Steam Once Again Hid Negative Reviews; Reaction to Unpopular Changes
The negative reception faced by the developers of Skullgirls 2nd Encore after they gentrified their game was declawed by Steam, which hid much of the unflattering reviews.
If you don't know what Skullgirls 2nd Encore is, I rush to explain the whole controversy. It's a cartoonish 2D fighting game. Its distinguishing elements are lightly erotic elements and a dose of unconventional humor.
The game debuted in 2012 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and after a year it was also released on PC, and until recently held a steady base of loyal players.
Censorship of animated... female attributes
That changed, however, after the latest update, which "softened" many graphical elements, which was met with an unequivocally negativereaction from the community. Players did not like the removal of scenes in which, among other things, you can see the underwear of female characters, or the redesign of costumes with red armbands stylized as Nazi uniforms. Similar changes were made not only to the game, but also to the digital artbook.
A wave of criticism poured on the developers, but as it turned out, Steam quelled the voice of the disgruntled community - now on the game's tab under "Recent Reviews", we can see that these are "overwhelmingly positive."
Source: Reddit
Steam hides reviews (again)
This event has not escaped the community on Reddit, which quickly publicized the topic. Why did Valve's platform not take into account the negative reviews of players? We are dealing with a situation analogous to the recent hiding of 80 thousand negative reviews of War Thunder.
In both cases Steam did not so much remove as hide the negative reviews, marking them as "unhelpful" and unrelated to the game itself. Most likely, the platform's algorithms worked automatically, identifying such a large influx of unflattering reviews (about 5,000 reviews) as review bombing. It's unlikely that no one at Valve analyzed the situation and wondered whether the criticism had no basis - after all, in a sense, the game had cut out content that players paid for.
Time will tell whether consumer pressure will persuade the developers to change their attitude and restore the game's "naughty bits'.
