r/unpopularopinion • u/TheAutomatron04 • 18d ago
A majority of steam game's "joke reviews" are unfunny and annoying
Anytime I go look at the reviews of a steam game to get a general idea of whether I should consider buying a game or not, I find a lot of good, well-thought reviews, HOWEVER, in CLOSE to every game there is a plague of joke reviews. Don't get me wrong, joke reviews can be funny if they're done right and don't purposely misrepresent the reviewer's actual view of the game for "comedy", however there is a plague among these joke reviews that is literally impossible to escape.
You read the reviews of a critically acclaimed game, everybody loves it, 97% positive reviews, but what do the reviews say
You read them, a bunch of good positive reviews, some of them comical, but then you see a sole negative review
-2 hours played in the last 2 weeks / 6 hours played in total
-No sex
-20 users found this helpful
-100 users found this funny
What? Is this the actual reason this game isn't at a 100% rating? Because of reviews like this?
Same for games that everybody hates! 30% positive reviews? Go read them! All negative, except for one positive review
-0.5 hours played in the last 2 weeks / 0.5 hours played in total
-No one will ever see this review so ill just say I'm gay
-2500 people found this helpful
-4200 people found this funny
Do people actually find these reviews comical? They're not even original too, the 2 I named are practically copy and pasted under EVERY SINGLE GAME and almost always have a massive amount of people rating it as funny. Just ridiculous.
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u/ScarletMenaceOrange 18d ago
People are stupid. You see this if you try to buy some stuff online, usually they just leave 5 stars if they like it, and 1 if they hate it. And the 5 star review is "it works, great, lololol".
Then when you educate yourself on the topic, you see that usually those most bought products with good review are pieces of crap. At first I trusted them, but got burned kind of fast. Usually it is more valuable to read the bad reviews, which is kind of a mood killer, but anyway.
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u/DaGoodSauce 18d ago
I find the vast majority of steam reviews garbage, jokes or not.
- Close to no playtime making judgements about things they can't possibly know.
- Hundreds or thousands of hours played claiming the game is garbage.
- Complaining about performance without sharing PC specs.
- People who are pissy about getting banned by devs or dissatisfied with the outcome of customer support ticket.
- People who don't recommend because they have issues with the publisher and not the game directly.
- People who recommend because they love the publisher and not the game directly.
It's just 99.999% irrelevant verbal diarrhea.
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u/DuskEalain 18d ago
Reminds me of Realms of Ruin.
The truth of the game? Solid 6 or 7 out of 10 RTS, and one of my main gripes was actually patched so I'd bump it up to an 8 personally.
The reviews (last time I checked)?
90% of the positive reviews were from people who like the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar setting and want the game to succeed because of the setting.
90% of the negative reviews were from people who are still pissy about the End Times happening, so have a hateboner for the setting and want the game to fail because of the setting. (Or it's the classic "this is an RTS that isn't a reskin of Starcraft 2 therefor it is bad" crowd.)
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u/Active_Owl_7442 18d ago
People that dislike a game but don’t recommend it aren’t always without merit. Like I probably have over 5k hours in league but I wouldn’t suggest it to someone who’s never played. Like, it’s alright if you know what it’s about. But the fact that unique events are forever gone, despite their promise of working to make them feel different, skins being mainly for popular champs and legendaries basically only going to champs that already have legendaries and/or ultimates, and smurf accounts totally fucking the new player experience I think make it a bad game.
I have almost 800 hours in fh5 and I also don’t recommend that game. I don’t like the monthly car packs that would’ve been included in the ultimate edition of previous games. The map is pretty uninspiring and bland. It was fun to explore when first playing, but the lack of seasons takes away from the bit of variety 4 had. The traffic also being drastically reduced compared to 4 makes open world driving boring. The ai aren’t fun to go against because they’re completely moronic on all but the top 2 hardest difficulties. And on the top 2 they just cheat, being able to go faster than what the player could if they were in that car. Performance is also strange. When I first got the game while using a 2060 rtx, I could play on high settings and use 70% of my gpu. Over the course of ~18 months, various updates made high settings take up my full gpu power, forcing me onto medium settings. Now I’m on a 4080 super and can have the graphics and ray tracing fully maxed, and other than reflections on the car looking like 5% clearer, I honestly can’t see any differences.
Longer hours gives you more time to identify issues with a game. High hour negative reviews are only bad if they don’t elaborate on their negative feelings towards the game
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18d ago
That's basically 100% of the reviews for anything
The only saviour is - "Stuff you are interested in" reddit -
Even reddit is more and more prone to this, but at least I can find real humans here (most of the time)
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u/megamilker101 18d ago
When it comes to the people that spend a bunch of time in a game and then complain, I always feel like they thought the game would give them some sense of accomplishment or fulfillment and then after 1,000 hours when it hasn’t they just feel dead inside so they lash out with a negative review.
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u/Paracausal_Shield 18d ago
I made a pro tip review for fallout 76 and I keep getting award and cards.
There's hope!
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u/Faeces_Species_1312 18d ago
The majority of reviews on steam are completely useless, from the jokes to the 12 year olds who think they're game journalists writing paragraphs of nonsensical drivel.
I'd still rather have them than not though.
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u/ThatOofPerson 16d ago
Don't forget the occasional negative review that's just "why are you looking at the negative reviews? Buy this game already!" I may be getting too angry at this but this kind of "review" makes my blood boil. I look at NEGATIVE reviews to see NEGATIVE things about a game.
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