This week, Valve’s chief product, Steam, had a client update to its software, specifically changing how user reviews are viewed and filtered for a video game. Basically, they’ve set it to filter out all reviews from users who do not have a Steam key.
This means that while the user who reviews the game may have the game, Steam can’t verify this as the user didn’t buy the game through Steam.
Many indie devs have expressed concern over this as many of them develop and sell their game before getting it released to Steam.
However, I see this is as a step in the right direction. In many cases, user reviews of games can make or break it as players often times have limited funds and a large set of positive reviews may cause a player to buy a game he nominally interested in.
So having legitimate user reviews means potentially more revenue for developers who create good games.
Conversely, we have seen the rise of the armchair (basement-dwelling) communist in recent years. What these people do is find any avenue to marginalize and isolate anyone who openly defies them or produces content which is counter to their narrative.
This has been happening at Amazon for a long time now. I’ve seen many posts from Vox Day where he gives out Amazon reviews from such yahoos who clearly have not read his or his clients’ books. Amazon has yet to remedy this issue, although I am under the impression that they will ban the user from making reviews if a false review allegation is proven true. Vox himself also has zero problem with doxing and sicking his legion of followers on said user.
Most non-creative types who produce no entertainment content usually don’t care about this kind of thing. But what you have to understand is that negative fake reviews are basically like stealing money from the creator’s income.
What Valve has done here is allow users who haven’t bought the game through Steam to review the game, but basically refused to show it by default as they may potentially be trolls or SJWs with a Marxist mission.
In other words, if gamers want to negatively review a video game, even for political reasons, they’re going to have to buy it first.
While it doesn’t eliminate the problem of trolls or SJWs entirely, it at least adds a layer of protection which wasn’t there before.