MMO veteran Scott Hartsman recently skeeted a gamedev article about Steam reviews, specifically looking at the data on whether or not spending time replying to Steam reviews is worth the trouble. Apparently, it is. Thanking people for good reviews seems to have a small effect on the rate of positive reviews (as other people see it and think better of you), while responding to negative reviews has a significant effect on convincing negative reviewers to switch their reviews to positive.
“In the case of Forza Horizon 4, 80% of negative reviews the team responded to that were then updated by users turned positive. Several other games like DOOM Eternal, Gunfire Reborn, Space Marine 2, and Elite Dangerous saw 60%+ improvements. […] Reviews that have developer responses are 2x as likely to be updated.”
I have to figure that there’s some psychology at work here. Years ago, when someone posted threats against my children in the MOP comments, the person actually emailed me after he was banned and apologized, saying he was just being edgy and hadn’t thought through that we were real people. I have to wonder whether a dev answering negative reviews jolts someone who was just shitposting for clout into realizing, hey, these are real people, and they are listening to me.
Do you ever update your Steam reviews for MMOs and multiplayer games? How often? And do MMO devs ever respond to your Steam reviews? What about your comments on Discord or Reddit?
Something "we all know," but neat to see some work behind it. He scraped all scrapeable steam reviews, and there's inference but:"…half of players that leave negative reviews but then come back and update their review after a developer has directly responded to them, change to positive."
— Scott Hartsman (@hartsman.bsky.social) 2025-01-16T16:09:09.785Z
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
