I don't like being preached to either, although I admit I still buy some cringy games and movies now and then. Might some day even buy this game if it ever goes into bargain bin territory just for the laughs.

Cool, I guess?

lol, Dustborn

Only scientific amateurs go beyond the scope of their study. Feel free to make your own. Since the number of reviews has multiplied since yesterday, it's going to be a bit difficult. Maybe after GOG has deleted a first round and banned the NPCs?

Yeah, that's undoubtedly true. But voting on reviews is a system that clearly isn't working in a cultural environment in which hating, badmouthing, insulting and harrassing your fellow nerds just for liking a certain game has become an identity and even life's meaning for a whole lot of gamers (I mean, look at this thread alone. There's at least half a dozen commenters who have literally nothing else in life but to insult other people and then pop a vein when GOG yanks them out).

GOG is getting less and less honest customer reviews, and who could blame the customers? It's not like their opinion would ever feel valued unless they shit on the game and make 'most helpful'.

96% of the one star Dustborn reviews don't conform to GOG's rules. If you want more of those reviews, there's no shortage of those. There's a gazillion websites dedicated to the cultural war and a gazillion youtubers with very interesting, novel, hateful, and hilariously pathetic ideas about storytelling. You can get your fix right there, more than you could ever have wanted: .

That 'only sane' solution, which renders all other solutions 'insane' of course, unfortunately is a contributing factor to the demise of GOG. If dishonest reviews by NPCs are displayed right at the POS on GOG, and developers sell a hundred times more games on Steam, where they're getting much better and infinitely more honest reviews, we really don't need to wonder why GOG is getting less and less games here.

The problem isn't the system, of course. It's the cultural problem we're in, it is the sheer hate and dishonesty of a whole lot of political activists. More worthwhile systems of review and commentary on the net have been completely nixed because this tide of lies can not be stemmed in any other way, most notably the comment section of 'Popular Science' – and they definitely had a lot more personel able to remove bad faith actors' comments by hand.

What's at stake here is whether GOG will even be able to allow reviews at all in the future.

I hate it when people want to decide for me, for my own good of course, what games I may have access to on GOG.

Too many people complain about a game, they're not required to buy, being available for those that want it, especially on Twitter/X.

I think having unverified reviews is fine, but their star rating should not count for anything. It should certainly not appear outside of the game;s own page (Home/store) and certainly not in external places, like Google. If someone wants to review a game they do not own on GOG, that's fine by me, but it should not be counted towards the average score.

Are you suggesting that GOG are going to disable reviews for all games just because of one game getting bad reviews? Likely, GOG are going to do what they do best - nothing.

As for the problem not being the system: GOG are responsible for the reviews that they publish on their own site. The decision to publish reviews automatically, the decision to allow people to write reviews without having purchased the game, and the decision not to have someone moderate the reviews and check for fake reviews and inappropriate reviews. The only reason the activists have a voice to publish their views on GOG is because of these decisions.