Fishy?
Be it there or here or elsewhere the guiding rule is where there's smoke there's fire...
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They (well I only looked at 3 of them) all own 2 games and have reviewed both of them...which as you mentioned are by the same developer. They haven't even set up their steam profiles? Yeah looks fake. There aren't that many reviews, so odds are that without those "reviews", it would swing from mostly positive to mixed.
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These are usually the reviews of the Original Trader Group: they receive or extort some keys from the devs and in return they must write positive reviews. Only the average IQ is so low there that they don't even idle the game for enough time and write the same generic few sentences everywhere.
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I have read a bit about the OTG situation before but there it seemed to me the devs are mostly the victims (give us keys or we will write negative reviews). If they would give in and in return get positive reviews (without asking for it, just to avoid getting fake negative reviews) the devs wouldn't be to blame. I don't see a way to tell if the reviews are made by new OTG accounts or not so it could still just be the dev.
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Don't be too naive: most indie devs would gladly jump on the chance to get a bunch of mindwashed drones flood their game page with positive reviews; most users are too lazy to scroll down so they only see the rating and that's all. Some indie devs are cool guys, but the indie video game market has always been the home of the shadiest, most immoral people in the industry.
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You just saw more of the good side of the indie development. But even Steam is flooded with exploiters and downright scammers. And it is nothing compared to what is going on in the old shareware, now shovelware segment, which is either literally a money laundering process, a bunch of crooks, or at best some totally inept people pushing out the worst broken stuff for almost no money in hopes of fooling some people. (And it works, as it had been working since the early eighties.)
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That's… that's not really how it worked for most of the cases.
Many games were completed in a week or less, then just crammed onto compilation casettes, floppies, and later CDs and sold for a quick buck. The Eastern block has been and still is notorious for that. You know the game Big Rigs over the Road Racing? It is one of the most widely known examples of that. (The current equivalent on Steam are games like Uncrowded, Predator Simulator, and so on.)
And when the little guy was nice, do you know the deals they had? Supply the first episode/shareware version freely to make a contract, hand over the source code, will be paid only after the first x thousand units sold and even after that 5% for every one thousand climbing maybe 2%/1000…
If they even paid. Look up Crystal Interactive, also known as Xing Interactive. They (and by "they" I mean the single person behind it) has been notorious for not paying for published games, either hiding behind contracts or nothing at all; and most of the game he takes and makes are represented by a Steam game too, called Mystery of the Flying Dutchman, which starts by putting up a starting store page image that is stolen from another game. (And this also symbolises Steam quality control: the game has been reported for fraudulent marketing and copyright infringement a million times and it is still available.)
And the funny thing is? Xing is among the "trusted" shovelware distributors. The Russian one-man companies registered under fake addresses are still worse.
This is the actual story behind your starving nice shareware developers, sadly. And they are the ones who were lucky and had a real contract and maybe some money.
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Post this on reddit /r/Steam /r/pcmasterrace
It wouldn't be the first time that reddit brings something fishy at Valve attention
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When i read reviews i usually read the ones giving the worst. That gives me the best idea of what flaws the game might have. And then i look how many good/bad reviews it has. 1 review for or against doesn't change anything. It would be something else if there were 100 if not 1000 of fake reviews
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As I wrote I found 7 possibly fake reviews for each of the two games and there might be more hidden. For Crow that's rougly 10% and for Abducted even 30%. As BongoGT wrote: "[...] odds are that without those "reviews", it would swing from mostly positive to mixed."
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True but I see a line crossed when they start lying. Fake reviews are exactly that: Lies. I don't think people would accept it if there would be a fake seal on the package of a product so why should fake reviews be acceptable? I know you are just stating that this is the status quo in the industry but sometimes I am just fed up with their lies.
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I am SHOCKED that there would be questionable reviews on Steam! ;P
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The world is full of dishonest people. Plenty of businesses do the same thing to get good reviews on google and yelp what have you. Though for businesses I can sympathize to an extent because people are far more likely to review a business when they've had a bad experience than when they've had a good one.
As for the games on Steam, a little less sympathy because they are delivering a product, not a service. I would give just a tiny bit benefit of the doubt for Abducted since it's early access. They may genuinely want to get a community involved to help them develop and fix bugs but people often give a thumbs down because of those bugs, seemingly forgetting that that is precisely why it's early access. But considering the growing number of cases of early access scammer the padded reviews could just as easily be seen as a warning sign as well.
All in all, I'd say the reviews are fishy but the developers seem trustworthy for the moment with a moderately active Facebook/Twitter feed (though it has been a while since a post on either) so proceed with caution. If you noticed this because you were thinking about getting the game then try to get in touch with the devs first before making a purchase.
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Thanks for your post. I am indeed interested in both games but the reason for creating this thread was mostly to check if my conclusion is correct as I have seen more of this kind of reviews lately. Concerning Early Access titles I agree that negative reviews by people expecting a complete game can be a serious issue and I feel for honest developers who have to fight with this. I still wouldn't find it acceptable to create fake positive reviews in those cases as it would still be cheating. There are other ways (like promotions) to deal with it. It's the hard but right way.
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Sadly, there's plenty of devs who pulls this crap, don't let it get to you too much. If the game is actually shit their stupid shill reviews will be drowned in negatives soon enough and they won't even get anyone's money since people will just refund it.
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As a general rule, I ignore good reviews. There will always be someone that likes it. I read the negative reviews, see WHY they disliked it, and decide whether those points would detract from my experience. The actual numbers (percent positive, or #/10 on pro reviews) are pretty meaningless.
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There is no filter, good and bad reviews are, usually, full of garbage. Steam allows you, as an user, to say if a review is being useful or not and, also, if its funny (because there is a lot of reviews that are trying to be funny, no an actual review and I'm 100% ok with that).
Problem is you can't sort the reviews on the % of "usefulness", just positive, negative or funny. System its a mess right now, it won work properly.
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This was a good game.
1 person found this review funny
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Lately I ran into at least three games with multiple reviews I found questionable because they were one-liners and the person writing it owned very few games. I suspect they might be fake and I would like to hear your thoughts about it.
Please stay decent and limit your actions to exchanging information instead of starting a witch hunt.
I don't remember the first game but another one was Abducted. What caught my eye is the following:
The amount of reviews I found questionable is 7 for Abducted and also 7 for Crow. It is possible that there are more of them hidden by Steam because they are rated as not helpful.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you know of more things to check for when talking about questionable reviews?
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