Johan is trying his best to find common ground with Tencent and the Chinese market. Shame on you all.
Paradox censoring negative reviews
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I usually rate a game price by gameplay hours, I have over 2500 hours of EU4 (tho Steam reduced it for 1200 for some reason), what I paid for EU4 (all DLCs and I play it since before CoP) just worth the fun hours the game gave me.
... Now I want to see what Trump trying to write one would look like. "Go up to their queen, and grab her by the *****. Remember, despite the relations hit you'll take from this, covfefe."
Certainly more interesting than rants about "FAKE REVIEWS!!!"
Hi! This is very unusual and not at all inline with our policies we have regarding reviews which is generally to not touch them at all. I'll get back to you when I know more.
Paradox censoring stuff and trying to persuade reviews is nothing new, they did it to me on the Stellaris at release since I posted a negative review also. I guess the reason that people aren't more angry at it is because nobody else really makes a half decent grand strategy game so they are getting a free pass with fanboys.
There's the review, just beware it's salty and badly written as per my standard and you've got PD commenting at the bottom because I mentioned the pre-order exclusive DLC.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/NetQvist/recommended/281990
There's the review, just beware it's salty and badly written as per my standard and you've got PD commenting at the bottom because I mentioned the pre-order exclusive DLC.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/NetQvist/recommended/281990
Banning something is the best way to draw people's attention to it: guaranteed to get everyone interested in something that would simply have fizzled out. Now, instead of the review being the story, the alleged attempt to muzzle it has become the story. Instead of the poster looking bad, PDX looks bad for attempting to limit freedom of speech in general and criticisms of themselves in particular.
Any PR professional worth hiring would have told them this. By doing it they have exposed themselves as being stupid as well as being authoritarian. You cannot libel a corporation in law. If this throws the motives of PDX into question then, if they care about it, issue a response. If they do not, ignore it. This is the worst possible choice as not only is it ineffectual, but it draws attention to their own failings as well as the review they would rather no-one reads.
Very strange
K
It is indeed the worst possible choice, considering this wasn't quite as extreme as it can get.
Glad to hear it... if you haven't noticed Paradox are (intentionally or not) currently delivering a textbook campaign in how to destroy community goodwill. Your game (which is awesome) is at 30% "mostly negative" recent rating on steam and dropping due to the crazy price hike. The response to that had been very poor, and now trying to get reviews banned is about the worst possible thing you could do.
On topic. Ban attempt of review = very very bad. Review itself is pretty funny really.
Yeah, considering the other day I spent my lunch break listening to youtube videos about indie game developers trying to manipulate Steam's review system, getting publicly called on it, and then suffering the ugly consequences up to getting kicked completely off Steam...
That said, looks like the abusive flag has been cleared off of that review, so this particular issue might be settled.
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How was that review censored? All I see is one comment telling you the cosmetics (added portraits) do nothing, which is true, since they dropped the whole "Avians are more 'xeno' to Mammals than to other Avians" thing that was suggested once or twice.
Yes, the review should be about the game.
But reviews are a system, and if there's anything EUIV players should know is this: People will game the system. That is using every means possible to their advantage. Just like abdicating to get your Queen's dynasty in order to claim another throne.
For good or for bad, this is what a market economy is about. The power vested in consumers is considerable, without the consumers having much responsibility about how they exercise this power. A company that fails to understand this usually doesn't last long...
You can't ask a consumer to limit their review to their objective opinion about the gameplay. Or rather you can, but you can't enforce it. And rules that cannot be enforced should not be made in the first place.
If your customers are upset they will vent their anger.
If you then try to talk back and argue you'll only make things worse.
If you start censoring funny negative comments... you're entering a world of pain.
Pretty much this. Any reasonably company would try to distance themselves quickly from censorship. It sounds really bad.
But reviews are a system, and if there's anything EUIV players should know is this: People will game the system. That is using every means possible to their advantage. Just like abdicating to get your Queen's dynasty in order to claim another throne.
For good or for bad, this is what a market economy is about. The power vested in consumers is considerable, without the consumers having much responsibility about how they exercise this power. A company that fails to understand this usually doesn't last long...
You can't ask a consumer to limit their review to their objective opinion about the gameplay. Or rather you can, but you can't enforce it. And rules that cannot be enforced should not be made in the first place.
If your customers are upset they will vent their anger.
If you then try to talk back and argue you'll only make things worse.
If you start censoring funny negative comments... you're entering a world of pain.
Pretty much this. Any reasonably company would try to distance themselves quickly from censorship. It sounds really bad.
Only now i understand why most devs ignore community most of the time. Even if i never liked it i now understand there's a very good reason behind it.
Hey everybody! For those who don't know me, I'm Zeke, the community manager for EUIV!
We're still looking into exactly what happened here, but to clarify this must be some sort of mistake. While we do (as any developer) have the ability to flag reviews as abusive, we rarely do so and in those cases only with reviews that are clear cases of racism, slurs or excessive cursing (some reviews are JUST cursing
).
Also, important to note that reviews flagged by us are reviewed by Valve's comms team before removal, they are not just auto-removed.
We have no problem with people discussing our pricing or DLC policy. We would never try to censor reviews that we do not agree with. We love you guys and we always appreciate your feedback, even when it's negative.
Most likely, someone has flagged this post by mistake, or against our internal guidelines. Will let you know once I know more!
We're still looking into exactly what happened here, but to clarify this must be some sort of mistake. While we do (as any developer) have the ability to flag reviews as abusive, we rarely do so and in those cases only with reviews that are clear cases of racism, slurs or excessive cursing (some reviews are JUST cursing
).Also, important to note that reviews flagged by us are reviewed by Valve's comms team before removal, they are not just auto-removed.
We have no problem with people discussing our pricing or DLC policy. We would never try to censor reviews that we do not agree with. We love you guys and we always appreciate your feedback, even when it's negative.
Most likely, someone has flagged this post by mistake, or against our internal guidelines. Will let you know once I know more!
That wasn't the censor part but the trying to change how I review a game which I don't think they have anything to do with. The censoring is from what they are doing today as well as removing all posts back when people explained how to unlock said DLC with their own modding system by just using files included in the normal install. And there was a certain mod which PD removed in Stellaris that also caused uproar in the community.
Um, I am not sure if I understand everything correctly... but isn't this basically trying to circumvent paying for their product? You honestly expect a company to not stop people from spreading information on how you can effectively circumvent paying for the content they developed? That's like getting mad over removed forum posts that show how to pirate their games.... If you really want to argue in favor of this specific point, then you lose quite a bit of credibility by making these absurd demands.
Not to mention that this so far looks like a one-time mistake. Spinning an entire "censorship" conspiracy out of this little evidence seems a bit hysterical.
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If Steam adopted a platform-wide policy to forbid reviews talking about issues other than game quality, I would be all for it. Single companies doing that? Nah, it would be too arbitrary. Looks like a honest mistake.
It is a simple "Recommend Yes/No" review system. And if somebody won't recommend it because of the price and policy behind the developers, that is a perfectly valid reason to do so.BAD DLC policy biased Steam review writers on EU4 are NOT to be trusted, as they don't rate the GAME itself, only company policy on DLC.
That is like rating world of warcraft base game as BAD, just because monthly fee for it is too high.
Price should play a role in a review, but NOT be the main variable being looked at when reveiwing a game/DLC.
It is NOT objective.
If said reviews would be about DLC, you STILL got to consider cost/return value. Rating a good content "overpriced" dlc as 30% just because you *think* it's overpriced, is trolling in my book, or at least writing a biased review.
Example: viking traders went all the way to BAGDAD to trade, and the only UNBIASED non christian info you will ever find on vikings comes from sources that far away, just because they weren't thinking of vikings as vile aggressive raiding backwater heathens needing conversion, as many historians around King Magnus were back in those days.
Point being, all those bad steam reviewed are horribly biased and written by people that aren't trustworthy to rate the game as badly. Its common sense in science; if your source is biased, its untrustworthy source.
If you want to change DLC policy of Paradox, the idea would be to make everybody NOT buy the game. Which is exactly what writers of these bad reviews want to accomplish. The reason they write biased reviews might be a valid one, but it contaminates the review.
And what will it yield in the end?
Paradox giving up on making DLC, and making eu4 abandonware. I'm sure we can agree nobody on this forum wants that.
Hope you can understand my point here.
Conclusion:
Do NOT post bad reviews on steam, as it hurts ENTIRE current community, and FUTURE playerbase.
if you don't like paradox DLC policy, then don't buy DLC at full price.
don't ruin the free updates to the game by scaring unbiased potential buyers away with bad steam reviews.
you will achieve exact opposite of what you want; risking making this game abandonware with NO DLC and no free updates.
Paradox is right to censor this review, but they could have reacted to it with humor also.
"Harsh treatment of rebels is good for our absolutism" they could have posted as explanation for their censorship.
So would it be valid if I didn't recommend a game because of a rude developer? How does it help fellow gamers to assess the quality of the game?
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