Look at Beamdog's Enhanced Editions of D&D titles. Their reviews on GOG are usually quite mixed.

However, looking at it now. The Enhanced Editions are the better versions, boasting, among others, better resolution, better UI, major QOL improvements, and so on. And if you don't want to play them, they come with the original versions.

Now, their price on GOG is big, yes, but they go on sale often and the price is pretty fair then. I think it's a fair deal when you are getting the original AND the enhanced edition with a single purchase.


My point is, most of the problems are fixed, but the ratings are permanently down because of people from 7 years ago.

IMHO GOG and other platforms should archive older reviews, because they quite simply become outdated with time.

I think Gog staff sometimes add a note, if a review is purely about some technical problem that has been fixed in the meantime. I don't think they should do more than that, certainly not delete legitimate reviews.
And I totally disagree with you about the Beamdog editions, whatever their (imo very minor) merits, Beamdog's cash-grab was just evil.

The notes are good - just do more of them.

Hmmm... Archived meaning they wouldn't be in the forefront anymore. Honestly i'd rather just sort by date, so older review are put in the back and newer ones up front. Then they should have multiple ratings. In the last 0-12 months, 12-36 months, and 72+ months. Or maybe have the rating based on the most recent say 100 reviews and have a lifetime score.

Alternatively i suppose after major updates or DLC releases or something, then old reviews should be archived and the writers notified and given a chance to edit/repost their review, which may keep the original date with an updated date added to it.

Nonsense. Not all old reviews pertain to technical issues. And even those that do usually deal with multiple aspects of a game and can still be among the most informative reivews overall, even if some technical issues discussed are out of date. People just need to deal with the terrible burden of having to actually read and pick out whatever information and opinions may be relevant for themselves.

When I saw the title I thought "this again? of course not!". Then I saw the specific games the OP refers to and, er, definitely beg to differ when it comes to which of the editions is (still) worthy of positive reviews and which should be buried. And then I looked at the OP's specific complaint, claiming that reviews for the original and enhanced editions are mixed together, which would be a real issue if true. Only it's not true. As expected, the reviews for the enhanced editions are for the enhanced editions, all written since those were launched.

So no, the ratings aren't down because of the originals, the reviews of the originals aren't added to the EEs. But some EEs were actually launched 7-8 years ago.
And a review expresses the user's opinion about how the game was at the time, and a game released broken should pay for it. If it'll be fixed well enough, in time the weight of those initial ratings will be lower, but that point in time shouldn't be forgotten. (Something like rtcvb32 suggested could be added as an option though, for those who want to only see the ratings past a certain point, but it should probably be linked to updates, not a fixed amount of time, so since latest update / all time. Might also put some pressure on GOG to track and mark updates better.)

I honestly think that reviews should list what version is being reviewed. It wouldn't be perfect as someone could play the game once when released and review it years later after things have changed.

steam is ahead of this too , as they have recent reviews , so if a game comes out buggy and gets dvoted but then it is fixed , you can get the new reviews and their average , it is a good system

There's a button for that. At least for me; I don't know any more if a feature is native to gog or one of my installed "enhancements". Then there should also be a way to re-review a game every year (or at least confirm your review every year). As is, you can't even edit your rating any more once you post a review. The review should also be automatically renewed to the day before the last game update, at least, and a note should be sent to the reviewer to manually renew if the latest update did not change the gist of the review.

And honestly, OP: I don't think companies should be able to sweep crap like what Beamdog pulled under the rug so easily. It's not like the people who pulled that crap aren't still working at/running that company. I disagree with your assessment of the EE as well, but that sort of discussion belongs in the subforum.