Tim Sweeney addresses review bombing of Epic Games partners
A new statement from Tim Sweeney outlines just how harmful review bombing can be for game developers.
It's plain to see that many gamers aren't happy with PC store and launcher exclusivity. Despite contending with the likes of console exclusives for decades, gamers are proving to be notoriously stubborn when it comes to accepting change within the industry. As such, many players have been review bombing games on Steam after learning of exclusivity deals with platforms such as the Epic Games Store. It's a shameful practice, and Epic's Tim Sweeney has something to say to all the review bombing masses.
In a series of tweets posted to his Twitter account, Sweeney discussed how sponsored and promotional campaigns are advertised, how review bombing affects developers, and how gamers who can't play nice are basically ruining it for everyone. Here's the full quote:
"Anybody speaking for or on behalf of Epic makes their Epic association clearly visible online. When we’ve run paid promotional campaigns (such as with streamers when Fortnite launched), they’re clearly identified with #ad or similar.
"Please understand that developer livelihoods are at stake in the debate about stores and exclusives and revenue sharing - the companies and the individuals alike. All of their views should be welcomed and respectfully considered.
"Calling them shills and review bombing them and these other things are unfair to all of their hard work, and only stifle what ought to be a healthy discussion about the relationship between gamers and developers."
It really ought to go without saying that review bombing doesn't help video game developers or game distribution platforms. The spike in negative reviews over something as simple as upcoming game exclusivity only helps to turn players away from past games, costing the developers not only money but support for new titles. To make matters worse, services like Steam have had to implement new changes just to combat review bombing, increasing the workload of everyone involved.
It's entirely possible for video game enthusiasts to let their voices be heard without resorting to something as shameful or as hateful as review bombing. It hurts the players, it hurts the developers, and it hurts the industry. Tim Sweeney says it best when he says that the practice of review bombing serves to oppose the "healthy discussion about the relationship between gamers and developers." If players are unhappy with new studio policies, rest assured that spamming games with low-scoring reviews will only make things worse.
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replyKevin Tucker posted a new article, Tim Sweeney addresses review bombing of Epic Games partners
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for sure, they had some promise, but like if I want a review I'd come here for the official shack one and see what shackers had to say about it. I've found some great games that way.
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We are MORE
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I like genuine player reviews, they are useful to me. It's just the kneejerk reviews/negative review bombs that are useless, and those are extremely easy to discern from the genuine ones. Especially on Steam where you can see the time played. I am not going to even consider a review with 0.3 hours played unless the review is something like "couldn't get the game to run".
I think ratings on reviews are useless though, at least positive/negative ratings. It encourages people to write "funny" reviews that usually don't cover many aspects of the game. Or upvote/downvote reviews based on whether they agree/disagree with them. -
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I wouldn't go that far but I think they're more useful than people here give them credit for, they're just like people who go on forums and extol either the virtues or downsides of a game. If you take them with a grain of salt and at least skim what people say (and don't look just at the approval number), you can use them to quickly gauge whether a game is worth your interest.
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Hardly. Great way to see if a game still has a player base. If there are a ton of reviews for a multiplayer only game that say "dead game" I'm going to want to know that. No more (needed) updates? No more severs with people on them? I want to know that and s professional review right when the game comes out can't possibly fucking address that
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Bullshit, so you prefer a paid reviewer who may or may not be on cahoot with the publisher so that they continue to get preferential treatment and get behind the scene info, to honest player reviews on how good or horrible bad the game is, from their own personal perspective?
There are many professional reviewers who have written articles that are totally crap and do not actually reflect the state of the game while grossing over the bugs in the game. On the other hand, players who tries to do that will be drowned out by the tonnes of honest reivews on steam/ gog/ and other platforms. And these reviews are often very detailed and explained why they like or dislike the game and who contributed to their rating.
These are way more important than professional reviews, although there are also place for professional reviews which may offer some info that players may not provide. But they need to be kept honest.
So both are important.
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I don't see it that way at all. It sounds like the stance here is simple, no matter how you feel about Epic or exclusivity deals, the "review bombs" are not helpful to anyone and hurt game development in general and so it hurts gamers.
The people do it think the ends justify the means, they think they are justified in hurting a game developer as part of the crusade against Epic. In reality all they do is make everyone even more disgusted at gamers and less interested in listening to legit criticisms of Epic or exclusivity deals.
So basically we all lose, and no matter what happens we end up with less power for developers which is ultimately something that some people don't seem to care about.-
What other choices do gamers have to make themselves heard? Contrary to Sweeney's comments, I don't think there is actually a discussion going on. Epic is doing what it wants as a rich profit-seeking company.
Review bombing is a metaphorical protest march. They need to cause disruption to be heard (and sometimes the message isn't worth hearing)-
What other choices do gamers have? How hard is it to not use Epic Game Store until it meets your level of standards?
It seems like an easy choice to me. If you are principled in what you are trying to get, why stoop to review bombing? It is petty and in the end nobody is going to win by doing it.-
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The difference is that in addition to you not buying the game, a bunch of other prospective customers also won't be buying the games. It won't work of course, because the vast majority of customers are not us loud-mouthed internet gamers, but people who won't pay a bit of attention to user reviews.
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Except its making them rethink steam.
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This whole game store fight is so so so stupid.
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It's certainly blown out of proportion, but it's not entirely stupid. I am pretty annoyed at being pushed to use a substandard product like EGS which, rather than build a featureset to rival and compete with Steam and oithers, is instead just forcing people to use it to play certain games instead of actually giving users a compelling reason to do so by offering a better product.
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I fail to see how people are forced to use anything. I am not saying you don't have a point about EGS having less features, but that shit is being addressed by Epic in a very swift and transparent way. It's fine to be critical of Epic, but that doesn't justify any of the bullshit that people are doing with review bombing.
Not a single person doing the review bombing seems to give a fuck about the developers, or they are ignoring it for some sort of stupid crusade that won't change anything.
Whether people want it or not stuff like EGS are here to stay and more companies are going to follow suit as well. This is a trend that was started a long time ago.-
I even briefly had "forcing" in quotations like this because I just knew someone would come and nitpick that. Shoulda stuck with it. You are effectively forced in to using EGS if you want Metro or the upcoming Borderlands 3, among others which don't have their own publisher store as well. (So I'm excluding recent Ubi stuff from this).
Very swift, transparant and also slow. Basic functions like reviews and shopping carts should be in there right now, not behing a 6 month roadmap.-
No one is forcing you to buy those games. You aren’t entitled to any game in any format.
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I want to play the new smash brothers on my pc, but I can’t. Does that mean Nintendo forced me onto their platform?
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Even worse, the make me pay several hundred dollars for hardware that can only be used for their games!
Gamer logic dictates Nintendo must be punished for this.-
I think the vertical integration of publishers, developers, and hardware makers is a mixed bag, if that's what you mean.
It's cool that it results in some big budget showpieces like God of War, but hardware redundancies add an unnecessary expense for gamers. It would be great if you could play any game on whatever hardware you wanted and bought the hardware to match your needs.
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No you can’t be wrong on the internet. It’s not allowed.
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It’s literally no different than Origin, Uplay, or Battlenet (or whatever it’s called now). Or games on consoles. Plus big titles were leaving Steam before EGS came along.
And if exclusive deals is what it takes for a real competitor to Steam to take off, that’s fine. No one in their right mind should be upset about someone trying to take on Steam and it’s 30% cut or complain about more competition in market space.-
It is *literally* not the same thing, as Origin, Uplay and Battlenet are not coaxing developers from other established storefronts with bribes. Other than dumpy storefronts, no one was too worked up about EA games being on EA's store and Ubi games being on Ubi's store.
Like I said, it's blown out of proportion and dethroning Steam will take some dirty tricks to happen, but people aren't without reason for hating on EGS and its shit store.-
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What's the illegal thing Epic is paying for?
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You're using the wrong term. Bribe involves at least something unethical, which is not present here.
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A bribe involves circumventing laws, regulations, and enforcement of them. Like paying someone to not inspect something to pass regulations. Or you know, paying someone at a university to circumvent the selection process designed to be fair to get their kids in.
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https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/bribery
Epic paying for exclusivity deals does not meet the criteria for bribery. It's a legitimate business transaction. It's no different than Walmart paying a manufacturer for the exclusive rights to sell their product or any number of similar deals that are made in business all the time.
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So it’s different because Epic doesn’t own the developers it’s made agreements with? That’s not a real distinction. The end result is the same for users - you have to use a particular app.
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Sorry but people were pretty pissed off when EA started removing their games from Steam and made them only available on Origin. People in general have always been "anti-Uplay" and "anti-Origin" ever since they started to exist.
To be honest I am not a fan of all these different storefronts either, but you know what I realized in the years since Origin launched? I am not entitled to any of this shit and I am fortunate enough to be able to play so many amazing games made by incredible game developers.
Instead of being a dumbass and not helping developers, I focus on the bad business practices of distributors and storefronts (including Valve) and don't punish the developer.
I have since bought plenty of games on all the different storefronts because the games are all that matters.
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The idea of PC gaming as a platform itself is pretty much dead now. With increasingly little exception, games are sold on and generally require a digital distribution platform to play.
If these distribution platforms do not compete outside of exclusives then there's no real forward progress to me as a consumer. To that end, I think Epic is playing a dangerous game by fighting so hard for them.-
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I'm talking about in the context of buying and playing modern games, which is what the thread is (was?) about. Linux runs on the same hardware as Windows but does not have access to nearly as many games as Windows. Likewise, if you can buy a game on Steam and play it on both Windows, Mac, and Linux, Steam is now your domain and you are free from hardware/OS boundaries. That's the good part!
I'm not trying to be pedantic; I just thought I'd relay my ovbservation that the nature of platforms has changed. It's more about distribution platforms than hardware or operating system.
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Generally new entrants can't come in and meet and exceed the entire feature set of the existing competition. Steam has been building a store for decades now, you can't build decades of features to compete in a year. Likewise Steam has been building a network of users and developers for decades, which is something a competitor straight up cannot build. So what are you expecting competitors in digital stores to do exactly? How should Epic have made their store better than Steam in a way that Steam can't copy directly in a matter of months of their own feature work?
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This ought to be a fun one.
https://twitter.com/taciturasa/status/1125106411787247616 -
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It's just like when people think Gamestop is evil because they let people sell used games.
Makes no sense at all. -
I think for a lot of people it's just an issue of more convenient (one store; one application; one ecosystem) vs less.
However, there are so many benefits to giving up a bit of convenience - the issue is almost none of them directly benefit the customer.
Better games with more developer funding is probably the biggest long-term benefit to multiple storefronts. -
indeed, even more baffling when you point this out and then these people defend why a monopoly is better for them long term
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Very well said and I totally agree. Somehow people came up with the idea that every developer is forced to give Valve 30% and thats just the way it is. Imagine if people just decided physical retailers weren't allowed to sign exclusive deals. Any developer should be perfectly welcome to sign exclusive deals and if you don't like it you don't buy the game.
Reviews are a reflection of the quality of the game and not buying products is how you express your displeasure over retail locations. -
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This is the most basic bitch kind of complaint in gaming.
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Aww, thanks 😘
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I don't think it's hard to understand why having all these different programs that do the same thing but differently isn't 100% universally a good thing for everyone. Obviously competition is great for more intangible things like "forcing Valve to do stuff again" in the grand scheme of things, but in the meantime I've got an annoying first world problem with all these different launchers/friends lists/accounts etc. I don't think any reasonable person is really arguing that any of these inconveniences are anything more than "minor" but it seems silly to pretend that having to use all these different launchers is 100% a good thing because a monopoly is capital B bad.
Just like with all criticism, simply voicing some doesn't mean you have a simple binary opinion. There are elements of this whole EGS thing that are good (spurring competition) and there are elements that I think objectively suck, like the launcher wars. -
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The cost, to the consumer, of this exclusivity, is zero. Na-da. Nothing.
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Mouse clicks, thus ultimately, calories. They're doing everyone a favor!
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Not a financial cost but you're forgetting why Steam was needed in the first place; it was easier to pirate games than play them legally. This is making it harder to justify purchasing any of these games in a time when the industry is complaining that game development cost is going up while the end price remains the same. I don't care if it costs these guys 30% to put their garbage games on Steam, that's not my problem. If they made better games, they wouldn't have to resort to these anti-consumer tactics. GTA V is making untold millions and Rockstar doesn't give a fuck about improving GTA Online outside what makes them money.
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http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=38561223
None of these critics have a good answer for what would satisfy them and result in effective competition in the market
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As someone who has spent thousands of dollars on Steam, I completely agree with you.
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Say what you want about the PC launcher wars. It's still more civilized than Star Wars threads.
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Idk this whole thing is mostly bullshit. It's good for spawning good nerd tear posts on the internet though.
People shitting on egs have it pretty wrong. Steam is the non competitive product. They could stop this entire thing in a second, if they matched egs's Dev cut. Until then, nerds gonna nerd.-
It's all very dumb. People shit on Comcast and other companies for running these internet monopolies, but then these companies try and compete with Steam and they crap all over them. I really do not understand what's going on at this point.
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how does competition in a market normally offer something to the consumer?
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increased resources for rocket league means more rocket league stuff, maybe a bigger prize pool
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nope, nothing, nada. In fact games on epic store is either on par or more expensive than on steam for me, for virtually all games.
And not intending to implement features such as a full review segment (they only intend to implement an publisher opt in review segment - yeah like any lousy publisher will keep their review segment up) and not having a clear refund policies and charging user for alternative payment method .. all shows that they do NOT care about the gamers.
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and you actually think that an anti-consumer and ant-competition antic like exclusives is competition? Seriously dude?
You know what will really be competitive? Epic game using their millions to improve their lousy featureless game store AND mandating their publisher to release their games slightly cheaper on epic store than others, since they are getting so much more return.
But no, they seems to be more focused on returns for publisher and do not care one bit about anything that are useful and of concern to the players, including pricing of game on their store (which is on par or more expensive than on steam in virtually all cases), launcher features such as cloud save, reviews, shopping cart, a proper and easy refund policy, and more .. way more.
So don't talk to me about trying to compete with steam dude .. this exclusive deals hurts all launcher, including GOG.com.
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more competition = more money for indie devs and we all love indie devs
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