Steam counters Borderlands 1 and 2 review-bombing
New measures appear to be working.
Steam's new anti-review bombing measures appear to be working.
Borderlands 1 and 2 suffered review-bombing on Steam after 2K announced Borderlands 3 will be a six-month timed exclusive on the Epic Games store.
But Valve's new anti-review bombing measures have kicked in, and these "off-topic" reviews are excluded from the review score by default.
Currently, a message is displayed on the Steam pages for both Borderlands 1 and 2 warning a "period(s) of off-topic review activity" was detected.
According to Twitter account Steam Database, Borderlands 2 was the first game to make use of the new counter-measure, with over 4000 reviews excluded from the calculation.
Borderlands 2 is the first game on Steam to make use of the "off-topic reviews" marking. Over 4000 reviews are excluded from the rating calculation. pic.twitter.com/kUMN0Lqdx3
— SteamDB (@SteamDB) April 6, 2019
It's an encouraging sign. Valve has often come under fire multiple times for inaction on Steam issues. Indeed, recently Metro games suffered review-bombing after Metro Exodus launched as a timed Epic Games store exclusive.
However, while these Borderlands 1 and 2's review-bomb scores are excluded from the overall user score by default, they're still live on Steam, if people want to read them. And, as expected, most are complaints about Borderlands 3 launching first on the Epic Games store.
Meanwhile, Epic's drive for exclusives shows no sign of slowing down, despite the controversy over its effort to establish its store.
