some of the reasons there are absolutely diabolical
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I know, it's been a great source. Seeing how bizarre, saddening and upsetting some of the cases are.
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this is actually very useful, thank you for sharing
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One of my favorite curators! Actually providing useful information
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I have to admit, I'm quite surprised by how good and informational this is. Thanks for the heads up ,mate !
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They're great. The owner is in constant battle with the character limit, but he does a great job digesting matters into a short brief explanation, along with citations if you want to give anything else a read up.
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I'm happy to see that they track both negative and positive bombing.
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Hmm:
Positive Review Bomb
Reason: In order to get the DLC for the game for free, players had to write a positive review for the game
Isn't this called review manipulation and a reason to get a game banned?
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Sadly there are still many games that were never banned for this.Games that have positive reviews from fresh Steam accounts that own only that single game etc.
I think Steam does not care as much as it should about trash games and fake games and fake reviews.
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They do, but it's selectively enforced, which is annoying. If the games aren't making money, are trashware, and not from China, then they'll do it to gain some favor and positive PR, but that's it.
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Yes, it's theorized that the games are consistently Chinese developers, and they seem to have a different set of rules due to governance over there. So instead, those get flagged as off-topic.
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Yes, it's great, positive review bombs never get flagged because, of course, developers/publishers don't want them to be removed from the aggregated score, because it helps them. Definitely gives the curator an edge over Steam's own system.
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Good for having context for negative and positive bombing, with archived source. Some reviews bombing are stupid or just broke steam rules
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Don't have time to go through all of this, but the most recent one:
Godot engine “Negative Review Bomb
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9/29/24-
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Reason: Some people are upset at Godot's tweet that said "Apparently game engines are woke now? Well then, we won't complain." in a jesting manner. ”
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is uhhh... misleading. People were upset because the community mod behind that tweet also mass-banned 'in a jesting manner' a lot of users asking to keep politics out of game engine. Godot donors as well. Then the board made it even worse but I won't dwell on this here.
Makes you wonder right away if other reviews with reasons behind review bombings (be it positive or negative) are as deep as that one.
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That tweet was the instigation of it all. Curators are capped at 200 characters, so only so much can be diluted into that brief explanation. The curator links an archived news article that goes into more depth.
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That tweet was the instigation of it all.
Not really, the following actions of the person behind that tweet were the instigation, not the tweet itself. Very different.
It's pointless to state a reason behind review bombing in 200 characters then if curator can't provide a full context with detailed explanation (via own website or Steam group at least), not to mention that many games (like Warframe from the list) have several cases of review bombings throughout their lifespan.
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Again, they link articles with more details, hence full context is given.
If you just don't like the curator, fine, I'm not here to change your mind.
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I think it's more just to let people know that review bombing happened, so that they look at the reviews through a different light. It's not that much about giving background to each of the incidents.
I'm sure many of the other examples skip over a lot of background information too.
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I scrolled through the reviews a bit more and noticed something even more interesting.
Informational 6 December, 2019
Negative Review Bomb 8/30/2019 Reason: Alec Holowka, one of the game's coder and designer, was accused of abuse and sexual assault
But if you browse through said negative reviews you'd see they are actually in support of Alec Holowka and how he was falsely accused by Zoe Quinn and how he was betrayed by his close friends.
No mentions of him taking his own life a few days after the accusation, too. But they had no problems mentioning a suicide in another review though:
Informational 22 August
Negative Review Bomb 5/4/24-5/9/24 Reason: Game implemented an Anti-cheat (players were not happy about it) that lead to a C2 content creator (Soter Dave) getting banned, he then took his own life.
Skipping is one thing, twisting facts to fit one's narrative is another. Yeah no, fuck that curator lol.
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"On Monday, Holowka was accused of physical and emotional abuse by game designer and writer Zoë Quinn. In the following days, a colleague of Holowka’s claimed he had jeopardized her role on a game after she had rejected “romantic advances,” and the Night in the Woods team announced it had cut ties with the developer based off “allegations [that] are extremely plausible and just about all of it we’ve corroborated with other sources.”"
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Should I even remind you how cancel culture worked back then and how people tend to jump to conclusions? The whole Depp accusations by Heard maybe, and how pretty much everyone in the industry turned their backs on Depp just to be safe? And how did it end?
Forgot about this piece of information? If her actions contradict her statement already then the whole story is nowhere near 'extremely plausible' and should be thoroughly investigated instead. By authorities even, considering her accusations led to a suicide. We may never know the truth sadly.
Even if we toss the whole story aside, that curator makes it sound as if the people targeted Alec in their review bombing. Which isn't true once again. So yeah, it's a very twisted 'review' withholding key pieces of information.
P.S. By the way, just checked my stats out of curiosity and apparently I've been blacklisted by five people in the span of one day. Very in line with my first sentence.
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Alec acting in ways consistent with the allegations was a poorly kept secret in the industry which people have since shared their accounts of. In addition, Alec would often use the threat of suicide to manipulate people. By my mind, this was an inevitable outcome since those threats become a reality at some point if nobody intervenes and sometimes even if they do.
And victims of abusive relationships often have inconsistencies in their timelines and even their accounts, as a result of the extreme circumstances they find themselves in. Lying in order to live becomes baked into how they cope with the abuse. It does make sense that there would be conflicting timelines and an inability to just stick to definites.
Something I once read on the topic reads as such: "Lying often becomes a survival strategy. It serves as a coping mechanism to navigate a world that may have been unpredictable and threatening."
Now personally, I find that 'review bombing' is an overused and often incorrect statement/term. A lot of times, games receive a flurry of negative reviews as a result of shit launches, technical issues, and so on. And those are also now characterized as review bombing. Which is false. It's just actually "reviewing". This group however seems to focus on games where Steam intervened to flag reviews mass posted on a false or unrelated premise, such as people bombing a game that has a female lead or games that allegedly launder money for Russia or Ukraine or games with news such as the one we're discussing, and so on, where actual review bombing did take place.
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Oh, as far as being blacklisted goes, who cares? You'd get blacklisted for saying you breathe air. Nobody canceled you though. That would be another term people completely misuse.
Personally, I'll never know who blacklists me unless they directly say so, and I have SG set to only show giveaways I am able to enter, so I'll never have a clue about what I'm missing, lol.
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I don't know the whole story, but the Chivary 2 reason is sad.
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I wasnt aware of any of that. Nothing in gaming could ever justify the loss of a life but how could devs ever predict that? Still i dont get people being mad at an anti-cheat(unless ultra invasive)- i mean the troubled banned player aside(clearly already in a bad place regardless)...
Anyone more aware of the situation- my take is the backlash is likely moved by cheaters thenselves? Or did the backlash only start after said banned creator did that?
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I agree. Devs certainly shouldn't be blamed for what happened, as you say, no one can ever predict something that tragic would happen.
I think the bomb was moved by people who, understandably, were quite emotional after what had happened and needed an outlet, and they chose user reviews.
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Happy Cake day! 🍰
Edit:
Forwarding Calibr3 wishes to u aswell ^ ^
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It is! I really should make a note of the day instead of being surprised every year!
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I love that one review in which a game got "positive" review bombed because to get the DLC for Free, you have to review the game positively.
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Hey guys,
I just wanted to share a neat curator/group that keeps track of all of the review bombs happening/that have happened on Steam and then gives reasoning and timespans for those wanting extra input on why and when review bombs happen.
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36308017/
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Review_Bomb_Tracking
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