's both nearly impossible with champ/item releases and hurts player engagement by causing staleness.
oh god, it's Emmitt Nervend.
...Paper Mario: The Origami King?
please do not virtually hurt me
Review Bombing helped to save DOOM Eternal from Denuvo.
Just throwin that out there.
Oh this is applicable to soooooooooooooooo many things.
People review bomb because they dislike the game, think the developers are shitty, or both, likely one leading to the other.
Hasbro got reviewed bombed by the entire D&D community
WC3: Reforged's EULA deserves a video all of its own for how greedy it was.
When the game released people were shocked to learn that the EULA demands that every custom game creator: "assign to Blizzard all of your rights, title, and interest in and to all Custom Games, including but not limited to any copyrights in the content of any Custom Games." Unlike other mod related EULAs, this one claims exclusive ownership, meaning that if a fan makes a map with original work and then later attempts to use their own original work elsewhere (art, characters, game-play mechanics ect) Blizzard may take legal action.
In the past Blizzard has attempted to press copyright claims on developers who recreated or adapted custom maps from WC3. For example their legal dispute with Valve over the game DotA2, which they seem to have lost since Valve released Dota2 successfully. It seems that Blizzard is attempting to sure up future legal proceedings with this new EULA so that they will own exclusive rights to the next "big thing".
Luckily this ploy was exposed almost immediately which caused a huge backlash and a mass exodus by those interested in creating WC3 custom games. In their short sighted attempt to profit from the love, dedication and free labor of their player-base, they essentially killed the custom map community in the cradle.
Bullying the owners of shitty companies is always valid
This discussion to applies to politics in a lot of ways. Persuasive voices are heard more often than loud ones there, too.
Whiles I agree with the sentiment, it is sadly easy for calm, persuasive voices to be ignored/not noticed at all.
The distinction between review bombs and just reviews seems to be getting lost. The AC Unity one was just they did a good, and got good reviews, and the Warcraft one is bad game gets bad review. They're not review bombs, they're just reviews. The Firewatch vs. Pewdiepie example is a good example, that was some bullshit.
SImCIty (2013) received so much criticism for its flaws, and EA did so little to respond, that it eventually gave birth to its biggest competitor: Cities Skylines.
Can we get a be game where I can pet Zoey, she looks so adorable yet I’m allergic.
Vex Well... will it help if you know that they sell a Zoey plush?
If you're review bombing a game that you haven't bought or played, that is not OK.
Giving away assassin’s creed unity for free was one hell of a PR move.
Surprised you missed Pokemon Sword and Shield in your list of Review Bombed games