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

That could potentially work, actually.
It'd be better than sorting reviews by "helpfulness", which, I might add is the one of the most arbitrary rating systems of all time.

you are getting what you deserve. use your brain and think about why people are doing this, they are not doing it for the fun.
and sorry for you, it's not against steam rules. it's the perfect use of the steam refund function.
If you leave a negative review you are likely to ask for a refund, it's logic.

That would overly skew the results towards positive reviews. How many people who give a legitimate negative review are not going to use the refund system? If you don't like the game of course you are going to ask for a refund. This would remove all negative reviews and therefore wouldn't give an accurate reflection of the truth either. They've already tried to remove the bulk of negative reviews by adding Titans to Steam as a Stand-alone expansion. But you can't hide the truth. There are many disgruntled customers with legit complaints.

I'm pretty sure it already tells you "hours played". Someone who plays 100 hours is obviously going to post a positive review. I don't play games I don't like for 100 hours either. Can you please tell one game you don't like that you have sink 100 hours into. LOL

No it is abusing the ability to refund games, you're buying the game with the clear intention of refunding it right afterward. That is not allowed.

The only reason people are doing this is so they can kill a company that did them no wrong, and trying to skew the data from people who have actually bought the game, played it, and are happy with it.

This isn't necessarily true - and 100 hours was definitely an arbitrary number. Twenty or so would definitely work better - but something that differentiates those would be super helpful.

They need a way to buy it, review it glowingly, and buy more copies (showing people how many extra copies you then bought) Better yet.. have a Tip the developer button.. man would that piss off the negative people.

As I already said, I'm pretty sure it shows you hours played.

A developer's job is to develop the game, and not babysit the immature actions of those seeking to ruin the game's reputation intentionally.

Leaving a negative review for a game you didn't even play just to bash a developer you don't like then getting a refund is a clear violation of the refund policy intent and is abusing both the review and refund functions. Valve needs to rethink how those two functions interact with one another.

If someone is truly disgruntled with a product, what you will expect to see is a purchase, negative review, and refund. There is no way to distinguish the genuine from the disingenuous, and therefore no way for anyone to stop this.

We can argue all we want theoretically in the cloud about the ethics, but in the end none of us can say what the motives of any person in particular are. So i hope no-one does silly things like attacking 'suspect' individuals on steam as a result of this.

Certainly don't want to go around attacking random people who have short negative (or positive) reviews and .1 hours of play time based upon circumstantial evidence. And, "attacking" in the forums, I always frown on anyway.

But, the dozen or more people I've seen who've actually told people in the forums to abuse the system? Imo, they should be banned from the Steam community and have their refund permissions revoked.

Yea, just report those people. Valve will most likely ban them because now they are attacking their bottom line by encouraging refund abuse.

You would think so, but one person I reported had the thread he created encouraging abuse deleted but has suffered nothing else.

Since then, he's continued to bash anyone saying positive things about either game and spams negative threads. I am glad that thread was deleted, but I'm disappointed that was all that was done.

Edit (21 Aug): He was eventually banned from the PA:Titans forum.

The refund system shouldn't exist.

Not sure I agree with that. :L

The refund system is an important part of consumer rights.

The problem is how it can be abused. As usual, Valve are taking far too long to iron out the bugs.

Valve gets away with being lazy being the gaming community as a whole lets them. You never see them getting the criticism for similar mistakes made by other, less popular, publishers. You don't see people complaining like they complain about other developers' and / or publishers' PR.

Case in point, this PR issue.

It's why I'm generally critical of Valve. I hold them to the same standards everyone else holds other companies to.

Ya, I like the refund policy.

It allows people who are computer illiterate to refund games when they don't know how to get them to work on their broken systems.
It also allows people to legally demo games to see if they'll like them rather than doing illegal things which gives players an opportunity to try out games they otherwise wouldn't have ever done.

There are downsides such as players who only play for an hour and uninstall it thinking the game is terrible when they're not even done with the tutorial yet, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives when just isolated to the refund policy itself.

I agree for some reason the gaming community isn't often critical of steam and steam definitely needs work in some areas like the refunds and the steam greenlight which aren't effective or are easily abusable by both companies and gamers

No.
Too many crap games on steam for there not to be a refund system. Too many 'developers' trying to scam consumers. Refund system is major step in correct direction, but probably not enough.

Why shouldn't it exist?