Don't forget that you probably only checked those reviews in the English language. Switch to Russian and you'll see positive reviews only. So it isn't Steam's rating calculation that is flawed. Which is no claim that you should trust those numbers, considering several issues with how reviews get there.
Comment has been collapsed.
I've noticed this with a lot of bad Russian games, mostly negative reviews in English, but enough positive reviews in Russian to make up for it. Is there some form of nationalism going on, or am I missing something here? Must suck for the people in Russia who make good games as well, as it makes it harder to trust reviews of Russian titles.
Comment has been collapsed.
I've looked at some of the reviews for some of the games in the past, expecting to see bots and paid reviews, but many of them seems genuine. But they seem to be very lenient with flaws. Google translated some, and got things like "The game was not very good and was very buggy but it has potential".
Comment has been collapsed.
This thing was used to be done either by hand or through unknowing proxies, like the Original Groups setup, where the admin distributes free keys as gifts and the users are expected to write any kind of positive reviews. it is slower but a lot more genuine, although can lead to even more obviously forced feedback.
Then they realised that botting is cheaper and yields a lot faster results.
Still, at least some of these are just low-life game publishers, but still publishers. Not the mob using Steam for money laundering (which is a thing).
Comment has been collapsed.
Don't forget that Steam shows "helpful" reviews only.
If they somehow downvote their own fake positive reviews en masse, they will never show up (but are still counted).
Comment has been collapsed.
"Review system on Steam is badly broken"
There, fixed it for you.
Comment has been collapsed.
This could be the explanation why the game has 93% of positive reviews while there is at least 38 negative ones from 62 counting... Those numbers are totally wrong. There should be at least the right number after the percentage of how many reviews are really counting.
Comment has been collapsed.
Everyone is voting up the negative reviews so they are showing up on the top.
There is something wrong with viewing the reviews though. I have noticed this on many games. The game will say it has like 100 reviews and you go to the bottom of the page, click "view all reviews", then click "all languages" on the top and it only shows you like 10 reviews. I don't understand this. I have noticed this the most on new games that look very bad, but have a lot of good reviews.
Edit: Oh, I missed where you said you were looking at reviews in the past 30 days. That is definitely broken because if you scroll down and look at the review dates, most of them are not from the last 30 days. They are showing you all reviews.
Edit 2: If you view all reviews in all languages, sorted by most recent, it only shows 3 reviews from the pats 30 days, but the games says there has been 62. That seems broken as well.
Comment has been collapsed.
Nope, it's just a bunch of bot and paid groups doing friends only reviews. They don't show up for everyone, but they are counted in the stats. This is how you can easily drag up the percentage, but it can bleed out when somebody scrolls down to read a few, since the negatives will be featured on top.
Comment has been collapsed.
I saw a giveaway here the other day and I commented on it for the same reason. It looked like a complete trash game and it was only released less than 3 days ago, yet it already had something like 100 or 200 reviews that were like 98% positive. I tried to view all the reviews in all languages, but I could only see a total of 10.
Comment has been collapsed.
sigh Sadly, it is an organised thing. One such group was recently busted and community banned (although in reality it was one Thai who set up a thousand fake accounts and a Russian developer who paid for his services), but that one was really bad at covering the tracks (had a good setup though, just poor execution). These things, well, they have been around since Greenlight, and will probably be around. And they are just the worst of this practise, the organised half.
Comment has been collapsed.
Kind of like this very obvious one that was posted yesterday: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/9qXBL/
Edit: Or is that the one you were talking about?
Comment has been collapsed.
I saw that post yesterday, but didn't realize there was an update till you just mentioned it. I'm happy steam is at least doing something about it. Hopefully they will work harder to crack down on it since it does hurt steams reputation.
Comment has been collapsed.
I wish we had the option to see review scores WITHOUT Russians' scores.
If some dev were to say he wouldn't integrate the Russian language, they'd drain him in negative reviews. I really can't trust that system.
Comment has been collapsed.
It seems that the positive reviews are brainwashing people successfully.
Posted on June 6th: "Best game ever. I would highly recommend it. Story was amazing. The axe murder scene was brutal and gory. Not for the faint of heart. I recommend putting your headphones to super high so you can hear the real story. "
And yeah, it was a real account.
Comment has been collapsed.
Seems like the system needs many improvements. And I understand there is many fake reviews. But those numbers in the descriptions are definitely lying. How can a game have 93% of positive reviews of 62 recent ones when there is 38 negative recent one reviews I can see and read? Who is doing the math for them?
Comment has been collapsed.
I know, but it says that 93% of 62 recent reviews are positive. But I can see and read 38 negative recent ones. Even if all those other reviews were positive it cannot go over 39% (24 of 62) of positive reviews. They are lying with the percentage or with how many reviews are counting towards the percentage and then the majority of those other reviews is hidden.
Comment has been collapsed.
Seeing the recent reviews are tricky because the reviews are usually ordered by how helpful they are marked, also look at the overall rather, 70 % of 200 are positive, and you can see at the bottom there are 141 positive reviews and 59 negatives, thus equalling a positive review ratio of 70.5%
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, the total numbers are ok. And the recent ones probably too. After clicking on Load more of recent ones reviews it shows all the reviews no matter how old they are. So it seems there is only a very small fraction of those reviews visible in English and all those other positive (and many fake) reviews are in different language(s), like you said.
The conclusion is: don't rely on those percentages at all and read the reviews if you want to find anything meaningful about these games.
Comment has been collapsed.
62 Comments - Last post 5 minutes ago by bromax333
53 Comments - Last post 50 minutes ago by truthfullybug
252 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by WaxWorm
291 Comments - Last post 6 hours ago by JX8
795 Comments - Last post 9 hours ago by FranckCastle
364 Comments - Last post 9 hours ago by Zepy
44 Comments - Last post 10 hours ago by IronKnightAquila
51 Comments - Last post 1 minute ago by SHIV
544 Comments - Last post 13 minutes ago by yourshk
1 Comments - Last post 14 minutes ago by chairmankao
33 Comments - Last post 23 minutes ago by OurMajesty
96 Comments - Last post 36 minutes ago by ChimChakMan
9,620 Comments - Last post 43 minutes ago by CurryKingWurst
42 Comments - Last post 48 minutes ago by coleypollockfilet
For example My Bones - the review system says 93% of the 62 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive. But when I look down on the reviews there is 20 negative ones from 20 under the title Most Helpful Reviews In the past 30 days. That's utterly nonsensical and impossible to be true both at the same time. I saw lots of other games with the same bug. What is going on in here. Any ideas?
EDIT: After clicking on Recent and Load more reviews there is 38 negative ones and only 10 positive ones. That is really far from 93% positive.
Comment has been collapsed.