Bethesda Softworks stunned Steam users earlier this week when players discovered that Starfield developers were actively replying to negative reviews on Valve’s PC platform.
It was unusual to see such a major company diving deep into reviews, but what was even stranger was the replies themselves. Some eye-grabbing quotes saw Bethesda arguing that Starfield is, in fact, not boring, comparing its sci-fi video game to the level of excitement Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin might have felt when they landed on the moon.
These comments quickly made their way to social media, and when they did, many were stunned to see one of the biggest companies in the industry replying to crowds of displeased players. Some developers were quick to clarify, though, that developer replies aren’t new for everyone.
“Yep, we’ve been doing this for a few years now,” Gloomwood and Dusk developer Dillon Rogers said in a post. “A lot of people will flip their review if you reach out and let them know you’re working on the issue or helping them resolve a bug. It makes a big difference when it comes to the algorithm, actually.”
While the Fallout studio is somewhat of an outlier when it comes to replying to reviews in the AAA space, it’s far from the only developer to participate in this level of community engagement. It’s so popular that it takes only a few clicks to find studios of all sizes replying to negative and positive reviews of their own. Each does it for their own reasons, and none of them would craft the same response for any one review.
“Our team will respond to reviews. We also have had the publisher respond to a few reviews,” Jasper Cole, lead developer on Backpack Hero tells us. “I do believe that most review responses are directly from me.”
The three-person team at what Cole calls “Team Backpack” takes a hands-on approach that, hopefully, will result in a stronger connection with the audience the studio has garnered so far. It takes time, though, to comb through thousands of reviews, and to no one’s surprise, Cole says taking the negativity head-on can be “hard on me and on the team.”
“Mostly I just go in and try to respond to anything negative, just to let people know that we care, that we’re available, and that we’re trying to resolve their concerns,” Cole added.
Of course, not every Steam user review is created with constructive feedback in mind. Steam’s review pages essentially operate as their own ecosystem that has its own in-jokes and trends. Skip between a few different pages and you’re bound to find the same copy/pasted text art of an adorable cat parading around the positive review sections. Conversely, some users aim to leave tongue-in-cheek negative critiques that…aren’t really critiques at all.
Gag reviews may have little impact on some games, but for others, a few negative reviews could be the difference between sitting at “Mixed” and “Mostly Positive.” That’s why you might see titles with relatively smaller audiences more actively spending time with reviewers. Moving Out 2 and Risk: Global Domination developer SMG Studio spends most of its time by targeting disinformation while still leaving messages signed by studio head Ashley Ringrose.
“We’re not going to tell people their opinion is wrong, but if they lie and say ‘the game did X’ and that’s not true then, (we) gotta step in,” Ringrose says. “We get some on Risk where people say ‘I made it to a higher rank in the game and THEN the dice started not working, or the CPU targeted me!’ and they accuse us of doing that to ‘make more money,’ which doesn’t even make sense (business-wise).”
Not everyone is clear on the impact that waves of negative or even positive reviews can have on visibility on Steam, though Valve did attempt to explain which games get the spotlight in a recent video. Ringrose, for example, is more concerned with reviews for projects that SMG puts out on the Google Play store, where dropping below a 4.0 score could mean the difference between being featured and not. It is at least reasonable to suspect that the more positive reviews a project has, the more likely it will attract attention and be placed in front of potential buyers.
Foulball Hangover studio director and Hydroneer creator Max Hayon started engaging with Steam reviewers upon his game’s launch in 2020. “As a solo developer at the time the task fell down to me. As time has gone on, and the team has grown while we continue to develop Hydroneer, that task has remained with me.”
As of November 30, 2023, around 20 of Steam’s top 100 Most Played titles (based on current players) feature community pages where developers show trends of replying to reviews. The Naraka: Bladepoint team, for example, heavily interacted with Steam reviews in 2021 and early 2022 but doesn’t seem to have responded to any users in 2023. The Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege team, meanwhile, responded to negative feedback as recently as November 28 and has some developer replies as early as 2018.
That said, there are developers who see review replying as an important pillar of their community management strategy but don’t put much stock in the probability that they can get a review to flip from negative to positive.
While a developer like Cole guesses that he can flip “30% to 40%” of Backpack Hero’s Steam reviews, DayZ creator and RocketWerkz CEO Dean Hall says that, in his experience, “you’ll almost never flip a review.” Some success in this area, he says, may be found if developers patch specific issues, such as technical errors and common glitches, and then let the reviewer know that their criticism has been dealt with. Even then, reviewers may not see the developer’s response or care enough to switch their feelings from red to blue – and that’s if the solution even satisfies the complaint.
Hall does say he trusts players, adding that his open dialogue during the early days of making the original DayZ mod helped shape the game into what it eventually became. RocketWerkz’s 2021 project, Icarus, received its latest expansion only a few weeks ago, and the company is using negative reviews to not only educate itself but hopefully, educate potential players. The same strategy was used for the studio’s Stationeers project for years.
“Sometimes a potential customer will actually be swayed by a negative review, which is something we hear sometimes from those who read a Stationeers review where one user says the game might be too complicated in a certain way, but that is exactly what the person reading the review is looking for,” Hall says. “Ultimately, review scores overall are important to a game’s success – but customers tend to look a little deeper into the content of reviews. For this reason as developers we have to learn that at an individual level, negative reviews aren’t always a net loss for you. The right negative review just might get someone to buy your game.”
Steam doesn’t outright recommend that developers not respond to reviews, but it does ask them to proceed with caution. In the “Best Practices” section of a “User Reviews” page, Valve includes suggestions for those interested in replying to reviews. These include recommendations to not respond to every review, refrain from arguing, and limit the amount of time spent reading reviews.
“In my experience, while Steam does generally recommend that developers refrain from replying to reviews, I believe this advice is not one-size-fits-all,” Don’t Scream and Paranormal Tales co-creator Joe Henson explains. “I agree with Steam to a certain extent, particularly when it comes to developers who may not handle criticism well. Responding to negative reviews requires a certain finesse and emotional distance to ensure you don’t leave a poor impression of your game or brand.”
Henson says that reputations are “hard-won and easily lost,” and lives by that phrase in his own work. While some developers opt to communicate with reviews with copy-and-paste responses, Henson, who also serves as head of marketing and PR for Toy Story-style shooter Hypercharge: Unboxed, is steadfast in his desire to remind users that there is a person on the other line.
One of his responses made it to the front page of Reddit in 2020, not for being funny or savage, but because he pointed a lonely user to others they could play with. It was wholesome, but more importantly, it was human.
Henson’s viral response didn’t sway the opinion of the original review, but judging by an update from the user that arrived one month later, it might have helped push them to give Hypercharge: Unboxed another chance. At the least, it resulted in an uptick of hundreds of new game sales.
“…my approach is about balancing professionalism with a personal touch, ensuring that each response is thoughtful and reflective of our commitment to our players and the community,” Henson said.
Speaking on his philosophy, he adds: “Looking ahead, I plan to continue this approach in future projects. Engaging with our audience has become an integral part of our company ethos. Each interaction is an opportunity to learn, improve, and strengthen the bond with our players. In the end, it’s about creating a community around our games, one where every player feels heard and valued.”
Henson says he believes in responding to negative reviews “the right way.” As we’ve recently seen, many studios are still navigating how they can utilize Steam review responses to cultivate a positive environment for players and developers. It’s a budding and often tricky method of community interaction that does not have a clear path, and despite the reactions to Bethesda’s methods, it’s far from new.
IGN has reached out to Steam for comment on its “Best Practices” for user reviews.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.
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