• stardust@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    This shows the power of steam reviews with it being driven by the actual community. People tried to downplay and belittle its effectiveness, but it being front and center on the store page does have more impact than there would be without steam reviews. If there were no steam reviews the PSN requirement would have been pushed through with it being easier to ignore some random internet comments on social media than a store page.

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Reviews aren’t pointless, but their impact only goes so far. I am assuming the massive amount of refunds had more to do with it, tbh.

      • Glide@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        I suspect someone in accounting ran the numbers and decided they stand to lose more to reduced microtransaction sales than they would have gained via selling scraped data.

        Though I agreed with you. It’s still a win, but we have to be careful not to conflate this with Sony “caring”.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          It was not “someone in accounting”

          This shit goes all the way to the top. Every manager in the chain will have their take and influence on the numbers.

          • Glide@lemmy.ca
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            7 months ago

            Sure, and I’m not suggesting said bean counter was responsible for the decision. What I am suggesting is that the only thing that influenced the decision was bottom line finances. Someone ran the numbers, and when the suits discovered that they stand to lose more money than they’d gain, they reversed the decision. Never mistake this as Sony “listening” to anything more than their investors and their bottom line.

      • Stern@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I’d imagine that there’s math to be done on sales for a mixed review game vs. a overwhelming positive one, and its not favorable.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        7 months ago

        Made me imagine a page where everyone everyday can leave 1 vote on how good the government performs

        If the scores are too low for a prolonged period of time, the government is dismissed.

        (Obviously a very first-second concept with millions of flaws - just a thought)

          • Allero@lemmy.today
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            7 months ago

            Two-party system is the enemy of democracy to begin with

            But maybe even they would be more inclined to do better everyday

          • Allero@lemmy.today
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            7 months ago

            Many countries actually have such systems in place today, even Russia (lol) - not that they work too well.

            Normally, there are two sources of issues here: petitions can in fact be declined, and, in cases where the signature count depends on scale of the petition they can be intentionally escalated as to make it impossible to gain enough signatures. Besides, in many cases petitions can be left unanswered for longer than promised.

            Long story short, the system is open to shenanigans and doesn’t make the government truly accountable.

            We need the system that would actually make politicians rapidly lose their jobs when they ignore public opinion.

            • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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              7 months ago

              Good detailed response :)

              make politicians rapidly lose their jobs when they ignore public opinion.

              Under such conditions, would the US have ended slavery or enacted the Civil Rights Act?

              • Allero@lemmy.today
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                7 months ago

                Completely depends on who is allowed to vote.

                If slaves would have a vote, they’d certainly strongly choose one option :D

                Same for the discriminated groups.

                If they don’t have a vote, this depends on the rest of society in the short run, but can cause violent rebellions in the long one. Democratic system does not eliminate possibility of revolt.

    • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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      7 months ago

      The sony communities I saw poopooing the whole thing flipped immediately into “WE DID IT” mode, pretending they actually cared about the people that were going to lose access.

    • Syrc@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      This is why Steam reviews should be taken much more seriously. This was impossible to avoid due to the enormous amount of bad press and devs themselves jumping on the hate train, but I’m betting that a lot of review bombing attempts have been quietly offset by the company just paying people for fake reviews. It’s especially obvious when the game has relatively low reviews for months and months, then suddenly bad stuff happens and along with the justified dump of negative reviews, positive ones also skyrocket (99% of which composed of “good game”, random memes or ascii art).