Reviews are going to suck no matter what reviewsystem GOG is going to get, a "try before you buy" system would be much better.

Not really a solution. Many people deal with buyer's remorse by deluding themselfs and end up aggressively defending their shitty experience.

Wow so many walls of texters... Anyway, I like to five star a game sometimes because it gets wrongfully one-starred by people because they here a certain comment from one other GOGer.
Yes, I wrongfully and prematurely reviewed Renowned Explorers in an underserving way. However, I had amended the review with a proper and deserving one. It was five stars, but it was accompanied by an actual review after hours of gameplay to finish.

I have no constructive assistance for this topic.... sorry.

Aren't these problems the same with ALL types of review processes though?

The process goes like this: reviews are opinions on the quality of games, those opinions come from community of people and a community of people, once it reaches sufficient size, always becomes stupid.

So logically, any review system based on a community of people is eventually going to become stupid too. Look at the mess of Steam Reviews and Metacritic, same thing.

Even GoG, as it's community increases, is no exception to this pattern, which is why our rating systems are becoming a mess too. We could improve GoG's rating system, but I have a better solution:

Just remove any rating system at all.

Put the burden back on the consumer to actually do their own research on the products they buy. In an age of the Internet with screenshots, trailers, forums, social media, hands-on demos and let's play videos, everyone has enough more than enough resources to see if they are going to enjoy a game or not.

Attaching an arbitrary number of stars to a game and claiming it somehow objectively represents the quality is a flawed an outdated way of thinking and just further serves to complicate game buying by adding a superfluous piece of information.

Firstly, zero apologies for necroing this still-relevant thread.


Let me offer a scenario:

Gamer Gus has discovered that GoG is selling Game X; One of their beloved titles from younger years, Quick to dive in, they play this game for a few hours. Impulsive and excited as they are, still blind to the industry's predatory love for fostering mindset, they leave a glowing review after patching over their recent but ongoing experience with their extensive memories.

A few hours later, Gamer Gus discovers that this game has a fatal flaw - A critical bug, maybe, or chunk of content gone AWOL.

Gus goes to change their review, to reflect their stunned disappointment; Only to find that, in spite of over a decade of seething complaints, GoG still requires paying customers to contact them directly in order to edit a comment.

Being an imperfect creature, as we all are, Gus decides that chasing up their review is just a tad too much effort, or perhaps forgets, and eventually returns to Steam. Thanks to this very deliberate attempt at dissuasion, the glowing but undeserved review now holds its power forever.

Let's take another scenario:

Joystick Jane has bought a game on GoG, and has been sinking a respectable number of hours into it, over a respectable amount of time.

One day, she opens the game, only to find something has broken. She spends many hours trying to fix it, on her own time and dime, to no avail. Extensive searching reveals that a change several months ago has caused the game to be broken beyond her own control.

A little more research makes it clear to Jane that the developer doesn't seem interested in fixing the game, nor ever will, as GoG is significantly smaller market than Steam (where the game's sister version is still working well). People are clearly still buying the game, and it's still being promoted, despite not working - As GoG makes it much more difficult than Steam for people to deduce the state and quality of a game, and spares very little effort to police the quality of what they sell.

With a now-useless copy of the game, and no ability to get a rightful refund, Joystick Jane writes a frustrated review. She notices a slew of other negative reviews; Hidden by sorting, of course, as GoG's curious default is for "most positive" reviews, which naturally make little effort to illuminate flaws. However, she also notices that the game has somehow retained its star rating, seemingly unaffected by the new reviews.

Looking around, Jane also notices that most of the reviews featured on most games are quite old - Close to a decade, in fact. Even though GoG has seemingly floated older reviews to the top, these reviews all seem to be from the same year, often even the same month.

With a now worthless game, no pending fixes, and much more privy to a market system that seems unashamedly engineered to smokescreen its products, poor Joystick Jane returns to Steam.

How about we go for a hat trick:

Tommy Tubular is trying to be a smart buyer, before he dives head-first into the game. Scanning through the reviews, negative and positive, he's pleased; There are a few complaints of bugs, but nothing beyond the norm. Buying the game on GoG, he's soon playing it with fervor.

At a certain point, or perhaps over time, he notices that there's a severe issue with the game, which seems endemic to GoG copies. He also discovers the GoG forums, and finds out that these 'small, isolated' issues have actually been affecting everybody, and are being expectedly ignored to no consequence on the developer's part.

Tommy Tubular has a nasty feeling, and decides to return to the reviews. He checks through the dates, and finds a large number of five- and four-star reviews written throughout the duration of the bug - In spite of the fact that anybody playing would have certainly noticed that their game was severely affected during this time. Poor Tommy is rather surprised.

Tommy also notices something else: All of the truthful reviews seem to have very low 'helpful' ratings; However, all of the gushing reviews have very high 'helpful' ratings. Prefering mass-review stupidity over the very obvious presence of corruption, Tommy returns to Steam.



Of course, these are just a trio of completely made-up scenarios, that I'm sure very few GoG users (if any) have ever had to deal with. I am also sure that GoG is run by only the most trustworthy and transparent people, with only the most spotless reputations, and we could scarcely imagine they or their associates would ever be duplicitous.

Now let me offer a different scenario:

Simply post your review in the game's subforum.

Lead the title of your review-thread with "REVIEW:" followed by [name of the game].

Write your review.

Then head over to the official review section, and post the link (to your review in the subforum) there, accompanied by a short notice like: "So far, I rate this game "X out of 5" stars.
You can find my extended written review in the game's subforum [link to review]."

Some benefits of this scenario?

- No real restrictions regarding the length of your review
- The possibility to bookmark your review (see below)
- The possibility to return to your review at any point, to edit it (see above)
- The possibilty to receive help for something, which you may consider a flaw/bug in the game, and for which other users have found a solution/workaround
- The possibility to add a video to your review (not sure, if that's possible in the regular review section - haven't seen any video links in the reviews I've read, so far)

That scenario beats yours, huh?

Edit (because I just came across this old (also necroed) thread): https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_do_i_edit_a_review_i_made/post9

That seems like an excellent idea. It would not solve all issues, but it does allow for updates.

Maybe I am part of the minority, as I see a review as something you post after finishing the game, where you actually then have full knowledge and experience of it, and allow for your growth with a game etc.

It is a bit like Think Before You Speak.

Or just follow the advice of BreOl72, which is sound and what some folk do.

Personally, I take most reviews with a pinch of salt, especially as they often vary widely just for one game. If enough reviews exist though, you might get a reasonable sense of average.

I tried that, and pointed to my review on the game page, but ultimately that got downvoted so far past Oblivion that it took fall damage in Morrowind.

(See Locomotion.)

And more to the point, the reviews are becoming harder to find because there's no less than four layers of junk to get though and pray the reviews load. Instead of having a dedicated reviews page.

We won't buy from them, but the Steam reviews are more numerous, and can be quite in-depth, as well as comprehensive from obviously very experienced gamers. Wait for a new release to go gold before considering a buy, esp the dreaded EA titles. Ugh!

No qualms about buying from Steam, Steam does have the advantage of forcing a positive/negative review which while pissing off reviewers sometimes when they want to leave a neutral review, makes statistical analysis much easier. Also makes alternative ratings possible, I generally go by the steamdb.info ratings as for me they are the most reliable/least biased.

I hate the system of game reviewing that gog made. It does not let me to change my review - it is main disadvantage. The second disadvantage - I cannot add pictures (screenshots) to my reviews, even small pictures - but I can add pictures in the forum section. game review system that gog implemented looks old and clumsy in all ways it exists.