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On January 11 2025 07:57 ChillFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2025 05:51 CicadaSC wrote:
Looks like the main player base and reviews are being botted now? Gerald acknowledged it on the subreddit. What is going on??? I created a conspiracy theory. Please don't take it seriously =D
I don't know what you mean you created a conspiracy theory, it's not a conspiracy frost giant have responded and said yeah it looks like bots. the only conspiracy theory part of it would be who is doing it? I doubt it's frost giant themselves I suspect it's probably an investor? Like a personal investor because weren't frost giant selling company shares? Someone like that has a strong invested interest in ensuring the game succeeds but I feel like this is only going to backfire. It seems their goal was to change reviews from mostly negative to mixed in time for the RTS Fest on Steam in hopes it gets more people to try it out.
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On January 11 2025 09:03 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2025 07:57 ChillFlame wrote:On January 11 2025 05:51 CicadaSC wrote:
Looks like the main player base and reviews are being botted now? Gerald acknowledged it on the subreddit. What is going on??? I created a conspiracy theory. Please don't take it seriously =D I don't know what you mean you created a conspiracy theory, it's not a conspiracy frost giant have responded and said yeah it looks like bots. the only conspiracy theory part of it would be who is doing it? I doubt it's frost giant themselves I suspect it's probably an investor? Like a personal investor because weren't frost giant selling company shares? Someone like that has a strong invested interest in ensuring the game succeeds but I feel like this is only going to backfire. It seems their goal was to change reviews from mostly negative to mixed in time for the RTS Fest on Steam in hopes it gets more people to try it out.
Nah, the point of my conspiracy theory is someone check-mated FG with bots.
Of course, some parts or even bullet points of it are real and believable. That's the whole point of every conspiracy theory.
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Northern Ireland26324 Posts
On January 11 2025 08:24 ChillFlame wrote:
As a FG hater, I have to admit, that these bot reviews are really sketchy.
If it were any other game, I would say no one is THAT stupid.
But this is FG, so I'm not so sure :D
Of course, I don't believe FG, but folks are nervous RN, so they act too hasty.
I'll wait till we get some more info.
Going from the Reddit zone there seem enough dedicated FG haters that I also wouldn’t rule out one of them seizing on this latest PR disaster and pumping out some bot reviews just to further kick them while they’re down.
Overall review volume is pretty low too so it wouldn’t require a huge amount of effort.
Perhaps due to not being a huge Redditor I’m surprised by things most regulars are used to, I don’t think I’ve ever dwelled in a community so full of both hardcore haters and ‘the company can do no wrong’ at the same time!
I can absolutely see the more unhinged and invested on either flank employing all sorts of dodgy behaviour to augment their case as it were, very strange to me
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I can absolutely see the more unhinged and invested on either flank employing all sorts of dodgy behaviour to augment their case as it were, very strange to me
Exactly. Even I don't jump on the hate train this time. Bot reviews are obvious, but we don't have enough evidence to accuse someone.
It might also be a 3rd party :D Like their shady investor who usually invests in crypto-scam projects.
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On January 11 2025 09:58 ChillFlame wrote:Show nested quote +I can absolutely see the more unhinged and invested on either flank employing all sorts of dodgy behaviour to augment their case as it were, very strange to me Exactly. Even I don't jump on the hate train this time. Bot reviews are obvious, but we don't have enough evidence to accuse someone. It might also be a 3rd party :D Like their shady investor who usually invests in crypto-scam projects.
My guess is it's an individual outside of company actor. There's no way Frost Giant would actually do that. The people who invested their pocket money for shares in the company are most likely I think. They wanted to change recent reviews from mostly negative to mixed before RTS Fest.
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My guess is it's an individual outside of company actor.
That's the least insane option.
But we're dealing with FG and their former biggest fans :D
So I won't discard two other options yet. Their CEO changed his nickname and made fake review(s). And their community manager confirmed it. I'd believe they're aliens at this point.
Edit: I think I have to clarify. Review bombings and bots are untrackable. A lot of developers use them. If Steam catches them, they will probably just remove suspicious reviews. So companies buy thousands of bots.
On the other hand, we have FG. They admitted they made fake reviews by hand. This is enough to remove the game from the store. And they only got 12-16 positive reviews (proven). This is insane. They don't have another platform, nor a publisher. They risked everything they got for 12-16 reviews.
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On January 11 2025 09:43 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2025 08:24 ChillFlame wrote:
As a FG hater, I have to admit, that these bot reviews are really sketchy.
If it were any other game, I would say no one is THAT stupid.
But this is FG, so I'm not so sure :D
Of course, I don't believe FG, but folks are nervous RN, so they act too hasty.
I'll wait till we get some more info. Perhaps due to not being a huge Redditor I’m surprised by things most regulars are used to, I don’t think I’ve ever dwelled in a community so full of both hardcore haters and ‘the company can do no wrong’ at the same time!
I think it's a fairly typical scenario with the troubled development. When I was quite a bit younger, I was part of the Natural Selection 2 community and it had some similar elements to its development. The game was heavily late, was running really sluggishly and had all kinds of half-written promises and huge community imagined expectations to fulfil. Meanwhile the developers were struggling to keep people engaged, preorders going and develop a game in the middle of it all.
Combine that kind of environment with internet where everyone is out there to win arguments rather than learn or find common ground and things start to fester very quickly. I was more on the side of whiny group of people and I do recognize the type of mistrust & bitterness that forms after a while. You feel like your valid concerns are often brushed away with dodgy PR talk and negative patterns tend to repeat. At some point the bitterness starts to affect your own (usually well-intended) critique feedback and you end up pushing harder for changes or answers and nothing good comes out in the end.
Being older now, I'd just walk away earlier and let others sort it out. Troubled situation like that doesn't bring out the best sides in any of the people involved, not the community participants nor the developers.
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On January 11 2025 07:57 ChillFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2025 05:51 CicadaSC wrote:
Looks like the main player base and reviews are being botted now? Gerald acknowledged it on the subreddit. What is going on??? I created a conspiracy theory. Please don't take it seriously =D It's all makings of the hater mastermind.
a large portion of all crimes committed are conspiracies. my lawyer relatives have a saying: "a good retail employee is one who never steals more than he should". As a teenager I worked at a Shell Gas Station and a 24 hour Fedex-Kinkos Print shop. Both places had a trio of employees at the top robbing the places blind. Both were "criminal conspiracies". meh.
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I honestly don't understand anything concerning this game anymore.
The game itself is F2P and good enough to be at least mixed on steam, probably better.
The developer runs from one scam to the next. And even when they are not involved there is some sort of scam running.
We now have chineses reviews bots but instead of lifting it up or bombing it down it's pretty mixed. Why? I don't get it
At this point FG should "sell" the game to a different company, put someone in charge who is really good with PR and then finish it with a clean slate and maybe even goodwill. You can even employ the same guys again, just don't let anyone have a reddit or twitter account. Frostgiant as a company is pretty much done in the gaming world.
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just don't let anyone have a reddit or twitter account.
Very wise words, man.
Nowdays devs think everyone is interested in their personal opinion.
Just do your work and make a good game, ffs.
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On January 13 2025 22:16 Harris1st wrote:
I honestly don't understand anything concerning this game anymore.
The game itself is F2P and good enough to be at least mixed on steam, probably better.
I don't think you can really say a game is good enough when it's meant to be multiplayer and has 40-70 player concurrents. This isn't like a story game where you beat it and then stop playing, this is a game that's meant to be played all the time.
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On January 14 2025 09:03 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2025 22:16 Harris1st wrote:
I honestly don't understand anything concerning this game anymore.
The game itself is F2P and good enough to be at least mixed on steam, probably better.
I don't think you can really say a game is good enough when it's meant to be multiplayer and has 40-70 player concurrents. This isn't like a story game where you beat it and then stop playing, this is a game that's meant to be played all the time.
Imagine a world where the game would release today in the state it is now from a imaginary development studio which is viewed mostly positive by the community.
I know I know, a lot of ifs and whens.
I honestly think the game itself would get at least some traction, player numbers after a peak at release would be somewhere in the high 4 digits and steam reviews would mostly be "it plays crisp and has good unit interaction but it's missing content and and graphics are not my thing"
Anyway, back to reality.
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By the way, the situation has been resolved.
Gaben deleted bot reviews and the rating came back to normal 36%
Tim's review is also gone.
https://imgur.com/a/c9hWUb9
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On January 14 2025 18:23 ChillFlame wrote:By the way, the situation has been resolved. Gaben deleted bot reviews and the rating came back to normal 36% Tim's review is also gone. https://imgur.com/a/c9hWUb9
Are we sure it's Tim's review? If it isn't true that's a pretty bold/slandering/damaging claim to make. Not to knock on you but this is the type of thing we have to be 100% sure about before tossing out casually like this.
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On January 14 2025 17:22 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2025 09:03 CicadaSC wrote:On January 13 2025 22:16 Harris1st wrote:
I honestly don't understand anything concerning this game anymore.
The game itself is F2P and good enough to be at least mixed on steam, probably better.
I don't think you can really say a game is good enough when it's meant to be multiplayer and has 40-70 player concurrents. This isn't like a story game where you beat it and then stop playing, this is a game that's meant to be played all the time. Imagine a world where the game would release today in the state it is now from a imaginary development studio which is viewed mostly positive by the community. I know I know, a lot of ifs and whens. I honestly think the game itself would get at least some traction, player numbers after a peak at release would be somewhere in the high 4 digits and steam reviews would mostly be "it plays crisp and has good unit interaction but it's missing content and and graphics are not my thing" Anyway, back to reality.
Nice fantasy.
It is a bad game for its price tag. Player numbers dont lie.
On January 14 2025 18:23 ChillFlame wrote:
Tim's review is also gone.
Nice. 245k is not enough to write a review that sticks
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On January 14 2025 18:41 CicadaSC wrote:Are we sure it's Tim's review? If it isn't true that's a pretty bold/slandering/damaging claim to make. Not to knock on you but this is the type of thing we have to be 100% sure about before tossing out casually like this. Yes, read further up. Steam itself directly linked the fake review to Tim Mortens steam account.
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If it is his review, he probably removed it himself. Other devs also removed or edited their reviews after Frost Giant acknowledged some devs did review the game.
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He promised that Tim will comment it himself.
Also Gerald promised to make a blog post regarding the GearUp booster marketing case a while ago.
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EPT
