Matthew 3:10 původně napsal:

I stopped writing reviews because someone at Steam banned too many of my reviews, and not once has this individual provided me with the reason for doing so. I got a 31 day community ban instead of an actual answer to my question.
*snip*

Good points. Maybe it's just me, but as a Dev I've been focused on point 2. I'm sorry to hear your reviews got banned - that's not cool. At the very least you deserved a reason for the ban.

As for 3, that can be true, yeah. So, when you say "Total Shitbiscuit," is this some sort of bad parody account (I mean, there's a Hodor Reviews Curator, so it's not too improbable), or do you really just not like Total Biscuit? If the latter, I'm just not sure why you'd take potshots at the deceased.

True. Hrmmm, that's a good idea. Alright, I'll cancel the contest, find a way to get part of my profile public (I was a player long before a developer), reach out to more curators and I think I'll put something in after the end credits (but probably only if the player isn't running New Game+ - I don't want to spam a player with it, especially since I can't remove the message if the player does post a review).

I'll reach out to Stephan and mm.324 privately, to avoid turning this discussion into an advertisement. If anyone else is interested, I welcome them to reach out to me.

Part of the reason I brought this up is because I'm not the only developer who is going to wrestle with this issue. If other developers can also learn something from this thread, I think that benefits us all.

Thank you everyone for taking time to respond. There's a lot of excellent points here.

@mm.324
@Stfan8000
Thank you for the offer! I'll check, and if I haven't reached out to you already, I'd be happy to offer you both a product key. Which curator do you each own/write for?

The Contest:
In regards the contest, after reading through all the comments here and dwelling on the matter, I agree. I like the idea of having some community competition, and I need the reviews, but there's just no way to ensure the competition doesn't skew things. That wouldn't be fair to anyone involved.

Public Profile:
Hmmm, I've answered every topic that's been made on the discussion group, and filled out public contact information, but if having an open profile is an important first point of contact, I could add one. To be honest, I assumed they'd go through the public contact information rather than my profile, but hey, fair enough.

Curator Connect:
I have reached out to curators already, but I'll check I haven't missed any of the names you've suggested! Oh, except for that Salz one - I try to only select Curator's that don't deal in asset flips, are active within the last month, have an audience to which my game would be relevant, and aren't part of that reviewer sham army that got started on Greenlight.

Criticism Hurts:
It sure does. I've try to take criticism on the chin, keep my composure, and take pains to keep a clear record of events in the forums. I don't block negative feedback and don't delete threads - I plan on keeping things that way! All bug reports have either been fixed or in the process of being fixed, and wherever possible I look at bad reviews as opportunities to make a better game.

Hey guys, I've had my game out for a while now, and despite encouraging reviews, I have had significant trouble getting users to actually leave reviews. I know players enjoy the game, but with so much out there to play, getting them to take the time to leave a review has proven difficult. Since reviews significantly increase game visibility (and I believe my title deserves it), gathering reviews is in my best interest. I am conflicted about how best and ethically to do this.

A common tactic to address this is the offering of some kind of reward in exchange for leaving a review - this should be starting to set off your red flags now - and there's inherent problems with that kind of solution. It encourages heavily biased and/or uninformative reviews, because it shifts focus away from sharing a good experience to fulfilling requirements to get free stuff. In short, the solution defeats the very point it is supposed to serve.

I wish to continue a history of open, honest and ethical behaviour. That requires me not to put on a contest that rewards dishonest behaviour. My question to you is this: as a community that's seen a huge range of honest and dishonest behaviour, what approaches have you seen or recommend taking in order to encourage user reviews without tainting their content?


Edit - removed "these" from "I know these players" - as it makes the sentence less clear.

talgaby původně napsal:

Heh, and you probably only know of those that are done in the open, like G2A. There are "stores" even under that level, and entire cryptocurrency-based operations below that, and those are still on the World Wide Web—I don't know if they go as down as the deep web. Kinda unlikely.

I have to admit, it is depressing knowing that of the people my game is exposed to, some of them are the G2A types. At this point I'm starting to wonder if this is some kind of money-laundering scheme, because it seems awfully complicated for something so shallow. And it's sad, because if those people spent half as much time making the world better instead of worse, then how amazing would life be.

Fun fact! I've spoken with a few legit editors about the matter, and they're fed up with these ass-clowns as well. Every step the community takes as a whole to make key fraud more difficult is another obstruction to this "business model." Therefore, as tiresome as it is to blacklist these guys and report them to the people they impersonate, it is a useful and necessary step. A blacklist can never completely fix the issue - a blacklist is by nature reactive; so every time a new fraudulent email is sent, it is only caught after the fact. But for now, it is a stepping stone towards a smarter system.

At the end of the day, there is no action I can take to guarantee my success. But I will be held accountable for the actions I take. Some of those actions are the steps I take steps to encourage (through key spam) or discourage (blacklist) key fraud emails.

@ZygZag Thanks for the encouragement! Currently I've sent no response to any of the fraudulent messages. My initial emails to YoutTubers/magazines did not work. I'll have to give it another go soon!

Hibachi původně napsal:

You can copy paste whatever notable sentence you find in a review into google and see what's coming out.
It's a good way to tell if reviews are legit or not.
I once found a website that was only composed of Steam reviews, and after asking, those Steam users weren't part of it.


Annoying, how those key beggars gives you more work to do, right?

Thanks man, that's a good idea!

Yeah, really annoying - right now I'm sitting at a 90% fake request rate and if you ignore the emails I received after paying for a PR package, it is a 100% fake request rate. It preys on genuine desires to share one's work with others. This whole key selling thing is absolutely disgusting. It is vile, loathsome and foul. It is - dare I say it - bad.

talgaby původně napsal:

Nope, all of them are registered under the same IP and domain hoster, which is just a hosting collector agency.

Of course, one would say this is not enough proof. But if you search on the content of their articles, you will also see that those are copy-pasted from the articles of other sites, down to using the same pictures.

Hey, talgaby, thanks for the confirmation! I'll add all four to the blacklist. The absense of contact information and writing staff on the sites also made me suspicious.

Hello Guardians! As I indicated in an earlier discussion, I'm a developer, and I got tired (yes, already) of all the fraudulent key requests I receive. I've used a number of key requests to support the Public Gaming Press Blacklist. As of the past few days, I've been noticing a shift in the emails I'm receiving.

I've recently been contacted by a number of small sites asking for review keys. Naturally, all these sites are not in English, and Google translate is spotty. While looking through one of them, a red flag can up when I realized all the content past the third page was all one or two-liners.

The sites that have reached out to me are:
http://spiel-news.de/
http://whygaming.be/
http://www.ocena-gry.pl/
https://gamepregled.website

All of these appear to have articles, at least on earlier pages, but I can't shake my suspicions. Are any of these legit? Is this a new issue for key theft? And is there anything we can do to dismantle these fraudulent efforts if they aren't legit?

Cheers!

merfab76 původně napsal:

Is this the same guy that has a few games on Steam ? https://steamhost.cn/search/?developer=Sergej110

I didn't notice he had a developer account, but yes, it is. On your search, click a game, then scroll down, click into discussions, then select a topic last posted to by Sergej110, and then click into his profile from there.

I have some games on Steam too. I was a gamer on here for many years, bought my games through here and Humble Bundle, and one day finished my game and posted it on here. I don't know how Sergej's dates work out, but considering the very suspicious game ownership count, I think that's strange.

Mellow_Online1 původně napsal:

Chudah původně napsal:

Valve really needs to get the curation overhaul implemented. The promised system for delivering Steam keys through Steam itself would fix a lot of these problems.

Supposedly from my talks with Valve, they intend to have it roll out between Oct-Mar 2018. Although knowing Valve that can be a tentative.

That is wonderful news, if Valve makes that deadline! Thanks for the update!