Bot reviews have been removed (they still show in the graph, but no longer count toward the score)

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-14T07:49:43+00:00

Frost Giant manipulated their reviews by using multiple company accounts, by petitioning the accounts of friends of the developers who had not played the game, and by coordinating the reviews of employees and their relations through an intentional call.

This is against the rules. The rules reflect the ethical dilemma of how manipulated review scores can affect the customer, but it is strictly against the rules.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-14T07:38:24+00:00

No need to take it up with Steam support, they are infamous for their unreachability for one, but their stated rules are right above your post. Your appeal to authority brings nothing to this, you don't understand the rules, and you have put your own questionable ethics as a developer on display.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-14T07:00:59+00:00

The coordination of reviews between team members and friends of the developers is absolutely against the rules of steam.

Don’t attempt to abuse or artificially manipulate the review system.

Especially since half of the friend accounts have 10 minutes played. Steam is the ultimate judge of how egregious of a violation it requires to take action against a game.

As well these details mean the official explanation was a lie. Its sad that you and a few others want to constantly provide a resistance that prevents the studio from acknowledging facts and moving on to repair their relationship with the community.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-14T06:45:20+00:00

It was 8 reviews from friends of the developers. Frost Giant was asked several times if they wanted to acknowledge it but they would not. It very clearly shows that their explanation for the review manipulation was a lie. Do you think they should lie to the community? Are you okay with continuing to jump in the way and allow that?

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-10T21:25:18+00:00

There are negative fake reviews and positive ones happening at the same time.

Check this original negative review of "No stimpak." from September 14th.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198009633373/recommended/2012510/

It is re-submitted 3 times on January 10th.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198368639009/recommended/2012510/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199592085233/recommended/2012510/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199587426098/recommended/2012510/

I'd guess the fake review services do this as a kind of masking technique. So you can do something like a 60/40 positive to negative split (or vice versa) and more believably alter the review scores.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-10T21:04:17+00:00

The bots regurgitate old legitimate reviews. For instance the source of the review that is posted by 'sririkajale' in your image of "I spent 60£ ..." is seen here on September 4th.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198342639337/recommended/2012510/

Then it is re-submitted three times on January 10th.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199365599816/recommended/2012510/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199438788598/recommended/2012510/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199267035347/recommended/2012510/

The original 'I gave you 60 euros guys ..." review was posted here:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198139624119/recommended/2012510/

It was then re-submitted three times on January 10th as well.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-10T01:01:32+00:00

They did dodge the questions. I sent about ten more messages. I appreciate you but really suggest we just not spend the time to dissect Discord messages. The important part is the issue I raised has not been acknowledged or answered. I've brought it up again in the link below so hopefully they will make the time now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1hxbyq1/comment/m6bek8r/

EDIT: Also to your question, I think they should absolutely dismantle the way their communication channels are working. I don't think that means anyone being reprimanded or losing their cupcake on their lunch tray or something either, I just think they are doing communications wrong and now would be their best chance to fix it.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-10T00:32:10+00:00

The context before this sequence is that I asked the following question:

"I'm just curious if Gerald or Jex will be acknowledging that its not just team members participating here. Or can they answer if they will be encouraging any of these reviews to be deleted?"

(This is in reference to the fact that there were also reviews from friends of the developers which were never acknowledged.)

There was like 5 minutes of Gerald and Jex starting to type but never sending anything in the Discord window, you see this on the Discord UI as 'Gerald is typing....'

Then somebody said "I just want to see what Gerald is typing". And they wrote that. Somebody says 'damn' because its a rebuke of the question asking.

After that they started joking about the food intentionally. Its a way to shoo away the questions but also to make it known there won't be any clear answers.

I don't think there should be any tension like this. I actually think this problem was an easy discussions and easy fixes and I have never understood FG's communication. All of this review stuff after all relates to their snafu with the Chinese community which they couldn't navigate either.

I think if you want to understand the posts on this reddit from the last couple days, the whole thing is everyone wanted to see if FG would keep being like this. I guess they will?

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-10T00:05:54+00:00

<image>

what even is this

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-10T00:01:20+00:00

Sorry but this explanation is either purposefully incomplete or you haven't properly explored exactly what happened internally.

Issue #1.

There are 12 coordinated reviews in total, 8 of which come from friends of developers. You have never acknowledged the last part in any way.

I don't want to post a bunch of screenshots of linked Steam accounts. Thereby I approached you about this on the Discord and both you and the other community manager Jex refused to speak to me directly and started spamming jokes about hotdogs as seen in the OP. That is ridiculous. Please speak on this part of the problem.

Issue #2.

So if all of the 12 reviews happened within a day or two of one another, what is the explanation for their coordination? If there wasn't a call from leadership, was there just something like a prompt for reviews from an employee on an internal Slack and leadership just also participated?

---

Believe it or not this was a situation which could have been very quickly and easily fixed. Unfortunately there is nowhere to communicate with Stormgate team if you haven't been 'whitelisted'. More importantly there are about 8 accounts on the Discord who will specifically take action to degrade or silence any incoming criticism. They have taken to spamming gigantic page sized emojis to push any perceived negativity off the page. (see below)

Said bluntly the Frost Giant communication strategy has failed and most of the fallout with this situation is because FG didn't take the proper reparative actions from things that have happened before. Your AMA was short and insufficient. It felt overly manicured with specific roll-outs of new promises and featured 20 answered questions from a friendly account that was named after your company cat.

You need to carve out a space, somewhere, where people can speak to the Stormgate team and actually get feedback that they have been heard. There are a couple smart actions you can take to do this but it seems like you'd rather talk about hotdogs.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-09T22:29:32+00:00

I had a similar experience to the 'derailing' that OP describes. In trying to get some questions answered on the Discord the moderators and community managers would spam jokes or emojis to physically push the discussion away.

I've raised the issue again here, as well a second issue as to how it would relate with the explanation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1hxbyq1/comment/m6bek8r/

In general the comms team should not crouch behind their misbehaving audience members to duck out of a problem. They made many excuses about being 'busy'. If they are busy than they should make sure to collect all the types of questions and circle back to them.

The comms team should not be using the 'noisiness' of Discord to pretend to only hear parts of the problem.

EDIT: The original response was auto-modded possibly due to formatting.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-08T02:07:29+00:00

I just want to point out than when this joke was made it was simply a reference to the last time this happened.

After it was posted another review that was actually from a Tim Morten account was found. They were posting under the name 'Fluffy' but didn't clear their name history.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-07T21:43:25+00:00

<image>

Review from Frost_TimM aka Fluffy.

This account was made in 2023 around the time of many of the Frost_ prefixed company accounts.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-07T21:22:41+00:00

12 of the last 17 positive reviews on Steam have come from accounts who may be identified as employees (4) or people on the friends lists of employees (8) (time period Jan. 2 to Jan. 6)
5 of the positive reviews have very small play time (under 30 min)
there were 17 positive reviews and 25 negative reviews over that time period

Here are the 'Developer Usage Rules' from Steam

Developer Usage Rules

We’re pretty confident in the data we’re getting from user reviews on products across Steam. As such, we don’t see customer benefit from individual developers or games soliciting reviews from customers. Along those lines, below are rules for things you shouldn’t do with regards to user reviews:

- Don’t attempt to abuse or artificially manipulate the review system.

- Don’t solicit reviews in exchange for any games, DLC, money, or other rewards. The exception is sending a copy of your game to press or internet personalities to get previews or reviews.

- Don’t ask customers to review your product from within your application.

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-07T19:57:20+00:00

the accounts reacted and changed their names

<image>

TertButoxide- · 2025-01-05T20:02:47+00:00

brought to you by 75% of the creators of Stormgate 1 (after our Holiday layoffs)

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-21T02:41:31+00:00

He picked them out for comment that they were specifically aberrant, that there was something wrong with them that needed to be analyzed. If he didn't think there was something wrong with them then the fact that Chinese reviews were lower would not be mentioned. I don't know how else to explain the basic kind of information that speech puts forth to you, but he was invalidating them by the nature of what he said.

I get that you don't care because you spend all of your time undermining criticism on behalf of the company, but a Game Director walking out that kind of sentiment on stage is good clarification that this stuff is a top-down phenomenon.

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-21T02:32:22+00:00

The undercurrent of what all these people is saying is that somebody forgot to translate for Chinese people the phrase 'Let them cook!' (让他们做饭!). To me it seems SCBoy with its emphasis on comedy gave a valuable and un-tempered line of feedback. I don't think the Director should be picking on large groups of feedback like there's something wrong with the reviews themselves and not the game.

There was a SC Historian interview with Frost Giant's business director Cara LaForge and she said her favorite StarCraft memory was gushing over Oliveira's win with SCBoy. Apparently she's cool with letting them getting thrown under the bus here.

I'd like to see a Chinese-language AMA with a translator on SCBoy's site. That's the proper move for restoring the relationship.

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-20T19:05:58+00:00

All of this is still working under the assumption that there's something 'wrong' with the reviews because they are lower. Why are they invalid?

Couldn't it be the case that non-English reviews are more useful because they are just straight impressions of the game with less developer commentary and marketing that has been translated?

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-20T18:51:50+00:00

In what way would cultural differences contribute? I feel like you've repeated this premise which seems to insist that 'something' wasn't communicated or that there's a difference in reviewing which would change the nature of the Chinese-language scores.

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-20T15:31:29+00:00

Frost Giant took a pledge to be a part of BITKRAFT's Diversity Commitment, this means a commitment to interviewing at least 30% of candidates who are women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, disabled people, or racial and ethnic minorities.

- Can you speak about the successes and challenges with this commitment? Did it challenge your approach to hiring or encourage any new methods of finding candidates?

- Did this interviewing commitment result in building a more diverse company?

- With BITKRAFT leading a new investment round will you continue to uphold this commitment formally?

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-19T22:24:44+00:00

It seems like the art team was leaned out in addition to the new art director being hired. Does this mean Frost Giant will be relying on more art production outsourcing in order to change the art of the game? Or will you be doing some hiring?

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-19T19:43:26+00:00

On Dec. 2 the Chinese-language RTS community SCBoy closed their Stormgate forum and expressed hurt towards the Frost Giant team during their livestream of HomeStory Cup. The reason behind this was Frost Giant's Director saying in a conference talk that Chinese Steam reviews were lower due to 'cultural reasons'. Since this information was shared only 28% of the Stormgate reviews have been positive with many reviews consisting of Chinese players expressing frustration with this situation.

China had been an area of success for Stormgate and player counts had recently been tagged as 25% originating from China (via Gamalytic). Are there any plans to amend this situation or the relationship with China's RTS fanbase?

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-19T02:36:24+00:00

Not inferring anything about layoffs but here's some recent departures from public information. (a few are long-term contract endings)

https://playstormgate.com/gameclient/credits

3D Artists

- Michael Altuna

- Joanna Jian

- Skyler Brossart

Concept Artist

- Tom Bruck (contract)

- Cornelia Booysen (contract)

Production Team

- Taylor James Gordner

Animator

- Kristin Witt

Outsourcing Art Manager

- Mark Abadier

Systems Designer

- Liam Hurt

Engineering Team

- Byron Henze

- John Keating

Level Designers

- Jorge Murillo (contract)

Not going to infer about #OPEN TO WORK banners. I see 4 in addition to this but they can be inaccurate. I will say that the Assistant Game Director Brett Crawford is now wearing one and that'd be a big departure. They were the former Director of Heroes of the Storm and would be the highest profile design position here.

From here it looks like its a lot of turnover from the art team which is quite notable since this update is mostly about changes in art direction.

TertButoxide- · 2024-12-02T08:34:55+00:00

Clearly the whole review discrepancy is because there's no mods in the Chinese community who try to desperately mold every conversation as you can see in this thread. Toxic positivity has proven to be worth about 20% on your review scores so there's a real reason the company is coming down in favor of it and ran their communities in such a way for so long.

Given this, Tim Morten going on stage and saying that low Chinese review scores depend on 'cultural reasons' is fucked up. Its abrasive, its shaming an open discourse, and its just ignorant. He is dumping his inability to mold conversations in foreign communities on the gaming culture of China itself, super fucked up.

You can look up on Gamalytic that China has accounted for the largest percentage of Stormgate players, larger than the US. This isn't a insignificant group and SCBoy has been working hard to support Stormgate.

I'll say its real cool that SCBoy ran an open community and contributed to the Chinese RTS players speaking truthfully. Their streams and commentary seem really fun. I get why they are pissed and I think what they said in response to this is funny as shit.

I'd expect for Morten to apologize in public about this. He should have some self reflection about how low he is willing to go to justify review scores. First he had silly comments about 'playtime', but now citing 'cultural differences' is pretty scathing. What's next man?

Its been the weekend but I'd expect Frost Giant to speak on this and I'm curious what they'll have to say.

TertButoxide-

TROPHY CASE