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Non-owners of a game shouldn't be allowed to rate and review it
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8bitWalker Often you can see one star ratings shortly after a release, one liner reviews with partly political messages or other nonsensical complaints. Multiple reviews reveal that the corresponding user hasn't even played the game.
Both features gets abused like crazy. Both need to be entirely removed.
Only owners of a game should be able to rate and review it.
Brahvim Maybe allow connecting (signing-in) to Steam to confirm a purchase for something *solely* to allow posting reviews?
...Sounds a bit "difficult", I guess?
Otherwise, yeah, this should not really be a thing!...
*GOG decides*...
Zeffi_s_Ghost I've reviewed one or two games that I own on other platforms (steam), so I think it'd be better just to have a quality control.
kabamaru_ Maybe it's allowed because they actually need more reviews and ratings. This is GOG, this isn't Steam with its huge customer base. If you've only got 2 reviews for a title, it's kind of useless for the customer.
Memfis-Pfeffi I might add
depends on how GOG values freedom of speech
so, here we are …
Memfis-Pfeffi if someone owns a game sold by GOG, doesn't mean someone hasn't got the title on Epic like I do Alien Isolation, yet I got Alien Isolation here on GOG because of DRM lifting
Maybe one-star ratings of game license owners indicate how dissatisfied they are with the game and couldn't be bothered to by a bad title twice just to be able to rate it.
Cryptic-Shadow rules for thee but not for me.
Vainamoinen The disruptive opinion can not be ignored, psychology tells us, it can not be filtered out, neither by mind nor algorithm. And when it's an opinion by people who go on second or third hand info or just draw it out of their behind, it has no place on the point of sale. Even Gabe Newell knows that, the dude with the monopoly who doesn't have to give a shit about his business clients. For GOG, it's clearly a life or death matter.
rw9hkj8uu For your information, GOGe has the "Verfied owners" filtre to separate the ones who own on GOG from others. Just notice it exists and do use it from now on.
Vainamoinen Nobody who posts reviews here directly reads the EULA, of course. That guy on youtube on whose behalf people act like jerks here, that guy might have read the EULA. Not thoroughly of course, leaves more time for fabricating outrage and getting clicks.
The people who eventually end up badmouthing a game on the point of sale at GOG have not read the EULA, they're just following implicit orders from their social media expert on the matter. They are making themselves willing satellites of an outrage machinery that could well be interpreted as a collective act of censorship itself.
They're mindless NPC drones without an opinion of their own, able only to reproduce the argument of some social media jackass.
So, in short, whenever somebody intends to "warn" you of the terms of contract of or 'censorship' in a game they have never played, they're dishonest actors regurgitating the hot internet garbage they've been fed with who should doubly and triply not get to write reviews on GOG.
And as this BS is against the explicitly stated GOG rules for reviews, well ... these people need to get a life.
TestGirlFan Total disagree, this sounds more like censoring than an useful feature. Don't like some ratings? Filters are your friends then ;D
anarion321 Hard disagree. Allowing all people to review gives more info, that's always a good thing.
For example, someone may have read the EULA of the game and found something bad they want to review. I see this all the time in reviews well liked in GoG, where DRM is important and some games are not fully DRM sometimes.
I could see more filter options to feature more owner reviews, but censorship should not be the way.
Even political messages can make people buy games.
JoaoPauloZA J_chuklz is 100% right. At the end of the day...the request boils down to shutting people up because you don't like what they say. Use the filters, and quit trying to dictate others' actions. The logical conclusions that Vainamoinen arrives at have neither logic nor a conclusion. It's irrelevant what a group of verified GOG purchasers say in unison or what they rate something jointly. There is a group/echo chamber mentality here that prevades everything. Leave people alone and let them speak.
j_chuklz Part of the problem is thinking that people who bought the game won't just rate it 5-Stars also for political reasons or because of their investment.
I mean, just look at the ratings for any title. There are a ton of 5-Star ratings for sub-par games. How do you suggest we correct that so that games aren't being over hyped and people getting duped? You aren't ever going to get an honest review system, because people aren't honest.
I like having the option to see what people are saying, even if their review is based on a walkthrough or Let's Play. Then I am being made aware of content that a strong supporter isn't relaying or omitiing on purpose.
Use the filters. They are your friend. The current system is the middle ground. It allows both the bloviating positivity and the negativity, giving the customer the knowledge they need to make a good purchasing decision. After all, reviews are there to relay information to the customer spending the money, not to help sell more games.
Vainamoinen Hey, let's not devolve into insults. There's more than enough of that on the forums. ;)
My answer to "how do you know they don't own it or haven't played it on a different platform" is, frankly, I don't. When the legit GOG owners rate a game a mean 4.7 stars (excellent) and the other reviews and ratings drag that score down to an 'overall' of merely 1.8 stars (abysmal), it is the only logical conclusion though.
The solution proposed here is fair, and it puts honesty above all other concerns. I have gripes with games I never played too of course, but you won't find my 'review' under Kingdom Come or some visual novels glorifying the sexualisation of minors. I won't review a game I never played. I'd be ashamed of myself misleading people like that.
For the non players, there are other places on the net to vent their concern besides the actual point of sale.
brogan84 I concur with JoaoPauloZA. You seem to be very opinionated. You see yourself as a "defender of truth," with the very idiotic view that your opinion should somehow matter more than others.
brogan84 And how do you know they don't own it or haven't played it on a different platform? You post is very simpleminded.
Furthermore, even if they haven't played the entire game, they may have seen something they felt strongly about,
You don't have the right to say who can and who can't have an opinion.
JoaoPauloZA I think this is a bogus request. How would you know whether a person played the game on another platform or not? You wouldn't. There are also playthroughs that people can wacth. This is merely an attempt by people who don't like what others say or think to silence others as though they were the defenders of truth.
CrazyEyEz24 I agree.. if you don't own a game you should have no-say in a review, i own an absolute tone of games (not all PC) and some are just a janky mess with less worth than toilet paper..... however i feel like if i don't or have not owned it via GOG i should not leave a review as a game can be very different depending on the device you have it for or where you got it from.
check Hogs Of War for example if you disagree... that game was EPIC on PS1, here on GOG (PC) its a steaming pile of shite where AI fails, the textures fail to load and the music/sound glitch out.. so if i was to review the PS1 version i would say its Awesome 8/10 but the PC version is totally different and i would give it a 1/10 as nothing works.
I also think that paid reviews should be removed as there biased a lot of the time which influences a buyers choice and a game is not always as portrayed by the person who got paid.
I just stick to reviewing games i have actually had or got on GOG as i think that's fairer than just my opinion on a copy i have else where.
HunchBluntley There's already filter that lets you only see reviews from people who have the game on GOG, and you can also see the average ratings of only GOG owners of a title. There's literally no need for this.
AmericanWithAGun The ONLY reason you should to be able to rate a game without owning it is if you own it on another platform, but the negatives of spammers and false reviews way outweigh this one positive.
fisk0 I think the biggest problem is that GOG does nothing about reported reviews, but I think there should be an option to filter out reviews by non-owners both from the average rating and from the reviews page, unless you explicitly chose to view all.
tedeee this is rather pointless, there is a report feature for reviews if you feel the reviewer is adding nothing constructive. other people do play games elsewhere and post here. i play some games on Game Pass and post reviews here to help others deciding on purchases.
Carpetcrumb perhaps there could be a verified purchase filter. maybe enabled by default.
Fraphi Exactly, 8bitWalker. Opened a support ticket just a couple of days ago about the same.
QWEEDDYZ I also point to 5 star spam reviews, bring by publishers PRs. Kalypso, Sega for sure.
And yet. Im completely disagree.
adikad13000 I have been saying this for a while now, weird that people find no issue with this, when it is obvious, that this makes it easy for bots to spam reviews on games. Therefore this feature should go.
Vainamoinen If you haven't put down your sweet euro or dollar right here on GOG's very own table, you don't deserve your opinion to be displayed right on the point of sale. Restricting reviews to honest customers is the only solution to the problem. And just in case you're wondering, the problem is dishonesty. Non Playing Commenters (NPCs) are the norm, not the exception.
Carpetcrumb i do not want to have to link every game i have ever played to gog (after first having to find and install it again) in order to leave a review.
though, i hear your concern regarding the abuse of the review feature, im not sure of the solution. i would think it enough that such reviews are reported and removed. but i am new to gog, so im not certain. <3
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