Asmongold TV - Why you can't trust Steam reviews anymore | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

Why you can't trust Steam reviews anymore Asmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ---------------- ---- Keywords: reaction videos, world of warcraft, gaming news, pc gaming, mmo gaming, streamer reactions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People rigging Steam reviews. What a surprise? So I've got a question for you. Can you trust Steam reviews anymore? Can you trust the Steam AI disclosure? You'd like to think that you can... You mean, you can trust it. I mean, you probably better than most things. I mean, but you can never trust anything 100%. But today we've got this story. One where two games from, when you follow the whole chain, billion dollar companies, just broke Steam's biggest rules. I mean, one of them should be pretty much one of the biggest rules. Review manipulation. And so far, these companies are getting away with it. And if I don't solve this, it will open the floodgates to behavior that, at least in one case, with the reviews, would completely ruin trust on the platform. So basically, what if a Steam review was about as trustworthy as an Amazon one? I don't think that's the steam that you and I want to use.

Also, here's something you'll find interesting that I just found out using Ground News, who are today's sponsor. I think that, by the way, I do think that reviews, like submitting fake reviews, and then, having people put in fake reviews. At this point now, they've been made illegal in a number of places in the world, so companies can be held legally liable for putting out fake reviews. You know, the Screen Actors Guild Strike in Gaming?

Well, they just reached a tentative deal that's ending the year-long video game strike, but what's interesting is watching how outlets spin it differently. Grand news here shows 98 sources covering the story, and the framing is all over the map. Some outlets lead saying, The strike suspended, others emphasize that it's a tentative agreement, which is a little bit more optimistic.

And here's another bit that caught my eye. UK outlets are calling the AI stuff a direct threat to the industry, but the US-centered sources, they're focusing more on the AI protections being secured. Essentially, it's kind of like same deal, but different narratives, different framings about whether voice actors won or just got a okay compromise. You also can see the bias breakdown. It tells its own story. 63% center coverage, but only five right-leaning sources touched this.

Nobody talked about a right-winning at all. When a major labor news story gets ignored by one side of the spectrum, that's you not being served. That's you missing out and part of the conversation. Devs are literally five-star of their own games via friends and family. Yeah, but like that's such a drop in the bucket. That's not something to really worry about.

Like it's the systematic manipulation. Like, I mean, it's same as like, you know, like view-bodding, for example. Oh, wow. somebody has their stream open on two other computers, so they have three viewers instead of one. Like, yeah, obviously, like, you shouldn't do that. But at the same time, it's not really worth investing resources and time into preventing that from happening. And that's one example of why I rely on ground users vantage plan.

There's so much else as well. I mean, here I can see 98% high factuality or above ratings for the sources. I can compare how the different outlets package the same facts. And all that helps me catch what your usual sources may end up skipping on. And once you're set up, say by adding the entertainment and gaming pages, you can just get ahead of industry news and actually see the big picture. So go to ground.com slash bellular, and that's where you'll get 40% off unlimited access with the vantage plan.

That's what I use. That's the best deal that you'll get. And the link to get it is just down below in the video description. All right, I first got to set the scene before we get to... Hey, well, I'm talking about. So on Steam, right, usually rule breakers. kind of get nuked. I mean, here's an example from February where users flagged a game called Pirate Phi.

As it turns out, it was just riddled with what they suspected was malware. So that happened. Four days after the game launched, Steam killed its store page. Then they reviewed everything, and two days after that, users who ran the game in their machine got warning emails about potential risk. And this is an example of things going right. You see, Rule 9 of Steam onboarding states that you should not distribute malware. Shocking thing.

Wow. A clear violation led to a very clear... Well, then how is it possible that they were able to release Dragon Age Vailgard? For a result, as was the case with this other story, where an entire publisher's library was pulled, because they were essentially churning out endless fake games designed to manipulate Steam's trading card economy. Kind of crazy stuff. And we've seen instances of individual devs being whacked for trolling, for ban evasion. And if you're an angry dev who decides to tweet a death threat to Gabe Newell, yeah, you will be...

What the fuck did you expect? Duh. We take him out on Steam. Now, in every example here, it's a very clear pattern. What are you fucking retarded? What we would all want? Yeah. The rule is broken.

Val finds out, they take action, and there you go. Everything is good. The platform is healthy. But here's the thing. Those examples were mostly smaller teams, mostly indies. This week, though, we've got two listed companies breaking Steam's rules. This sort of thing has happened before. Remember the whole discussion about the in-game advertisements

and how a whole bunch of companies were ascending. eventually just kind of flying in under the radar. And then they made a rule about it. That stopped immediately. Today's situation is even worse. First up today, we got Naxon. And they're no stranger to controversy, like say the Maple Story lawsuits, the darker and darker lawsuits. But now it's their abuse of Steam reviews.

And I think this is one we should be absolutely scathing and clear about because it's goddamn ridiculous. So here's how it went down. Last week, Blue Archive launched in Steam. And if you've got no idea what Blue Archive is. Well, you know exactly what it is. There are four girls in this photo. They're all anime girls, and three out of the four girls have cat ears. We know what it is already.

Good for you. You're free. That's so you're not confused. It's a huge gatch game. It's been going for a few years. Wow. For very popular in mobile. And now it's a...

Wow. Yep. And it seems to be doing real well. 91% positive reviews from 8,524 users. Pretty damn good. Now, say you're a connoisseur of the whole collectible girls plus concept genre of game. So all the gacha games, you'd probably think Blue Archive is just as good as this gacha darling.

And make a look at this particular YouTube video. It serves as a good example. I played an Amase Pretty Derby because it has 96% positive reviews on Steam. The title is I played Uem Sashi Pretty Derby because it had 96% positive reviews. Now, what if you saw a similarly title video but about Blue Archive saying 91% reviews? You'd probably think it's really good. But here's the thing. While those reviews look similar, you would be wrong to trust.

them because there's a key difference. Cy games are not breaking Steam's rules, but Nexon is. See, to celebrate Blue Archives PC launch, Nexon created celebration events. There's a fan art contest for currency, your Steam gift cards, social media raffle for currency, and then there's a big problem.

A Steam review event, where basically all users get in-game gifts once Steam hits a target number of reviews. Negative or positive? If the total number of Blue Archive reviews written on Steam page reaches the target amount, you'll receive event, gifts.

It doesn't matter. It's just the number of reviews. Yeah. And here's the thing. Steam's rules for user reviews are crystal clear. I will quote them, don't attempt to abuse or artificially manipulate the review system. Don't...

Okay. Don't solicit reviews in exchange for any games. Seems pretty fucking simple, huh? DLC money or other rewards. Absolutely. They ask for total, though, not positive? That's not what it says in the rules. Those rules are being broken.

Undeniable. And it does kind of make sense why they would try it. 100%. I mean, review manipulation is completely commonplace on mobile stores. It's one of the reasons why so many of those games have massively inflated review scores, by the way. Not actually that good. But of course, it's done for a reason. The good reviews look good.

They encourage early adoption. They make something spread more. But of course, on Steam, unlike the mobile stores, it is explicitly against the rules. I think Steam should just take the game off the list. Just take it off the list, period. Just kick it off steam. I mean, I blue archive. Like, I mean, realistically, if you look at, like, I mean, how popular is this game, really?

It's 12,000 players. Who cares? It's like, it's a big game. It's too much money. No, it's not. No, it's not. Steve is like a multi-billion dollar company. It's not too much money.

They already stopped the campaign. I think they should just, in my opinion, if I was Steve, I would just, I would just ban the game. Now, Nexon is worth a hell of a lot of money. They're a big company. Nexton can sue, though. And that means that they can't sue. It's so obvious.

It's so blatantly stated that they broke the rules. It's not even a question. There's a real simple question here. How much does Valve value their own rules? How much do they value that? Will they make an example out of this game? What will they actually do because the rules are being broken? And if the rule is broken and you do nothing, people will question the rule.

Exactly. And this brings me to today's second defendant. The Altruz is the new game from 11-bit. You probably know 11-bit from Frostpunk. And the good news is, it's a great game. It's 86% in OpenCritic, 88% on Steam. And that's all from real non-blue archived reviews. Wow. Which is nice.

The problem is 11-bit's mistake with false representation of generative AI. So here's essentially what happened, right? A user noticed that background art contained an AI prompt. It was a bunch of code, but one of the lines was basically the prompt. Now, this was a small asset. It was the kind of thing that basically would normally be covered by Loram-Ipsom text. So basically some AI generated placeholder stuff. And in this case, they basically used AI to generate some techno-babel stuff, but then they left it in.

And look, if they didn't notice that and that was the reason why they didn't use the disclosure on Steam, I suppose that would have been kind of understandable. But it actually turns out it's not just that because something else happened. Non-English users noticed some... I think that generative AI is probably in a lot more games than what people can realize. And the only reason why it's not being called out more is because it's so good that people don't notice it. Do you really think that these companies aren't using generative AI when it's such a good tool and such a good system? Why would they not do that?

As long as people disclose it, nobody cares. I think that the, why should a company have to disclose that they're using generative AI? What's the logic that they should have to disclose that? There is no logic. Yeah, exactly. It's just people don't like AI. And so they're simply trying to, the reason why is that they hope that by creating this distinction,

they can further alienate and isolate AI products and separate them from the market. That's the reason why they're pushing for it. It's the steam rules. I know that, but why is it a rule? I understand it's a rule. And I understand you have to follow. the rules. I get that and they should have done that. But like, let's go a step further than that.

Something altogether different. Those same prompts appeared in transparency. I don't understand this. So, like, why should somebody need to be transparent about this versus, like, having a video game developed in, like, a certain country? Or, like, let's say you outsource part of your video game development to a certain country. Do you have to disclose that also? Why is developmental, sorry, why is generative AI something that people deserve disclosure for, but not other forms of business practices. Why is that? Because customers care, but I don't think that they do. I think that it's a very small amount of people that are trying to artificially increase the amount of negativity towards AI in the hopes that maybe that will cause them not to lose their job. I think that the

majority of the AI hate is completely artificial. Titles on some of the in-game movies. Now, when called out for this issue, 11-bit did confirm that both things were true, that the art was indeed placeholder text that wasn't removed, but that the subtitles was actually deliberate. And here's how they explain it. It's latent development for their game, and the team decides to implement these movies. But they have a problem, and that problem is localization. Their localization partner would not be able to get that stuff done in time. That essentially meant that with the time they had... Why would you want to pay somebody for localization if you could just have AI do it? It's stupid. Like, what a stupid premise?

Of course you're going to use AI. It's a better tool and it does a better job. That 11 bit could either ship no subtitles for them or they could translate them in-house with the resources that they had where clearly, of course, they just went to using chatbots for that. Which is kind of understandable. A language model is pretty good at translating language.

Most AI still aren't. I don't really think that you can say AI. Like, I don't have any sort, of unique anger at AI for stealing art when I look at people that copy shit all the time. Like there are so many games that are blatant copies of other games and am I supposed to look at that and be like

that's okay but when AI does it, it's bad? That's just, it's not logical. It doesn't make any sense to me. If the problem is that something that you're making and producing is derivative of another product, then logically every form of derivative behavior would be viewed the same way, but it's not. AI is viewed in this unique way that it's a unique evil,

even though other companies do the exact same thing. Aren't you conflating inspiration and copying? In some ways, I am, because functionally they're the same thing. AI is functionally using another piece of media in order to inform and create its media. Okay? Developers and artists do that all the time. I don't see a big difference here. I'm sorry, I just don't.

Not as good as a proper creative localization job, but you get at the point. They went to that technology. Now, they say that this was only 0.3% of the overall text in the game, and so they decided to just make that call, to use the chatbot so that they could have the subtitles. Yeah, sure. Now, in their statement, they acknowledge that the wrong call was made,

and they say that they should have simply let you know. Yeah, duh, they should have. Yeah. But not just because it's the right thing to do. It's also Steam rules. They should have because they need to. See, Steam has got generative AI disclosure rules. I think that Steam, by the way, I think that they are right to have these rules right now.

And the reason why, even though I think the rules are stupid, is because of legal liability. The reason why they have these rules is because of legal liability. Because nobody knows where, like, legally, AI is going to stand. And the rule states, pregenerated, any kind of content created, with the help of AI tools during development. So clearly, 11 bit also broke Steam's rules. Yes. And to be clear, Steam's definition as it stands is pretty damn broad.

So if your game is using AI services during development, that's something you've got to disclose, seemingly, you know, whether it makes it to the final product or not. It's broad as hell, but that's the wording of the rule. So 11Bit may have intended to do this and then replace the content, but they launched without the disclosure that they needed. And as of the time of writing, there is still no disclosure.

Now sure, if they put that disclosure there, maybe they would have lost a few sales on the launch of the game or something like that. But I've got to imagine that audience trust and not breaking Steam's rules, those things... Well, there's... Steam has an obligation. Like, if I was Steam, what I would do

is I would offer refunds to everybody who bought the game. I would say that it doesn't matter how long you played the game. If you want to refund the game, you can refund the game. because like again and the reason why you do that and you know whoa well no no no it's very simple steam is a service and when people use steam service and they misuse it and they take advantage of the customers that steam has you know who gets the phone call steam does steam has to deal with the bad

PR from this not the developer that's the reason why they've they've effectively made a sale on a false premise they said that they were doing something they didn't say they were doing something that they were supposed to disclose you've made a sale on a false premise when you make a sale on a false premise then a refund is in order it's that simple what if you what if you bought the game say a year ago that doesn't matter to me it was a bad faith sale and it was done based off of inaccurate information that's it it's actually such a simple idea most certainly be higher. So that's our two naughty, naughty games companies. Now, in a way, this could all just seem like tattling to the teacher, you know, gay, but these developers

are doing a terrible thing in your platform. No, it's not that. No, it is tattling. And we need to keep tattling because if they do it and they get away with it, more people are going to do it, and more people are going to get away with it. And then the system becomes worse over time. Reviews become less trusted. And it becomes gamified by malicious actors that want to manipulate people out of their money, which reduces the quality of the products that we get on steam and it also reduces the quality of steam as a product itself. Absolutely, this is an issue. There's a reason why I bring all of this up. You see, in both cases, there have been no consequences. Nexon is not retracted. Their overt review manipulation campaign, 11 bit, have not updated their store

page. How little effort would it take to update the store page? I mean, come on. Sure, there's bad PR in both cases, but there's little material consequence coming from Valve. And unfortunately for Valve, a pattern is beginning to form. I think that they just might not have dealt with it yet, honestly. It took them a while, like, for example, with the day before, there was, like, a scam game that came out a couple of years ago, and a lot of people wanted refunds on it. It did take them a couple of days to, like, have a resolution for this.

And also, they could be in conversations with these developers, figuring out what the solution is. Crono thinks they're tense up. I appreciate it. As did the smaller games that I opened up today's video with. Those small games, like with malware and other things, we're very easy to punish. But a well-liked, well-selling game from a real big company that's worth a lot of money...

Still easy to punish. Still easy. And if you don't punish them now, you're going to have other big companies that call your bluff, and they continue abusing your system. You have to make an example out of people. Because the moment that you let one exception go through, then other people stop respecting your rules.

That's, in a way, harder to... to punish for Valve. It certainly seems so anyway. I mean, in one way, it's actually just as easy. The rules are the rules. Just apply them forehead. Yes. But that's not really how reality ends up working. What Valve has got to do is manage their relationships with each company. And here... No, they don't. No, they don't. It's a buyer's market. And Valve is the buyer. They don't. The fact is that the reason why all these companies come to Steam, is because Steam is the biggest marketplace for PC gaming. If they want to choose to make their own launcher and avoid that, then they can choose to do that.

But the fact is that there's a reason why all these companies are coming to Steam. It's because Steam provides a massive audience and it gives their game way more exposure. It would appear that the value of the relationship and the associated revenue with that is worth more to valve than their own rules. But I think they should be worried about that. It's not. nothing is worth more than a relationship and the trust that you have with your customer and if any business partner

if any business partner puts the trust that you have with your customer at risk that is now a bad actor business partner that's going to hurt you because I think we both know what this really would do it would set a precedent the point can be made of a very simple hypothetical what happens when another developer

manipulates reviews with exactly the same tactics as Blue Archive did and then they get punished by Valve, but they just say, but what the hell? You let Blue Archive happen. You never issued a statement and you never punched X on. Why are you being unfair to me? And now Steam is wrong. And yeah, Valve could say, well, look, look at the rules. You broke them. To which the company could rightly say, well, clearly, Valve, it's not a rule because those people, Blue Archive also broke it and you didn't do anything about it. Now, look, what I'm about to say is not really apples to apples, but there's a

reason why, right? In the legal system, you have the law as it is written, but then you've also got case law. The idea being that case law guides a judge and how to interpret the word of the law and actually apply it in a real material scenario. Sure. So here, think of Valve kind of like the judge. I mean, they're also legislative, but you get my point, right? What Valve have got to do is act, and they need to act because they need to set a precedent of how their rules are followed. Yep. That's the problem with Valve's kind of fluffily worded rules. Even take the generative AI one, Technically, you could argue that almost any game would fall under that if their business operations are running on an email platform that perhaps AI auto-labels their emails, because that would be contributing to how the game is actually made. So from that...

That's not even true, I don't think. Any kind of content, art, code, sound created during development, not including legal infringing content, pre-references, output of the game. No, because it's outside of the scope of the game. Like, that's not even true. So from that perspective, not only have Valve got a very poorly worded AI disclosure policy thing. As for their actual rules, like the ones that Nexon are maliciously exploiting, well, if Valve have the rules and they don't enforce them, then that would essentially be seen as, oh, well, in that case, you set the precedent that doing this at the level of Blue Archive

does not get you slammed, doesn't get you banned or actioned against. And that's what could lead other developers and publishers to try the same thing. And if Valve was to punish them, they could probably even make a legal case of Valve incorrectly applying their rules, as is understood through Valve, basically not giving a shit about their rules earlier. It's preferential treatment too. Suppose if you're a Nexon Stan, you could kind of say, well, hey, they don't specify that the review needs to be positive. It's not asking for that, therefore... What? That's not what the rule says that says manipulating reviews. It never said anything about positive reviews. It never said anything about positive reviews. It never

even said that. It wasn't about that at all. You just read it. It doesn't say that. Should be fine. Well, no, it still is manipulation. It's similar to like preaching to your own choir. Yes. The people targeted by this are Blue Archive players. People who would want the game to succeed and who will get rewards for the review milestones. Sounds like this can be applied to Twitch. True. Of course it is manipulation. And that erodes that

obviously is. And the trust in Steam reviews. Yes. And that is something that cannot become normal. As for 11 bit, well, they broke the rule. There should be a slap. But ultimately, I do think it was a misjudgment impacting a very small part of the game. Certainly, insofar as like AI disclosure related things would go, there is far, far, far more malicious stuff that could be going on. But that doesn't mean Valve shouldn't do anything.

Because a Valve does nothing here, they would just give the impression that this sort of thing is okay and that they don't take their own rules seriously. And of course, you just know that if that happens, the grifter types. would take any wiggle room that they could get and absolutely use it as a justification to just go hog wild. So something needs to be. And they're going to do it too. And they're going to say, why can they do it and I can't do it? This is the same problem that Twitch has.

When Twitch doesn't enforce their rules, then everybody gets pissed off. And they say, well, what about this other thing? What about that other thing? How's that worked out for Twitch? Enforcing your rules asymmetrically is never a good idea. Done. But it's still not as blatant. It's a very bad idea.

and the spirit of the role as in the nexon situation. So, Valve, give them the slap. Project to the rest of the industry that you're not asleep at the goddamn wheel because if you are asleep at the wheel, the norms in your platform will change. One where we as customers cannot trust reviews as an example. And guess what?

If it's bad for us, if we can't trust reviews, if we can't trust the disclosures are actually authentic, we will feel less confidence. We'll be less likely to buy on Steam. Or at the very least, we'll think twice. And as anyone who understands sales knows, BOOL Archive is a bad example because their community will still review, trust me. Well, if their community will still review, then why'd they ask for the reviews?

If they knew they were going to happen. Someone is starting to think twice, your conversion rate, just absolutely falls to shit. So to Valve, I have a very simple message. Would you trust someone who doesn't enforce their own rules? Yeah. I don't think you would. I don't think we should. So get on it.

See what happens when you take a set of rules. Stop Killing Games movement and the death of Anthem. Watch this video. Oh, jeez. Oh, geez, man. Yeah, there it is. It's normal to ask for reviews when you're a mobile game dev? Why would I care about that?

It's against the Steam rules. Period. Don't ask for reviews. That's it. It's super simple. Oh, but this is what mobile game devs do. This isn't a mobile game dev platform. Yeah, like, that's not.

the way it works, guys. It ties to prizes, not that's the problem. No, no, it's not. The problem is the fact that it's happening at all. Okay? Too many Blue Archive defenders in chat? The game looked pretty decent. There's a video. Give it a like. I do agree with this a lot. I very much think this is bullshit. And

that's different. It's different when you add incentives. It's worse when you add incentives. But they're both bad. Okay? Blue Archive canceled that Steam. review event a few days after it happened, apologizing and stuff, that's fine. And if they have a, if they have a resolution for that, that's great. But the thing is that Steam still has to do something because if only apologizing is what you're going to do, a lot of people will take the risk in doing something if they know that there won't be any negative consequences. And that's the problem.

Even how blatantly Twitch is doing it, they have yet to lose a case or even get sued for it. No, no, they haven't. You're right about that. They have. at least not yet. And I like how Amazon reviews and now the gold standard for bullshit. I didn't even know Amazon reviews were bullshit. I had no idea about that. It's the first time I've ever hearing about that at all.

Check out Blue Archive reviews. And let's see here, it didn't seem to us say that you can't offer compensation for any kind of reviews? No, it says that you cannot manipulate reviews. It is so blatant in what they say. Don't attempt to abuse or artificially manipulate the review system. There it is.

Are they artificially manipulating the review system? system. Yes. The next line two? No, then these are two separate lines. So these, this is number one and number two. Just because you break number two doesn't mean you also didn't break number one. Hence the full stop. Yeah, it's a full stop. That's a period at the end of it. They're not saying put a positive review up there. How do you, how is it not manipulating? They are giving free rewards, even if the reviews are bad. Where in the rules did it state at all about bad reviews or good reviews? Does it say anywhere in the rules about good reviews or bad reviews?

Does it make any distinction between the two things? No, manipulating can mean a lot of things. I don't think this is one. Why is this not one? Manipulating is swaying reviews one way or another, not encouraging reviews? No. To handle or control? To influence.

The connotation is that, but the definition is not. It's just like literally, like, it's just literal vocabulary. Because they're not asking for good reviews, it's just my opinion. This isn't an opinion. You're just simply wrong based off of vocabulary. It's, this is definitional manipulation. Manipulation doesn't occur whenever it's just something that you agree with. Manipulation occurs when a change is forced.

That's it. There's no taking an L. I'm taking an L on this one. Is there anybody, like, how can anybody, this is, this, this is the definition of the word. This isn't an opinion. This is a fact. I see your point, but I don't think they're really trying to manipulate the steam review system. Then why would they do it? What? This is the reason why I don't think most people should be able to vote, by the way.

This is the reason. people literally do not know the definition and the meaning of words. It's scary. It is legitimately fucking scary that people do not even know what words mean.