PA: Titans has been targetted for negative reviews/refund abuse

Edit: I deleted the thread on the old Steam forum, because all I got were people trying to derail the topic by bashing Uber... which didn't help.

Original Post:
As some of you know, a number of Steam users have been abusing Steam's new refund policy to post negative reviews then refund the game.

That review loophole clearly goes against Valve's intent with the refund policy.

I wrote a thread in the old Steam discussion forum in the hopes that some of Valve's employees would notice it and, if they're not already, plan how to stop this sort of abuse in the future. If you'd like to post in that thread to help make it active, I think that would be useful.

If you know of a different way to gain Valve's attention, please let me know, and I'll help there too.

Regards

If this becomes a problem then it's probably best if @jables contacts a valve person about it.

God damn you internet. You were the chosen one. So pathetic.

It's a pretty easy thing to stop, just remove reviews, positive or negative, if the user who posted it refunds the game.

It would be better not to overract to this. Yes several people will write negative reviews cause of this as it is with their refund right if they played the game less then 2 hours and wan't to return it out of any reason as per steam refund policy agreement. The issue with PA and Titans will calm down in a couple of days eitherway. Also removing reviews is a bad idea since it will generate even a bigger shitstorm then it already is. Only thing that would be positive is a developer commentary on negative reviews.

Not a good solution, because people should be able to review and refund terrible games. Let's say I buy a game, and it's a broken mess. I would probably decide to write a review to warn others of the problem, and then refund the game because I obviously wouldn't want to pay for or keep it.

My thread in the Steam forum already has a negative post...

LOL. The salt is real. I can't understand how these idiots get so worked up over imaginary issues they invent themselves. It's like reading a fox news anti-Obama comment thread.

Have you ever read an anti-vac post on facebook, holy **** its terrible, how short these peoples memories are, they just cant recall a world with polo and large wards of kids in iron lungs.

Until I got to the last bit, I was wondering why there would be people on facebook who are against Valve Anti-Cheat, and what that had to do with polo. I'd like to thank not having facebook for not even realizing what anti-vac meant in this context.

Yes, that's probably the best plan. It avoids debates spurred on by misinformed people with negative agendas.

Then maybe have some sort of company-based moderator to make sure that reviews are primarily gameplay based instead of this shitshow we have now where you can write a review complaining about how the game caused 9/11 and have it never be removed?

"But wait, if it was company-based then people would accuse the moderator of being biased!"
Valid point, Mr. Strawman, but you can never please everyone.
Maybe hire some random guy who has nothing to do with Uber and doesn't even play PA? I dunno.

I had the same thought haha!

I just think there should be a required time constraint before you can review. At leeeeast. (Then again that'd go against the whole steam bit of 2 hours after launching the game you can refund it and blablahblah.

Apparently Valve is actually really lenient on the two hours thing.
I've heard tell of people getting refunds after 6 and even 10 hours of gameplay for some games.

Also, I just want to point out that I totally called it

TBH I think they should seperate reviews between people who dropped a hundred hours and those who played for ten minutes then said its bad.

I removed that thread from the old Steam forum, because all I got were people bashing Uber which wasn't helping anything. :-/

So, it's up to Uber to contact Valve and suggest a time-limit requirement before people can post reviews or something else more useful.

To be fair, there have been a fair share of censorship by other developers, so they need to be careful about letting devs control reviews. Somehow I doubt Uber is gonna get the ability to moderate the reviews when no-one else does.

Giving reviewees direct control over reviews is the worst idea ever.

However, having a Valve guy appointed to sift through the reviews and remove trolls is another thing entirely.