Overwatch 2 is the worst game on Steam, according to user reviews | “The people who make Overwatch porn work harder than the people who make Overwatch”::undefined
Overwatch 2 is the worst game on Steam, according to user reviews | “The people who make Overwatch porn work harder than the people who make Overwatch”::undefined
Steams reviews have a much higher weight in regard to a games success than any other form of review. The new Battlefront games came to Steam way later, when EA Play got introduced and a big chunk of EAs exclusive library moved to Steam. By that point the Battlefront games got all patched up and were somewhat beloved. But a native Steam release like BF2042 was met with harsh criticism, which ultimately let to the game’s failure. There is a reason why AAA studios like Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft or Microsoft prefer not to release their games on Steam and each have their own launchers. The lack of transparency is also why the Epic Games Store is an attractive alternative for publishers. I’d like to think that Steam has the most solid review system one could ask for, something that other launchers are severely lacking. An “overwhelmingly positive” status for a game is an automatic success and everything below “mixed” is nearly a death sentence. Even games that are successfull, like the recent CoD titles start out “negative” or “mixed” on Steam release. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because the publisher already got his money from their own launcher and console releases.
I think that is a somewhat reductive take on the situation.
Yes, steam reviews have largely grown to be part of the PR cycle. The same way metacritic/opencritic did. And this is, in large part, what led to the rise of Influencers. Because Ubi have reached the point where “it is shit at launch but it will be good on a year” is considered a positive and… a lot of that is from all the streamers and youtubers who get paid to parrot those talking points.
Wanting to control their own store is more about maximizing revenue. Steam takes a relatively small cut (EGS takes an even smaller one). But it is still money that EA and Ubi and the like aren’t getting. That is why they prioritize their own stores.
But I think you have hit on something I’ve noticed over the course of the EGS mess. Steam Early Access doesn’t work anymore. People get angry that it exists, throw a hissy, and ignore games. Whereas, launching a game on a different store gives developers cash injection while limiting the consumers to the die hard fans. Because I don’t know ANYONE who browses the EGS store. But I know a lot of us bought Satisfactory or Salt and Sacrifice there because we could not wait. And that gets the actual Early Access community feedback without people complaining that this early access game is not as polished as Elden Ring.
And yeah, having the equivalent of some metacritic scores on the checkout page has a big impact. But, like I said, stuff like “review bombing” actively lessens that impact. Rather than “Oh, this is mostly negative, the devs must have screwed up” it becomes “Oh, this is mostly negative… Is that because there is a woman in the game or a single DLC was overpriced or is that because of actual gameplay reasons?”. At which point… those reviews are worthless again and I am back to listening to my favorite influencer.
So… steam reviews come with words… you don’t have to guess why something is rated poorly. You just scroll right down to the words and hundreds of people will tell you if they were “butthurt” or if the game just sucks.
Its funny you mention that.
Reading the top few reviews below the proverbial fold is incredibly useful. In large part because Valve already put the work in to filter out the review bombings.