SortaLewd
Member
- Feb 26, 2019
- 429
- 556
Pretty sure that's an outlier though. When people go looking for reviews on games do you think most people go looking at reviews from reviewers that likely own legitimate copies on platforms like YouTube, Steam, etc, or do you think most people look at reviews on pirating sites? A lot of games these days are cross platform and PC playerbase is not the majority consumer, so for most developers there's no incentive on manipulating reviews on pirating sites when sales are mostly coming from consoles. And even for PC exclusive games, I'd imagine people pirating is the minority.Oh, pirate reviews definitely have a major impact. There was a game (Titan Quest?) that included DRM that would intentionally break the game in weird ways when a pirated version was detected. These issues didn't occur in a purchased copy, but the game got slammed with reviews for being horribly buggy mess and this reputation stuck with it because of this. The developers even admitted to this mistake. Considering that piracy rates can be as high as 90%, pirates are likely going to be the majority of reviews found in the wild and can, and have, affected sales.
Because they can't. Unlike official platforms, they can't control what is being said here because they don't control the platform. There is no way for them to remove negative comments on a platform they have no control over.
I used Fallen Doll as an example because despite so much negative commentary that game has gotten recently over on its F95 page, they're still racking in patreon supporters. The point I'm getting at is that most people interested in a game look at legitimate/official platforms for reviews, not pirating platforms. I could see piracy and reviews from users on pirated copies having a heavier impact on smaller indie developers, but I don't think that applies to Wild Life at this point.