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Epic Games Store new rating system... and how they already fucked up in every conceivable way.

Fuz

Banned

The Epic Games Store “Ratings and Polls” update​

6.17.2022
By Craig Pearson
We’ve just updated the Epic Games Store with a new feature we know players have been waiting for—Ratings and Polls. These new features allow players to provide direct feedback to the Epic Games Store community for the games they’re playing. Responses will populate the store product pages with information about games and apps, creating a better experience and helping players find games they’re more likely to love.

After playing a game or using an application, players may find the Epic Games Store launcher requesting feedback at the end of your session. Let’s take a look at some of those questions and how the system works.

Ratings​

Our ratings system will ask random players, who have played a game for more than two hours, to give a rating on a five point scale. Here's how it works: Following a play session, random players will be offered the opportunity to score the game up to five stars. Over time, these scores will help populate the “Overall Rating” that will appear on the product’s store page. Because these requests are randomized, we won’t spam our players, and we probably won’t ask about every game or app used. This approach protects games from review bombing and ensures people assigning scores are actual players of the games. Here’s what a Ratings survey can look like:
The Epic Games Store Ratings And Polls Update Ratings
On the left is an example of the questions, and on the right are how the results are represented.

Polls​

Separately from ratings, players may also be selected at random at the end of a play session to answer a poll. For polls, players will be asked a question that relates to their most recent session. The questions cover a broad range, and will have a number of potential responses. Players might be asked to respond “Yes” or “No” to “Is this game good to play with a group?”. Players could also be presented with a multiple choice poll asking “How challenging are the bosses in this game?”. Here are a few of examples of how a poll prompt might look:
The Epic Games Store Ratings And Polls Update Polls

After enough players have responded to the polls, their answers will help generate tags for the respective product pages. These tags can be used to filter games and apps within the Epic Games Store. As these tags grow over time, they'll be able to inform players on content and improve discoverability—helping our players find more games to enjoy! Over time, the store pages will accumulate a wide range of tags from confirmed players that will inform the community about more aspects of each game’s content. Over time, these tags will also populate our Category pages, and will be used to generate custom tag-based categories driven by our players that will appear on the Epic Games Store home page.

Keep an eye out for these as our players share their opinions about the games they are playing!

So, instead of going to rate on your own volition, you'll be bothered randomly to score. This would really piss me off, but luckily I already keep away from their pathetic store.
And the system is so smoky that you can't ever be sure it's not tampered with (lol Tim, sure I trust you). Can't even leave a full review.


BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

Because, for some reason that I REALLY CAN'T IMAGINE, games not out yet are already very positively scored:
PfWoYFf.png


oQt90iy.png


Review bombing is bad guys, mmmkay?
07wnr.gif


Tim is really trying his best to be corporate friendly and anti-consumer.

(I took this from retardera, credit where it's due.)
 
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You can't opt-out of the polls/rating pop-ups? They're mandatory? That would be stupidly annoying. Depends a bit on how they design it. Nowadays even steam has a blue bar on the library asking you if you want to leave a review since you played more than x hours, which I also find annoying and I am of the people who always leaves a review but stop asking me to.
 
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Wildebeest

Member
Random polling is a fair way of doing it, but they are using a system where people are conditioned into feeling guilted into giving five stars.
 

Mr Moose

Member
Amazon allows reviews for some unreleased shit too, it's annoying.

Fall Guys is 2 years old though, so that one is fine. Was it not released on their store before?
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
This type of stuff feels like water under the bridge. If I’m on there I know 99% of the time what I want to spend money on. They’ve already given me a full library of games. You can check out site 1 of 10,000 for a review of X, Y, and Z most of the time. People get paid to write reviews. Reading what gamer #477 thinks of his two hour play session will more than likely not influence me one way or another.
 
Epic is so behind Steam in features, it's almost pathetic.
And tis rating system is so bad, it's pretty much pointless.
How does Itch.io compare to Epic?

Itch.io is almost like a videogame version of Bandcamp - in that it's indie friendly.

With that in mind, it's surprising that Bandcamp sold to Epic.
 

bender

What time is it?
I still don't understand how giving away a ton of good 100% free games and often having the lowest prices + coupon codes during sales is anti-consumer, but maybe I just don't love Steam enough.

Gabe's magic stick is more magical than Tim's. Duh.
 

GruntosUK

Member
Epic is so behind Steam in features, it's almost pathetic.
And tis rating system is so bad, it's pretty much pointless.
How old is Steam and how old is EGS? Things don't just erect themselves overnight. Steam has had a long time to evolve.
 

CitizenZ

Banned
Amazing storytelling, LOL. Whats that account for in the history of gaming, 4 or 5 stories tops?

"Our ratings system will ask random players, who have played a game for more than two hours, to give a rating on a five point scale" Well, I guess they took the avg play time from urinalist and YT creators.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
I still don't understand how giving away a ton of good 100% free games and often having the lowest prices + coupon codes during sales is anti-consumer, but maybe I just don't love Steam enough.
This is a loss leader approach. Its fairly common strategy but the way they're doing it - and the fact they are a billionaire corporation that can afford as much losses as they want in this segment - makes it very questionable.

Think of it like this:
Company A sells diapers at 10 money, the cost of selling a diaper is 7 which means they profit 3 money. Company A does nothing but sell diapers.
Company B comes around. Company B is a multi-millionaire corp that works in multiple segments and can afford losses in the diaper segment no problem.
Company B starts seeling diapers at 6 money (losing 1 money in the proccess).
Company A starts losing costumers because company B sells at lower price. (<- you're here, saying this is not anti-consumer)
Company A can't afford to match the price of Company B, Company B can afford the losses no problem because they have profits in many other segments covering them up.
Company A eventually closes down, Company B is now a monopoly on the diaper segment.
Company B now sells diapers at 15 money. People have no choice but to buy from them because competition got driven out of the market by Company B.

Its an oversimplification but you can see what sets people off. Also keep in mind Steam isn't the only one that gets affected by this kind of strategy, many other smaller stores can also get harmed.
 
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Pejo

Member
This type of stuff feels like water under the bridge. If I’m on there I know 99% of the time what I want to spend money on. They’ve already given me a full library of games. You can check out site 1 of 10,000 for a review of X, Y, and Z most of the time. People get paid to write reviews. Reading what gamer #477 thinks of his two hour play session will more than likely not influence me one way or another.
This is one of the worst takes I've seen in a while. Steam reviews (while not 100% perfect and still can be abused) are 100x better than some paid shill reviewer site, most of which don't even enjoy games and would rather push agendas. Steam verifies that the user owns the game, shows the user's playtime, and then the review is voted to be helpful or not among peers. This is all essentially controlled by gamers that actually play the game. If you trust random reviewer x,y,z over that type of direct feedback, then I dunno what to tell you.

The Epic system, while not only annoying to end users, has none of the transparency of Steam and obviously has some sort of management layer on top by Epic themselves, as shown by games that aren't even released having 4+ stars. This is what a truly untrustworthy and shady system looks like.
 

winjer

Gold Member
How old is Steam and how old is EGS? Things don't just erect themselves overnight. Steam has had a long time to evolve.

Steam was creating almost everything from scratch. Epic just has to copy what Steam did, and they can't even do that right.

How does Itch.io compare to Epic?

Itch.io is almost like a videogame version of Bandcamp - in that it's indie friendly.

With that in mind, it's surprising that Bandcamp sold to Epic.

Why are you quoting me, just make a rant about Itch.io.
And who cares about Itch.io. I don't even have an account there.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
This is one of the worst takes I've seen in a while. Steam reviews (while not 100% perfect and still can be abused) are 100x better than some paid shill reviewer site, most of which don't even enjoy games and would rather push agendas. Steam verifies that the user owns the game, shows the user's playtime, and then the review is voted to be helpful or not among peers. This is all essentially controlled by gamers that actually play the game. If you trust random reviewer x,y,z over that type of direct feedback, then I dunno what to tell you.

The Epic system, while not only annoying to end users, has none of the transparency of Steam and obviously has some sort of management layer on top by Epic themselves, as shown by games that aren't even released having 4+ stars. This is what a truly untrustworthy and shady system looks like.
Someone can idle the game for two hours and they give it a salty review. I don’t know how disappointed I’ve been from reading horror game reviews. My only take is that most of them are bad games. I don’t mind a star system for reviews. People review bomb games for the hell of it.

You’re also trusting every other gamer who buys a game to give an honest opinion. When the reviewer says “this game is sh*t” and has 100+ hours on it then what do you believe?

Someone can say paid reviews are bad, but that can’t be true for 100% of the time. That’s just believing the meta that it all works. I think its also bad for someone jumping in to read a bunch of salty posts about a game. When in fact we all hear that “you should decide for yourself”. All of a sudden you get conflicted opinions from gamers left and right. I can’t believe all video game review sites are lying.
 
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Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
This is a loss leader approach. Its fairly common strategy but the way they're doing it - and the fact they are a billionaire corporation that can afford as much losses as they want in this segment - makes it very questionable.

Think of it like this:
Company A sells diapers at 10 money, the cost of selling a diaper is 7 which means they profit 3 money. Company A does nothing but sell diapers.
Company B comes around. Company B is a multi-millionaire corp that works in multiple segments and can afford losses in the diaper segment no problem.
Company B starts seeling diapers at 6 money (losing 1 money in the proccess).
Company A starts losing costumers because company B sells at lower price. (<- you're here, saying this is not anti-consumer)
Company A can't afford to match the price of Company B, Company B can afford the losses no problem because they have profits in many other segments covering them up.
Company A eventually closes down, Company B is now a monopoly on the diaper segment.
Company B now sells diapers at 15 money. People have no choice but to buy from them because competition got driven out of the market by Company B.

Its an oversimplification but you can see what sets people off. Also keep in mind Steam isn't the only one that gets affected by this kind of strategy, many other smaller stores can also get harmed.

AKA dumping.
 

ClosBSAS

Member
I still don't understand how giving away a ton of good 100% free games and often having the lowest prices + coupon codes during sales is anti-consumer, but maybe I just don't love Steam enough.

The fact that you don't see egs preventing games from being on steam as anti consumer worries me more. It's not about exclusivity, it's about the game not being on steam, period. That's what Timmy wants, he thinks his plan is gonna work lmao, that's the saddest part. Steam has only gotten better, leaving egs in the dust when it comes to features. No game has sold better on egs than on steam. What Timmy is doing is totally anti consumer, but if ur in it for free games only, good for you. There are many issues with steam, but none have been solved by egs. In facts it's only made steam better. Ubisoft gets that moneyhat, so egs keeps games away from steam, that's just low. They want ubis dick so much.
 
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ClosBSAS

Member
How old is Steam and how old is EGS? Things don't just erect themselves overnight. Steam has had a long time to evolve.
Dude this isn't new. When steam came out digital distribution was new. It's not new now, ffs, this dumb ass argument needs to stop. It's so bad, fallacious. Digital distribution is nothing new. Nothing new. It wasn't new when origin came out and origin came out with more features that egs.

There is ABSOLUTELY no reason why egs can't have basic features. Even Uplay has more features and that's one barebones ass client. Even rockstar launcher has more features, that's just sad considering te money epic has. Just comes to show all they care about is beating steam with free games and moneyhats.
 
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PSYGN

Member
Our ratings system will ask random players

I don't like the sound of that. I can imagine them "randomly" selecting less critical reviewers. Like someone else said - if you bought the game, you should be able to review it. I mean, why would they not allow you that? It's blatantly obvious.
 

Denton

Member
I still don't understand how giving away a ton of good 100% free games and often having the lowest prices + coupon codes during sales is anti-consumer, but maybe I just don't love Steam enough.
Or maybe you are just disengenuously praising the decent stuff Epic does while conveniently ignoring the shitty stuff Epic does.
 
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Northeastmonk

Gold Member
That's what publishers and their shills want you to think, but it's false.
I’m not here to start a war. I’m just saying I’d rather argue against 1 questionable reviewer than a dozen or so gamers. I’ve tried to read the review section of Steam and for as many positive reviews, it’s always the negative ones that stay with me. I have gone to just looking for Overwhelmingly Positive responses at the top of the game page rather than scroll down to the bottom. Which to me, works. If I want it and it’s positive then I might purchase it. That Overwhelmingly Positive or Mixed could very well be 5/5 Stars or 3/5 for mixed. By the time a big AAA game comes out, the vast majority of the press have played it and the general consensus of the game is based on big publication sites way before the Steam Community or somewhere else gets their hands on it.

I do agree that having just a star system leaves little room for quality reviews from users. I also don’t mind it because whenever I dive deep into a game’s user reviews , it’s a lot of the times more depressing and I generally do not want the game for whatever pros someone else points out.

I think we all know the toxicity of Steam’s forums. I’ve known that for a long time now. People play games for many different reasons and what’s considered acceptable to one gamer isn’t acceptable to the next. That is why it’s easier for me to fight some reviewer who maybe gets paid to write the review than argue with someone who sink all their teeth into a game before the next person does.

uh, yes? They will on average at least. Its not like we read a single user review and call it a day.


uh, no? On that subject, Steam has a very good anti-R-bombing system in place

Again not here to start a war. I don’t like it half the time and it boils down to finding things on Steam that works for me.

I have spent quite a bit on Steam for 10+ years. I love Steam. I’m waiting for Deck. I own the controller and the Link. I’m just saying I hate reading their user reviews at times. I just don’t bother with it and move on to something else.
 
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mxbison

Member
How old is Steam and how old is EGS? Things don't just erect themselves overnight. Steam has had a long time to evolve.

And the start of Steam's success was forcing people who bought Half-Life 2 to install Steam so they can play it.

Easy to be pro-consumer when you pretty much have a monopoly.

I'm not saying Epic buying exclusivity is good. It sucks, but everyone is doing it and Steam would probably be doing it too if they didnt have like 95% market share.

I just think it's weird that Epic gets so much more shit for it than Sony, Microsoft, etc.
 

Fuz

Banned
And the start of Steam's success was forcing people who bought Half-Life 2 to install Steam so they can play it.

Easy to be pro-consumer when you pretty much have a monopoly.

I'm not saying Epic buying exclusivity is good. It sucks, but everyone is doing it and Steam would probably be doing it too if they didnt have like 95% market share.

I just think it's weird that Epic gets so much more shit for it than Sony, Microsoft, etc.
I agree with you here, I pointed it out in the past too, but it's besides the point.
 

Saber

Gold Member
I mean...people giving a score before the game came even out is a big deal. It's the ultimate buying trap.
I may not like much Steam myself, but Pejo Pejo put an exellent point. In there you can see if the say person is just review bombing or giving a honest by judging the amount of time he/she spent playing or even if the game was received as free. I know about this because I did that myself with a game know as "Fox n Forests", which has a lot of bad mixed into the game, and I find that a trully terrible experience.

Here theres nothing to give feedback since no one played the a game that haven't even released. Guess what happens when the game releases? People will buy it because they find the majority of players gave "positive review" before the game even came out. It's a putrit strategy.
 
I just think it's weird that Epic gets so much more shit for it than Sony, Microsoft, etc.
Because Epic is doing it on PC. On consoles platform exclusivity and moneyhatting is an old hat (no pun intended). Console gamers not only expect it, they see it as a win if it restricts the affected games to their platform of choice, and if they get the short end of the stick they expect their side to "retaliate" by buying out studios or moneyhatting other third party titles in turn.
 
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sainraja

Member
All they had to do was copy Steam not try and invent what a digital store/launcher should be. They are an embarrassment and their year end sales prove almost no one buys anything.
Nah, Steam was just the default launcher/store for a very long time without anyone challenging its position. What is the Epic store lacking that the Steam store has as of right now?

The rating policy is a business decision. They could have easily adopted Steam's rating system but given that 'review bombing' is a thing that happens and Steam hasn't been able to address it, EPIC has implemented a way that they think will work. Let's see if it does.

EDIT

I don't think there is anything wrong with taking the decision away from the player to choose to rate a game. That will definitely stop people from review bombing games.

Because Epic is doing it on PC. On consoles platform exclusivity and moneyhatting is an old hat (no pun intended). Console gamers not only expect it, they see it as a win if it restricts the affected games to their platform of choice, and if they get the short end of the stick they expect their side to "retaliate" by buying out studios or moneyhatting other third party titles in turn.
Before EPIC, Steam was the only big player there was. So, obviously, Steam wouldn't need to provide any reasons for people to choose them over someone else. Everyone had to use them. GOG (I can't recall if it was before EPIC or not) use to focus on old games only and I think they have gone back to that (unfortunately). My favorite has been GOG.
 
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Mister Wolf

Member
I still don't understand how giving away a ton of good 100% free games and often having the lowest prices + coupon codes during sales is anti-consumer, but maybe I just don't love Steam enough.

Yeah. I snagged FF7 Intergrade off Epic this past sale for $37. They've been won me over.
 

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
I cannot believe that people give THIS much of a shit about 'user reviews'. Crying because you can't have the thoughts of literal randos transmitted to your brain via a video game client? You have literally endless opportunities to feast on the worthless ramblings of idiots.

All you need is your own brain, and a no commentary let's play to evaluate whether a game is for you. If you are buying games because of a fucking user-driven star rating, or because you loved the ASCII middle finger that -++z3r0C00L++- posted to totally pwn the devs, you need to be beaten to death with a sockful of rocks.
 

Fuz

Banned
people giving a score before the game came even out is a big deal.
Ok ok ok ok ok we'll need to be perfectly clear on this because to my surprise a lot of people here don't get the point: no one could have given a score yet since those games aren't out. Their score system is rigged from the start.

CLEAR NOW?
 
Before EPIC, Steam was the only big player there was. So, obviously, Steam wouldn't need to provide any reasons for people to choose them over someone else. Everyone had to use them. GOG (I can't recall if it was before EPIC or not) use to focus on old games only and I think they have gone back to that (unfortunately). My favorite has been GOG.
That's the thing, though. Valve had no real pressure to improve their platform for close to 15 years, but they did it anyway.

I have no idea why, but somehow none of the other stores meant to compete with Steam ever bothered to mount a serious attempt at reaching feature parity, even though they are backed by multibillion dollar corporations and don't even have to come up with shit on their own. All they have to do is copy what Valve are already doing, but apparently they can't even do that.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Controlled reviews. Exactly how Epic would want it.

I’m sure those who give positive scores will be the ones asked to score what they’re playing.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
but given that 'review bombing' is a thing that happens and Steam hasn't been able to address it,
they did address it tho, quite splendidly at that.

7mdPzDD.png
OmBupEI.png


It makes sure it doesn't affect the score while at the same time letting players be aware there has been a review bomb, as well as allowing them to read the reviews from the period it happened so you can make your own mind about it.
 
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