I left a negative (2 star) review on The Witcher (www.gog.com/game/the_witcher) yesterday morning, but it doesn't seem to be viewable on the page. Is there anywhere I can go in my user account to see reviews I've left? Are reviews censored for any reason on GOG, and if that were the case, would I have been informed?

I'm not feeling great about having taken time to write a post detailing some bugs and poor writing in the game, only to have it disappear.

EDIT: sometime between 24 hours after posting, and 2 months, the review appeared.

Jeremy spoke in, the forum todaaaaaaaay...



okay that was stupid

The review system is poorly written and disorganized, so when you submit something there is usually no easy way to find it without sifting through 5600 pages of reviews manually where it will show up somewhere in no particular order or so it seems. It may take some time to actually become visible also, that's not completely clear. GOG has stated many times publicly in the past that they do not censor reviews outright, but that they may edit them for language or to add a comment or similar. If you read enough reviews it is quite clear that they don't censor them as there are hundreds there which would easily get censored on any other site with even the most lenient of posting guidelines/rules. GOG doesn't have the manpower on payroll to have someone paid to police reviews and moderate/censor them anyway, more or less the same as the forums. If someone causes a huge uproar that goes way out of hand and they notice or it is brought to their attention they may lock a thread or delete something that is sprouting racial hatred or other highly controversial nature but it is not often that sort of thing happens.

Otherwise they more or less don't give a shit what someone says. You could write a review that said "After I played this game it changed me and caused me to start eating my own shit." Now I eat shit every day, just like this game." and it'd probably become the top highly rated review in days and stay there.

Don't expect your reviews to be visible to anyone though who isn't prepared to wade through 400 pages of existing reviews to find it. It's just the way it is with the atrocious GOG review system. I'm sure they'll change it sometime in the future but probably not this decade. :)

But there should be really. At least the most basic thing should be that only those who have the game on their accounts can write a review. There's too many reviews that clearly are about a different release. Not to mention those "reviews" that pop up few hours after game release, in worst cases being something like "nice game im gonna get this later cant understand why the price is so high for an old game". AFAIK the ordering is based on "most helpful", so the more other people hit that plus button, the higher it ends up. Of course this means that newer reviews, no matter how good, always end up somewhere on page n+1. Presumably that will even out over time when more people see the review and rate it, but having some options of showing newest first wouldn't be a bad idea.

Why? I've been playing Jagged Alliance 2 for quite a few years before buying the game here, does that fact mean I am unable to write a proper review? What if I have a game on retail and then it comes here, is my review worthless because I don't have this specific version, even if the files are exactly the same?
A "Verified buyer" tag is much better instead of just blocking all reviews.

I consider store reviews as reviews of a certain product item, not reviews of the game itself so much. In an ideal situation there is no difference. In real life there is.

Older games can have compatibility issues, while newer games can have certain features cut from the DRM-free release, etc. Reviewing a different release may give a wrong impression.

"Verified buyer" tag is a good idea too. But as things are now, I find the review section to be completely useless. If I read GOG reviews, I want to know about the GOG version specifically, because it's my intention to actually use that information to commit to purchase (or refrain from it). If I simply want to see a review otherwise, the Internet is full of them.

I find this same problem on Amazon too, although in a slightly different form. While they have that "verfied buyer" tag there, they mix different product reviews together. When reading reviews for a Blu-ray movie, there are reviews of a DVD version in there too. If I have already decided that I want to have a HD version, having random comments about the DVD version is not helpful at all.

Hey, sometimes there's an option to select only the product on the page.
You have to click on "See all verified purchase reviews" and then select the type in "all formats".
I don't know why they show the filters only there.

Well, OP here. It's been 2 and a half days and I just went through all the reviews again. Mine still isn't shown, even though the "My rating" field at top shows that I gave a 2-star review.

I did use the word "rape" in the review, while discussing part of the game involving an attempted rape of one of the characters. Maybe the review got filtered because of that. Either way—censoring, lack of feedback on moderation, or just a VERY slow system—it's pretty disappointing. The reviews are sorted by "helpfulness". So new reviews, which are marked as helpful by "0 of 0" people, are in the middle.

Contact support, then.

I would try writing a new review for the game (a re-post), since if the system allows you to write another one then it probably wasn't registered in the first place, because of some bug.

GOG has categorically stated both publicly and privately via support repeatedly over time that they absolutely do not screen nor filter reviews. I've personally come to the conclusion that any quirks that we observe of this nature in the system is quite frankly explained by the system being wholly inadequate and poorly conceived rather than malicious or with some behind the scenes conspiracy going on.

The review system is just complete useless crap IMHO, at least from my personal perspective. I hope some day that they will replace it with something much more modern using elements similar to Steam but perhaps not copying Steam 100% as there are some elements of the Steam review system I'm not completely fond of either, but despite that I personally use Steam's review system as my first stop when garnering public sentiment about games as there are a lot more volume of reviews, a lot more controls in place to keep relevant reviews in eye view, a combination of long term review visibility and recent popular reviews giving a balance that includes NEW reviews, and various other useful elements such as whether someone owning the game and how many hours put into it, whether they are playing the early access or final release and other factors. GOG's system on the other hand is just as gameable if not more gameable and corruptible than the forums are.

I recognize that I'm being blunt and harsh but truthful about this and I say it like a big brother with love towards GOG rather than as a kick in the face. Eventually they will allocate resources into replacing the ancient crappy review system with something useful, but not until they have no higher priorities I'm sure and they probably will have their hands full of other higher priorities for some time to come I have a gut feeling. In the mean time however it doesn't bother me in a huge way. I simply ignore the review system largely and use Steam, Metacritic and other sources and aggregate what I find into a picture in my mind that is more useful at least to me personally.

In closing, I can say that I've written several reviews in the past that never showed up at all for a week or more then when I went to look and went through page after page endlessly I eventually found the review after n days. Asking GOG about it they said something like "that shouldn't ordinarily happen" or something like that, which implied to me that sometimes it can happen extraordinarily, which is certainly what I was observing. Then again I seem to have a knack for finding problems with GOG's website that "ordinarily shouldn't happen" and often which nobody else can reproduce. GOG probably lovingly thinks I'm on crack for months or years or more and then magically one day they update something and the problem is resolved. Happened to me many times in the past. The review system has problems of this nature. Nobody will acknowledge them likely but they're there and I really don't think any of it is intentional. Never explain to malice that which can be explained by lack of human resources and priority. :)

How long was your review?
There is some character limit there and reviews have been known to sometimes just vanish if you exceed it.

219 words, so, not especially long compared to some others. Here, for the record, is the review.

The Witcher. 2 stars.
What a slog of a game. Constant travel between locations takes forever, tons of side quests that ultimately aren't interesting, a totally pointless skill tree, spells which aren't useful, a huge item crafting system which (other than health potions) isn't needed to easily win any battle. Tedious inventory management for completists. On top of the slog, multiple crashes and twice a bug which prevented saving (claiming "the disk is full") meant I too often had to replay sections. After 35 hours of game time I was only at the end of chapter 2 (of 5). Mercifully, another bug prevented my completing that chapter, requiring I either restore a save that is 10-hours of play-time old, or abandon the game entirely. The choice was pretty obvious. (To avoid that game-ending bug, DO NOT PLACE ANY SEPHIROTS in the obelisks until you have them all and can do them all at once, or it may lose track of them. Google tells me others have lost their games to this bug as well.)

Also, a tip for The Witcher's writers: If you save a woman from a violent gang rape, and spend 2 minutes escorting her home through magic hell dogs, she probably wouldn't actually be in the mood to flirt and suggest a sexual rendezvous as a reward.
Review is now visible. (Took somewhere between 24 hours (since I last checked) after posting and now (2 months).