unless valve brings it back (which seems unlikely as the developer is running from it – https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/02/25/devotion-disappears-from-steam-after-pooh-review-bombing/) the best you could do would be to buy detention to throw them a bone and then pirate it
this was afaik the decision of the publisher, who is based in taiwan but has chinese investors
this whole thing is a major shitshow, on about the same level of ridiculousness as james gunn getting blacklisted for doing bad tweets, except as a response to even more innocuous bullshit
edit: i also really hope i don’t need to explain why, but this is categorically different from a western publisher being asked to remove skulls and bullshit from a game being sold in china
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Right, what it looks like to me is a publisher being pressured by right wing ultranationalists
TBH I don’t get why Felix is trying to portray this as chinese government action
tbf some (many?) of the right wing ultranationalists are probably (literally) paid operatives who are actually given access to VPNs and stuff so they can stir shit up in comments sections
the internet in china is just like, 1000x more Online than the internet in the rest of the world basically, for good and for ill
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yeah it doesn’t seem like a huge stretch based on past evidence to suggest that the right wing ultranationalists are doing the actual ideological work of the government, whether or not they’re smart enough to get paid for it
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except for the bits that are less online than everywhere else. Like this game
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i meant that as in, like, the Online state of mind, but… yeah.
Folks are claiming it’s only a temporary removal. That’s a reddit link though, so. vOv
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best case they still lost their publisher and are facing a ton of liability
Seems Detention is getting review bombed too now
Now that gamers know this tactic works, guess what’s gonna happen?
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Does it, though?
You can easily filter out negative reviews in Steam and get a gist if something is review bombed or not. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets as much free advertisement in the Western media due to this, as much as it may lose from someone who is browsing Steam games and doesn’t see it right away in Top Rated games.
Also, if the game is being pulled by the publisher of the game, then there is nothing Valve can do, so not sure why Valve is being blamed for this.
Valve does nothing to moderate it’s reviews or forums or even disincentive users from behaving like assholes. It allows and, through inaction, condones this kind of behaviour. The fact that filtering tools exist mean nothing to the average user; also those tools are meaningless once someone caves to pressure and removes the work from Steam entirely.
A lot of publishers use Steam as their sole point of distribution on the PC (which they shouldn’t, but that’s a different issue) and because Valve allows shit like this to happen, it sends the message to the fuckers who did this shit that their behaviour is effective. They know this tactic works and they’ll do it again.
If you think a game can get review bombed and suffer no consequences on Steam because ‘they can be filtered out’, you may have some unrealistic assumptions.
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A. It’s mere speculation on our part: I can easily say that people just use negative reviews (and in case they spike, Steam has gone an extra mile to warn of this to anyone reading the reviews) to understand what is the issue and then proceed from that onwards. If there’s bunch of reviewers saying that the company is using shitty monetization practices, fine. If the sudden negative reviews are outraged at some other practice, fine. Anyone barely literate can do their own homework.
B. If someone caves to the pressure, who cares? Valve does not tell the devs to remove their game, it’s their own choice.
C. There are other distribution platforms (particularly with the launch of Epic store).
Yeah sorry, I’m not in a place of mind to deal with gamer apologia this morning. I’m out.
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Note that review aggregate is highly influential to Steam’s recommendation engine. Theoretically Valve could have a model to ignore review bombing but I don’t believe anyone thinks this is the case.
That is to say nothing of the incredibly psychically painful experience of your game, made by people to make people happy, only seeming to unleash a torrent of hate upon you. Why make games then?
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I just wanna chime in and say that even I, a person who has basic literacy, the wherewithal to navigate Steam in fairly advanced ways, and a solid idea of how poorly reviews reflect the reality of life, still sort sales by best reviewed games. I just don’t have time to look at all the garbage!
So review bombing groups this game, that is apparently GOTY quality, with things like Super Graboid Hentai Puzzle Simulator 2017 or whatever.
Plus it’s just fucked up behavior!! Why do we have to put up with it? I don’t even want to READ these stupid shitty reviews from entitled gamer babies who can’t be bothered to control their own emotions and thoughts. Don’t dump your garbage on me, don’t dump it on the creators, and for fuck’s sake don’t get their games pulled from the store!!
Yeah uh publishers can pull games without the consent of the actual developers because they are afraid of bad PR. They have more to lose from bad PR than bad sales, whereas the developers don’t get to sell their game and now they go out of business and we don’t get more games from these developers!!! it’s bad for everybody and stupid and now i’m angry
anyway
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