Steam’s “review bomb” fix is so far failing its first big test

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  It's not hard to identify when the review bomb started for Borderlands 2. [credit: Valve ]

Last month, Valve announced a new policy intended to curb the problem of "off-topic review bombs" on Steam, wherein a horde of players post negative reviews of a game for reasons other than the game's actual content. This month, that policy is so far failing to correct for some clear off-topic review bombs on Gearbox's Borderlands games.

In the six months leading up to March 31, Borderlands 2 received a total of 412 negative reviews on Steam—a paltry 4.5 percent of all the reviews posted in that period. In the few days since April 1, by contrast, the game has received a flood of 2,156 negative reviews, or nearly 62 percent of reviews during that time. You can see similar recent review patterns on the Steam pages for the original Borderlands, The Pre-Sequel, and various series DLC packages as well.

Dive into the text of those recent negative reviews, and you'll find practically no one criticizing the games themselves. Instead, you'll find hundreds of people expressing their displeasure with Gearbox's recently announced decision to release the upcoming Borderlands 3 exclusively on the Epic Games Store for a six-month period.

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from Gaming & Culture – Ars Technica http://bit.ly/2FLZaSg