Limiting reviewers to a small, random sampling of active players means it would be difficult if not impossible for those players to organize any such review bombing campaign. On the other hand, Epic will likely never have to worry about detecting its own EGS review bombs. Valve's efforts, which mix automated detection algorithms with decisions by "a team of people at Valve," have had mixed results. On Steam, Valve has gone to great lengths to combat a common issue where floods of "off-topic" reviews (i.e., those focused on issues "outside of the game.") mess with their user recommendation engine. Epic promises that "we won't spam our players, and we probably won't ask about every game or app used."įurther Reading Borderlands review bomb triggers Steam’s “off topic” fix That's not an insignificant improvement either. Those quick surveys-which are supplemented by polls that ask more specific questions about a game's contents-appear to players randomly after individual play sessions. On EGS, by contrast, Epic explains that the "ratings system will ask random players, who have played a game for more than two hours, to give a rating on a five point scale."
On platforms like Steam, anyone who has "recorded playtime" on a title can submit a user review. The main difference in the Epic Games Store rating system is that it's not just open to any player with an opinion. While EGS's user review system brings some interesting ideas to online game stores, it still feels a little half-baked, even after years of apparent work on Epic's part.
The first set of public ratings produced by that system is now live for hundreds of titles on the Epic Games Store (skip to the end of this article for a handy breakdown of some of the best-reviewed EGS games thus far).Īfter sifting through those ratings a bit, some pros and cons of Epic's unique user review approach come to the forefront. Further Reading Epic Games Store launches with extremely limited selection of gamesLast week, Epic finally added a user review system to its PC Game Store, nearly 3.5 years after the service's initial launch.