I randomly came across some dev responses to Steam reviews. Well.. I’m not sure if they actually read the reviews. It’s the same response to every review, and the Chinese version is exactly a Google translation.
Ironically, they mentioned “If you have any further thoughts or suggested changes, please feel free to share them in a reply here or in the Forums.” Hmmm, guess what we’ve been doing in the past month? Is this a 105 from the devs?
Lol, it seems that, once again, PR is relegated to copypasta AI responses. It even feels like the replies from publishers in the comment sections for phone app games…
They may be copy paste (which tracks, thats media training), but you can tell by the time stamps that its a human at the keyboard.
It is like double blue ticks in whatsapp or auto reply email during annual leave in outlook.
Have they ever resorted to this before?
looks like some sort of AI response, it’s meaningless really. If they actually listened to the players, they wouldn’t have mixed review for the DLC on Steam the last time I checked, and that’s only those who bought the DLC. If you count the people who don’t buy it because of boycotting, it would be negative review for sure.
I will be a minority in here, but I think this is a positive step forward. Yeah, making a personalised reply to a review would be better, but at least it’s something - and having a general reply that seemingly does not “insult” a reviewer, is better, i guess, than silence.
Currently, my own review (Steam Community :: Ramsay Bolton :: Review for Age of Empires II: DE - The Three Kingdoms) is the 3rd most upvoted one - which is crazy, did not expect that 
…so if they actually took the time to read those reviews (such as Steam Community :: GoatScream :: Review for Age of Empires II: DE - The Three Kingdoms or Steam Community :: Tygus :: Review for Age of Empires II: DE - The Three Kingdoms ) and reply to them, it might indeed mark a positive step forward. Check the timestamps…they could have given this response to every single review within 10 minutes, but it took them several hours in between, which probably means that they indeed DID go through those reviews.
So if we stick to contructive criticism and keep it civil, I really hope we can get listened to. It’s not like we received ANY replies to a poorly received DLC yet…And 3K stands at 53% right now, going down day by day.
If you checked those threads that started 1 month before the release of the DLC, there are a lot of constructive feedbacks from the community but the dev kept radio silent for 1 month straight. The easy solution is just making 3K unplayable in rank…How hard is it to do? yet nothing is taken noticed for a month and they went through with it anyway…
I literally said that in my own review, and the other 2 highest upvoted ones said the same thing. The reviews have been stagnating since the first 24 hours of release, and the rating is continuously decreasing (53% now). Sales are definitely lower than expected, too. Maybe they ignored us, thinking we were the vocal minority..but it shows that we were not. Let’s give them a chance - be relentless, but don’t lose hope.
How can you tell this?
He can’t and steams “best sellers” number is not a good way to try and guess. The obvious focus on the DLC was the release on the PS market, which steam provides zero info on. It also doesn’t count gamepass sales.
It takes a bit of brainpower and charts history. It was n29 yesterday around this time, now it’s n65 https://steamdb.info/app/3080080/charts/
ROR had around a 1000 reviews in the first week. In the past 20 hours, there have not been even 70 reviews out of 382 so far, which means the review count is decreasing rapidly, and with teh current pace, will reach nowhere near ROR levels - both positive and negative numbers, after a week will have passed.
Of course, Mathusala0TTV has repeatedly shown his denial and a need to prove someone wrong, but we shall see what really happens and what really is the truth…
My guy, I didn’t say the game hadn’t sold badly. I said you have no way to definatively prove it is selling badly.
If you want to use return of rome to compare sales, then you need to find where return of rome sat on the steam best seller list for the duration of its release cycle, then you need to know how other games were selling on steam comparatively at that time, and actual numbered values, then you need to do all that for Three Kingdoms and then only then would you have some way to compare it.
Correlation does not imply causation.
I’ll say it again because the people trying to cope right now keep ignoring it, It’s been very clear the push this last month has been for the Play Station launch with trailers for that preceeding trailers for the DLC. The DLC has been bundled as part of that launch. no one has any idea what those sales are
People wondering where the advert budget is going, it’s going here.
Could they be bad? maybe. But we’ve got no clue what they look like.
This guy has been coping so hard lately, it’s best to ignore him. Every single time we speak some sense, he just ignores it and tries to prove everyone else wrong regardless. If you make an educated guess and someone says “you can’t definitely prove it”, but they themselves make their own guess, such as here
, means that the person is not thinking straight. Especially since RTS like aoe2 is not really a proper game for consoles, and everyone knows it.
I’m not making any guess as to if the game has sold well or not. I am providing context for why just looking at steam (badly) is not the full picture.
means that the person is not thinking straight. Especially since RTS like aoe2 is not really a proper game for consoles, and everyone knows it.
If it hadn’t sold well on Xbox, then they wouldn’t bother porting to the PS. Clearly the devs think there is a market for it.
I’ve seem in different contexts a few self-proclaimed “devs” coping hard for other companies’ horrendous moves, even when they are the consumer this time.
You’d think they should hate those bad business decisions, which offended the consumers and pressed the “devs” alike, more than you do. They want you to get used to it.
Just a peek of how ####### the modern gaming industry has become, if this is their mentality
Out of curiosity, I took a skim through the reviews, seeing which ones they replied to. It’s exclusively the negative ones.
Now, I can’t say exactly why. Could be just wanting to look like they are placating people of course for a more cynical response. But given they seem to have taken time between each response, it really does look like they are reading them.
I hope this is a positive sign.
And if not…my mod to add 5 East Asian civs and campaigns for ALL of them and the Chinese will have a live-stream of the civ designs on the 18th 
The oddity of modern gaming (may extend to other domains if you are flexible and cynical enough), is that the companies would do a better job and give you better value if they don’t make enough money
As for how a win-win situation turned into something like this, I don’t think it was the consumers’ fault.
Sorry, but, when had this ever worked in the video game industry…? I only know 2 games that devs listen to constructive criticism, all the rest made changed when there was a massive bullying campaign against the game online.
And the two games only started to listen to criticism when it suffered massive review bombing campaign.
They’d make more money in the long-run by appealing to their core audiences, of course.
Releasing slop like this might make them an extra million or two right now, but it could (and probably will) mean less money down the line.
Don’t kill the golden goose.
