I know I've ranted many a time about steam before but with the absolute review bombing I'm seeing happening to most studios across the board it's very curious how these games that clearly no one damn likes keep bumping their way up to the top sellers list. I check out the top sellers list quite often just to see what's trending in the industry because it's usually a decent benchmark.
The fact that the positive reviews are always gibberish on these games as well make me deeply suspicious. Is it really the normies being normies? Or are even they sick of the state of the games industry constantly releasing broken game titles and is there some major shenanigans going on? I bring up the steam reviews so often because even in the comments pages people think they're bots and such. I mean don't get me wrong, normies are really really dumb, but I think even they'd be pissed off after awhile if they kept on pre-ordering broken products. I'm thinking of games like Pharaoh Total War which no one asked for somehow getting to the top sellers list.
If any indie developer did this they'd be called on it and wiped out and by the way I know that devs fuck with their review sections on steam all the time.
Aye, there's definitely some weird shit with Steam's stats and rating/review results. And "recent reviews" tends to be implemented rather poorly, to the point to where a game that's only received 8 or so reviews in the past month can lead to "mixed review" status based on 3/8 of those reviews being negative. Even if they're negative for shitty reasons.
Also, how utterly short and meaningless most reviews are. I've actually AVOIDED writing reviews for years because I felt like I needed to be overly detailed and verbose, and didn't have the time to do that. Maybe I should've said fuck it and given games I like positive low effort reviews anyway? I dunno.
One thing I'd like to bring up, since it's something I often tune out, fail to notice, or forget, is how awesome and useful some of this NextFest stuff is that Steam's been promoting lately. Games with playable demos and the like, giving people a proper chance at previewing and trying before buying. Still plenty of shovelware but I've played at least a few demos that were legitimately enjoyable and/or seemed like they might have decent potential.