WHAT!  Is there any logic to this?  Seems unfair

that's silly...

We at Stardock would really appreciate it if you haven't already reviewed GalCiv III on Steam to take a moment and do so.

Review GalCiv III here

Review GalCiv III: Crusade

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I would have preferred to write a review in French, my English writing skills aren't exactly... literrary, but it'll do, I guess.  Don't get why there's an option to write in Bulgarian but not in French on Steam.  Anyway.  Done, for the main game.  I'll review Crusade once I have had time to play it.

Since I already wrote a (positive) review for GalCiv III, I do not see a way to review Crusade on the Steam pages (despite finding it a better game, overall).  This does seem like an unfair way for Steam to promote games.

EDIT - nevermind, I found a means to review the expansion separately, and am now doing so.

Thanks for the tip.  I thought we couldn't do that.  Review posted.  Whether Steam counts it or not.

Thanks guys.  The score is now back over Mostly Positive which, in turn, increases the number of page views to the game by a huge number.

Fundamentally, the system is broken.  During the darker moments, it's tempting to just build a review bot and player bot and just have a 91% positive review score with 14,000 concurrent users.  But then there is no way to tell if people really like the game or not.

The basic issue now is that when only 0.6% of the users vote and the entire game's visibility can be decided, literally by a half dozen reviews, sometimes by people who have hundreds of hours into the game but are essentially using the review system to hold the game hostage until THEIR particular pet peeve is solved then you know the system is flawed.

We run a site called WinCustomize.com so we have a lot of experience with the power of user reviews.  But we would never consider using a handful of user reviews to determine visibility. That's nuts.  It's so prone to abuse.

I don't envy Valve and the position they're in.  It's a tough issue to solve.  But since they do take 30% of the pie, it seems like there would be more than sufficient resources to solve it.  Fix the exploits and have visibility based on things like what are people actually playing.

I think people let Valve off the hook way too easily. Their platform has some long running flaws that they should get called out on. While things have improved somewhat, there's still visibility issues with the store-front, and the platform is being gamed by unscrupulous 'developers' looking to make a quick buck with their shit-house 'games'. 

Froggy, I assume your plugged in with the Steam crew,  what do they say is their  justification for this?  Should we all vote with our $ and start buying from GOG?

I use the app. Specifically, I go to the Store page of the game I wish to review.

My reviews of this game will go on GOG and be very positive.

p.s. I just remembered I have the Steam version of the game too, so I guess I`ll just copy and paste it there, but no doubt someone will call me a shill because it`ll look like I`ve played the game less than 5 minutes.

Funny I thought video game creating eggheads would figure out how to create an effective and fair review system.  Can I have their jobs?  I will work for 80% pay.