Unfortunately, manipulations like these are to be expected in this day and age. But I'm glad it ended up not being what happened in my case.

Ah, I had no knowledge of that group. And yeah, that sucks. I can see how what I did could be comparable to such actions, but it was not my intention. It was more disappointment, that's all.


I absolutely cannot deny that. And in that aspect, you're right, there are a ton more examples I could have gone after rather than this one. But I don't know, this game's case doesn't sit right with me. We had Disney animations in the 30's that were 100% hand drawn/animated and they looked amazing. Now, instead of having humans sharpening their animating skills and techniques, we have AI doing it. Is that really progress? In my opinion no, but it's unfortunately the world we're walking towards.


Well, not a notice like that, but yeah, a notice saying such technologies were used, you know, for transparency. We have all the ingredients used listed in the foods we buy, why can't that be mandated for game companies as well? Is it ethical to sell something that looks like it was made by a real human but wasn't?

I can see how non-owners being able to review a game can be detrimental, but I also see how it can be useful. I had a case where being able to review a game as a non-owner was very useful: I made a review explaining why I ended up not buying a game on GOG, and ended up buying it someplace else. The game had never seen a discount on GOG, had less features compared to Steam, was harder to mod, had poor developer support, ... At the end of the day, as you said, you still have the owner rating anyway, so it doesn't make too much of a real difference, except in select scenarios, where non-owners being able to make a review could be actually useful.

Thanks for keeping the discussion on this level, by the way. This covers a lot of topics people are passionate about – Artificial "Intelligence" creeping into the industry, review bombing, fake reviews, etc. It's absolutely necessary to be more level headed about this, and I may not have been the prime example of levelheadedness these last posts.

Me neither. But I guess the last three or four instalments of the Broken Sword franchise irked me, stylistically, and none of those were made with AI technologies. Take the last one, "Serpent's Curse", a 2.5D approach with 'hand painted' backgrounds and 3D character models. The backgrounds didn't sit right with me, the 3D character models irked me more. I liked that game though, it brought back all the point and click charm I had hoped for. What bothered me was merely stylistic choice. Same thing with Return to Monkey Island – I actually liked that style a lot, but others really popped a vein. No AI used there, still it irked them.

Huge can of worms to open, of course. In general, I consider AI unethical, but mostly because these machines are trained on vast data stolen from the internet without the artists' consent or remuneration. That's just horrible, but not what happened here. Another thing we see happening in several industries today is that machines are trained on the work of in-house artists, designers or programmers, who are not only not compensated, but also fired! Also not what happened here: Revolution Software has, in fact, a rather stable work force to my knowledge.

Second, traditional animation is prohibitively expensive. Even before the AI revolution, studios like Disney or Ghibli switched to digital technologies. It has seldom been used in gaming for that reason. In Broken Sword, there were some really impressive animation sequences, no doubt. But truth be told, not that many. Dragon's Lair had a lot more.

And, taking off the rose tinted glasses, Disney animation wasn't without its exploitation as well. The whole traditional process rests on the idea that the key frame animator will hand down the brunt of the work to an army of "inbetweeners", and their work is historically arduous and boring as fuck; besides, the key animator gets all the credit (the inbetweeners do get paid though ...).

I generally have a problem with reviews when non owners try to 'warn off' potential buyers of the game. On the face of it, Steam is Amazon and GOG is the struggling supermarket around the corner. Steam will always have more features, more service, better prices, timelier updates – and to add insult to injury, they will always have better reviews too, because you have to own the game before you can review it. As a result, GOG reviews are pretty much always far more negative than the Steam ones. That in turn, how could it not, will influence the popularity of gog.com among gamers and developers alike. It's a vicious circle that needs to be broken as quickly and efficiently as humanly possible.

In a nutshell, I feel like non owners are marking down games on GOG because they don't find the amenities they're accustomed to from the monopoly. And, well, the customer being drawn to the monopoly is one of the reasons why AI succeeds in disrupting the industry.

No problem. And honestly, I deserved to hear what you said before. I was indeed acting like the usual internet asshole we see everywhere, something I try to avoid but sometimes I end up doing.


Yeah, each era has it's own contemporary form of being terrible. Hand animation is a colossal task, and I can see why one wouldn't want to do it, but at the same time, I see some virtue in it. And the way I see it, even if at the time it was already a tedious job to do, at least people had the opportunity to do that, to do something. Opportunities for anything, it being good or less good, are dwindling.


You're right, and now I feel bad that I contributed towards that situation. GOG does indeed have a lot more negative reviews. It can indeed be detrimental to the developer, and in turn, to GOG itself. But I also feel it's what makes GOG better. I can't bear to read most reviews on Steam. I don't trust the reviews or ratings there. They just all feel so artificial. At least here, I can feel some real feedback, be it good or bad.


I might end up deleting my review on this Broken Sword remaster, if possible. I feel like I was way too harsh and I fell for the typical hate trip, even if it is for a more noble reason in my opinion than the usual "this game is WOKE" crap. I jumped the gun when I posted this thread as well, which was also pretty ridiculous.

Same here. I'm an internet asshole on probation, formerly extremely proud of how I could cut open any subject and pour salt in the wound. But I found that sometimes, even a supposedly 'balanced' view isn't enough, you have to counteract the negativity. Which is difficult when in reality, you're actually seeing two sides with valid points, it's just that the net negatives wildly exaggerate their points and define the slightest of the slights as the ultimate red line crossed that warrants one star without taking another look (or a first one to begin with). 30 fps, no voiceover, no German translation, no bonus soundtrack, some patch missing, not long enough, six lines of dialog missing, voice actor changed, not difficult enough, not white enough, not high res enough, not sexualized enough, no brothel, too many clothes on the underage women, too gay, too expensive, not enough fail states, no achievements, can't kill the children in the game ... the list goes on. I'm just bored of these people, and sometimes I ask myself whether they actually like playing video games.

Agreed without reservations. What Disney, Bluth or Ghibli did will never be surpassed; and I've watched hours worth of youtube videos by fired artists whose work is now continuously stolen, shredded, and rearranged by a stupid machine.

No need to feel bad. Of the critical reviews at the time, only yours even mentions the use of AI. And let's face it, if nobody called Revolution out for that, at all, that wouldn't be satisfying either. The industry already doesn't feel much of a need to tell customers of their AI use. Revolution Software/Cecil did. If just one review is out there that makes clear the technology isn't universally welcome, that's kind of a soft break applied to the AI spread.

Good for you, for realizing your mistake. We all make wrong decisions, out of rush or if we aren't thinking clearly enough (myself surely included). The most important thing is not to insist on the mistake, but decide not to repeat it.

Hard to tell really. People nowadays like things for apparently no reason. Crazes seem to be the guiding light for most people. Everything is political nowadays. People feel obliged to take sides in absolutely anything, even the most trivial of things. Any action, no matter its relevance, is implicitly taking a side. The internet truly is a barren wasteland. But amidst the toxicity, we still somehow find some good in people, so that's not too bad in the end.


I like that way of seeing it. Thanks :)
Thank you. Indeed :)

I'm a big fan of taking sides. Being neutral always helps the oppressor, and the people who claim to be impartial are amongst the greatest liars these days. I'm also convinced that it's not the people that like things "for no apparent reason" are the problem. The industry would have no reason to innovate if they could always predict what people like, and if trends were a thing that never changed in unforeseeable ways. It's the people that hate things "for no apparent reason" who worry me.

AI is a huge threat to a lot of industries. It's a valid reason to be more mindful about what we consume. I think that a rejection of all AI content is not the worst reflex to have. At the very least, there are much worse and much less sensible rejection reflexes at work today.

Because you are just relying on the game being reported as being owned at GOG.
Many folk own a game at another store, usually Steam or on disc.
What such folk have to say about game can be just as important and relevant as a person owning it at GOG.

GOG even provide a way for you to filter out such reviews if you wish, so nothing to complain about really.

Hell, many folk here deliberately check out reviews at Steam, because either they find the reviews for a game at GOG too limiting or just not enough of them. Me, I 'd rather not visit Steam if I don't have to.

Anyway, reviews are not the be all and end all, they are just a guide ... maybe. So it doesn't make much sense to put too much faith in them.

And you can also think about it the following way.

Before a game even comes to GOG, people often rely on old reviews etc, to vote for it using Community Wishlists, So any review that isn't a false one, has some value, no matter where the review comes from.

Take the Broken Sword Remaster as an example.
There are 28 reviews published on GOG at the time.
13 of those are by verified owners, 15 aren't.


12 of the 13 verified owners give 5 stars.
Only one gives 2 stars; he demands a "Windows 7 patch".
None of the owners rates the game one star.
The vast majority of owners rates the game 5 stars.

7 of the 15 non owners give 5 stars.
7 of them give a blanket 1 star.

None of the 1 star reviewers tells us anything about the remaster that they could have experienced when playing the game on Steam.

Their gripes with the game are as follows.
Keep in mind that the review guidelines begin with the words:
"Your review should focus on your in-game experience only."

1) RottenRotz - too expensive
2) derserge - too expensive
3) SENSHOCK - likes the graphics, but bemoans unnamed "cuts and changes"
4) exiledemulator - too expensive
5) gogplaya - too expensive
6) Testiclides - AI used (see above)
7) lookingfor - too expensive

So... uhm ... these non owner one star reviews really don't focus on their personal in-game experience, do they? It's reasonable to assume that they never did buy and play the game, not even on Steam, where the game costs the same as on GOG, and most of these people just told us in no uncertain terms that they won't buy the game at that price.

And even the positive reviews by non owners are sometimes a bit of a head scratcher, because if you don't even own a single game on GOG but still write a review ... Come on, that's weird isn't it? Raises some eyebrows?

I don't believe I could have said it better myself...+1 to this entire post.

And when will i be able to filter out reviews written by Linux / Mac users and the ones with the " runs fine on my Steam Deck " ?
( yes , i'm still using only windows and not interested in handeld gaming )

Not that i entirely agree with the "ingame experience only term", i think, else we may get a nasty shit-storm just because translation issues. I never said it is nice not to have proper or accurate translations but... it is surely unfair rating a game the worst possible (or almost) just because of this flaw. Or maybe there are many bugs... or probably AI used... so it may get the worst rating instantly.

The important spot is to look at the whole picture, to bring up every spot and finally create a good "overall".

However, the problematic thing is, that the mass either is deciding for "hype" or "shit-storm"... but rarely a balanced and sane... not insane... approach. The majority of "big games" are actually rather hyped and on smaller games it totally depends if the game is "hitting" a sensitive spot of those "fans" because small games often got certain pretty hardcore fans. So, if those fans are happy, which is based on certain spots (censorship, translation, fan-service, not using any AI and what else) and overall, a small game is rarely allowed to be priced very high, so it have to reflect the expected price range (AAA for example 100 is OK, if it is from Blizzard twice the price no matter the size...) and of course if there are a lot of bugs, some probably even game breaking. However, this are certain points that do not make a entire game and most important is simply to be fully transparent. For example in order to detect a "small game" someone may have to watch at "how long to beat" and simply trying to provide anyone with the required informations. In the end, dependable on the amount of "weak spots" a game may slowly become rated down but it is over the top rating down a game to almost zero for a single "lacking spot", in general.

It is as well "over the top" always to hype a game like crazy and handing out tons of 95+ ratings, in the end this entire hype at the individual approach, will become meaningless. It is a fact that for many gamers a game like "Elden Ring", for example could be "a pain in the butt" and if they even start to moan those are just "whiners"... "ignore them please". So in general the majority is enforcing stuff, for good or bad... it just depends if the fan base is big enough and if a game is able to become hyped... or... unfortunately getting the "shit-storm-label" (i already told many possible spots).

I think, it is part of the "overall impression" if a company on the game affected may even have some bad philosophy, which of course is as well part of this impression and finally experience, as we all are experiencing a game differently... some people may even feel a lot if there is any bad ethics, in or outside of a game. Yet it should always stay focused on the game affected at the review, not any other game from this company.

In general, i know not much about the use of AI because i use my "artistic senses" in order to judge the quality of a games art style. The same way i taste food... i will taste a game and its graphics. Sure, it is proof of quality if everything is hand crafted, yet in general i feel it will be hard satisfying me with AI all the way... it surely will become noticed because it simply will lack a unique signature which i appreciate. The ethics is another thing, but not going into this discussion now, most of it has already been told.

Well, I was speaking about a principle, which isn't necessarily put into practice.
Abuse of the review system seems quite prevalent, even amongst those who own the game at GOG.
That last statement is one major reason why I don't put much faith in reviews, regardless of who makes them.
Some just want to rant or rave about some aspect.

It is also possible to take different things from reviews, depending on who makes them.
For instance, if I want to know about how well a GOG version runs or what the update/bugfix status is, I concentrate on owners at GOG.
If I want to know more about the game play etc I pay attention to reviews more broadly.

Many reviews are clearly worth ignoring, and I guess that is why some, perhaps many check the reviews out at Steam instead. Me, I can't be bothered to do that, most of the time. But then, reviews are only part of my decision process, as I look at many different aspects, some of which carry more weight with me. Wikipedia for instance can factor in informing me about what I really need to know.
Well I think you are going to remain out-of-luck there.
And amongst Linux players, those reviews are likely valid, and they can be GOG customers too.

In any case, as I keep alluding to, reviews are not masterpieces of judgment and are often very personal.