It completely skews the games' ratings over temporary technical issues.

These problems will be sorted out by later updates, but your review will remain, forever lowering the score of the game.

Please note the 'Support' tab at the top of the page. That is where you go if the game does not work or gives you any trouble. You will also get faster results that way.

EDIT: I am specifically referring to older games that ran into compatibility issues that have been sorted out, or are not universal.

Perhaps you can tell me when the developers are going to come back and fix this apparent dumpster fire (which GOG is charging $25 for)? By all accounts, the game is almost unplayably broken and abandoned by the devs. Does it deserve good reviews on a store that is supposed to be for 'good old games'?

Unless, you know, they won't.

If you don't want the rating of your game damaged by technical issues, don't release a broken game. People need to learn that lesson, not be shielded from it.

While I partly agree with you on at least accounts of technical incompetence, (IE, too stupid to operate a blanket) there are situations like Interstate 76 or Pop:TB where it's a technical gong show.

Though I feel a notice to the lines of, "AMYOYO, this game is going to be running by your own fruition." could solve a lot of problems with the middle day Windows/Latter Day DOS games.

"This thread has been brought to you by wishfulthinking.com"

I'm not referring to developers releasing inherently unfinished games.
I'm mostly referring to older games. Now and then there is one that has some compatibility issues, usually due to a change in operating systems like new versions of Windows, or due to some incompatibility with modern hardware. These problems are usually fixed, but there are people that use the reviews section to complain about the problem, instead of either using the support page or discussing it on the forums.
Those reviews still remain, but are completely irrelevant to anyone reading them, and they also lower the score of the game for no good reason.

Reviews describe the status of a game at the time of playing, so it makes sense to report compatibility issues.

What would be useful, is that Gog added fields for details like OS, version, etc and filters to select only the info you need.
And modifiable reviews.. at least for a few days and surely when a new game version is released.

The best ones I've seen are the 1-star reviews for "Game wouldn't start/is broken." without any further explanation... or "Doesn't work on my Win10 machine" while a game's support doesn't go beyond 7 or 8. *facepalm*

I disagree; imo it's worth reviewing the GOG specific release, so if they have issues they should be able to bring them up. I say this understanding the complications of various hardware / software combinations.

imo What GOG should have is a way to respond directly in the reviews like on other sites ("sorry for the trouble", etc.), but I guess if the website is a low priority, that's on them for not making such a change or similar.

heh why? I would like reviews to reflect if the game is working or not
if the game is shitty and crashes constantly it deserves 1/5 rating

@OP - None of your first post makes any sense.

If a game has some technical issue, then as a potential buyer I want to know about it.

I agree that sometimes reviews are out-of-date in regard to the current state of a game, but a lot of bugs also go unfixed.

In the end, it is about how you take reviews into account, and what you pay attention to. Date of review is an important thing to be aware of, and things customers say in other reviews. Each game tends to have its own forum section, where you can find out the current state of the game or ask a question about it, if still unsure.

In full reality though, you should be complaining to GOG and Developers or Publishers about providing games in a poor state or not providing enough information on the game web page about updates.

If we have a concern about a technical issue, we should be able to find out if that has been addressed, and where better to do that, than on the game's web page ... perhaps linking back to a forum web page for greater detail.

Reviews are opinions of the product at the time of publication. Unfortunately though: a lot of games simply DON'T get problems fixed regardless of how early the reviews are published. Give the readers some credit: those still interested will do some research to see whether the listed problems got fixed. Others will stay away.

It would help if GOG (or whomever) added a comment to some of these reviews to indicate if the problems were fixed in version <x>, but that's of low priority compared to other things they should be concentrating on right now.

Breja, you're becoming an arch-paladin of "The Voice of Reason" order as of late. I thought you aimed to misbehave :P.

Sometimes those technical complains use to get old sooner or later. I read a lot of reviews with obsolete technical problems. In other cases they are just complains of people having glitches that are not real bugs, but isolated problems with their own configurations. Something classic in PC gaming specially in older games. And something that would fit better in the specific game subforum or in the technical problems service.

So, I agree, People should stop posting technical complains specifically in the reviews or at least they should be revised from time to time to be accurate.
Remember that the the refund policy in GOG is pretty flexible and posting bad reviews because suposed bugs steal space to real reviews about the game.
When the problem is for real and the game is well known for being defective, there is the refund policy.

There is a review for earth 2140 saying they got the dos version for working a.i. but another review a few above is the a.i. isn't fixed in the game and ignore any reviews to the contrary since they are using the windows version instead of dosbox one which has a.i.

Made me chuckle