Gamer News
Steam Charging $60 for bad reviews
By Yahoo Silverman
>Here at the Echo Chamber, the royal we like to keep our thumb on the pulse of the gaming community, I consider myself to be somewhat of a cardiologist specializing in the study or treatment of broken gamer hearts everywhere. After the launch of Battlefield 2042 my pulse connected thumb was vibrating, and right away I knew what I had to do. I grabbed my tools. Internet connection, check. Stethoscope, check. According to Google, Cardiologists use catheters (presumably on patients) so for the sake of whatever this analogy is I will just say “check” to that as well.
To cover this story, I immediately knew where I needed to go and as I arrived to ground zero, Metacritic, I began to dig through the rubble and fallen debris looking for signs of gamer life when I quickly realized two things, the first being that I forgot I was pretending to be a cardiologist and I am now some sort of rescue effort fireman type. The second thing I realized is that Metacritic was a mere decoy, a useless relic of gamers past. Metacritic user scores are nothing more than “baby’s first negative game review: featuring spelling errors” (despite the obvious presence of a spellcheck button). Just as I clenched my fists and raised my arms to the sky to theatrically question all the Gods, my thumb once again began to vibrate.
My Spidey-thumb dragged me away from Metacritic and through the bread crumb trails of Twitter complaints and YouTube rants, and the royal we arrived. The Steam page for Battlefield 2042. Like my experience in the dating scene, the reviews here were “mostly negative”. My vibrating gamer thumb had brought me to the holy land, a parted red sea of red gamer thumbs pointing downward as if to say, “my experience with the game is not unlike Yahoo’s experience in the dating scene”, how personal.
I needed answers, and I needed them soon-ish. It was on this page that I met Steam user 1v1_with_ur_mom, the leader and spokes-gamer for the Anti-Battlefield Pre-Order Group (ABPOG for short), a group that spends 364 days a year refusing to pre-order Battlefield. I asked MR. 1v1_with_ur_mom the first question that popped into my brain, if you are let down by Battlefield at launch every time, then why buy it at launch? He responded with “To let EA know we don’t like it. Metacritic user reviews are rudimentary, any bozo could leave a review there, but here on Steam EA knows that we bought and played their game so when we say we hate it, they know we mean it.”.
I was slightly baffled by the idea that people would pay money for something that they statistically won’t enjoy, just to leave a review on Steam. ABPOG member Salami4Kusanagi noticed my confusion, and after calling me a filthy casual was kind enough to explain. “The first few hours were free, but then it’s not.”, Salami4Kusanagi continued to say “So if you played 50 hours, you only really paid for 40. But once you leave that review, EA knows what’s up”. While I still don’t understand how giving money to a company that annually puts out games that could generously be described as “not very good” is at all effective, I did finally see things clearly. Gabe Newell found a way to charge $60 on his platform for bad reviews. Gabe Newell IS 1v1_with_ur_mom.
Before I could easily gather any further evidence, ABPOG was alerted to the presence my controller, the smoking gun of my gamer ineptitude. I was now exposed as the filthiest of casuals. Their welcoming words quickly turned to Battlefield lobby insults, it was 200v1_with_Yahoo, and while I may be too old and out of the loop to understand most of these insults, they hurt none the less. I stood my ground, momentarily, fighting the pain. I needed proof. I needed it soon-ish. I knew what I needed to do.
I looked 1v1_with_ur_mom straight in the eyes of his anime profile pic and said, “when Half Life 3?”. Insta-banned. Case closed.
