Concerning recent Steam forum changes...

Yes.

For the moment, we decided to change the forum permissions so that only game owners can post and here's the important bit - For those that own the game there is zero change. 

The reason being we were all getting a little tired of filtering through posts to get to actually require our attention. Some forums are viewable and the Off Topic one is currently available to all. (We'll probably change the name reflect that its open to all.) After everything that's happened this week here, we don't want either forum to become a "He said this here, she said this here" place.

As Simon said in a recent interview. "Phillips says for every thousand people posting something on the official forum, 99 per cent is along the lines of ‘Godus is shit, you’re shit, Molyneux’s a dick’." (Might not be entirely accurate, but you get the picture.)

PS We should have said we were doing it! 

I agree with 2. I can see limiting posting to cut down on trolling from people who do not own the game. But you should not hide the forums just because you are scared of what people will see there.

It won't affect that. People can still see the Steam Announcements, Facebook, Twitter, Steam Reviews etc.

I didn't ignore point 3. "The reason being we were all getting a little tired of filtering through posts to get to actually require our attention." Having this in place will allow us to see what people are actually saying easier. It's about filtering out the trolls who just want to continue hating on something. 

We know that all negative feedback on steam forums i being moved or deleted regardless on being on or off topic.

Does that mean that you equate any negative feedback to trolling?

I'm not sure if this question can be regarded as rhetoric as you already gave us most of the answer. So, well, now you all have it, guys.

This doesn't really address the everything part. It won't affect your ability, sure, but to go with this format again, it affects ours. Since much of our criticism has been moved to the subforums that non-owners can't see, they're only getting what you want them to see. Many of the articles and interviews being discussed in those subforums are highly pertinent to potential buyers' research of the game, suggesting that you would prefer your buyers be uninformed instead, which is an extremely shady practice.

This is especially given that, for many users, they go specifically to the Steam forums to do their research, which admittedly isn't always the wisest, but they do serve as an okay supplement to other sources especially when those other sources fail to address specific concerns.

Basically, I think we can see where you're coming from with regards to limiting posting privileges to owners, but what we can't see is what the reasoning is for outright concealing a bunch of subforums. Last I checked, you can limit posting privileges without hiding subforums, something aptly demonstrated by your own settings on the Steam forums.

This change is smelly. Has this change reduced the amount of information non-owners can view on the forums? Have they lost the ability to read posts they could read last week? Because if they have then you have done something very wrong.

It's implicit in the action of concealing discussion of said interviews/articles in the location where buyers are more likely to look for information, which are the Steam forums themselves due to their ease of access from the store page. It's basically built into the design, you're more likely to go from searching Godus, looking at the store page, going to the community hub, then going to discussions and checking there than you are to go a few tabs over to news unless you're specifically interested in checking that.

This means that you'll peruse the forums and either get enough from the various not-so-positive threads to warn you away, or you'll want to look more into it...Which means either checking the articles about the game or simply asking upfront, but seeing that they can't post they'll either walk away there or maybe go and check where they can ask. However, with activity low as it is, they may not see any response which means they'll either leave at that point and not bother with it, do some research and not bother, or they'll make an uninformed purchase due in part, yes, to their laziness, but also because they couldn't even see where other discussions were taking place to check them.

See where I'm going here? It may not have been your intent, and you may not be saying it outright (I mean, again, why would you if it's not what you mean to do?), but it's easily implicit in what you've set up.

The average user, unfortunately, is not going to go scouring the web to figure out the ins and outs before they make a purchase. They're going to try to go to the ground level source (i.e. community forums/reviews) to get the lowdown on the game's situation. By concealing any part of that, you're inadvertently aiding their lazy ignorance and essentially suggesting you'd rather they act on that than that they act on bare minimum lazy knowledge. Actions speak louder than words, which is part of why 22cans is where it's at in terms of its reputation. We've been reading your actions more than what you say, largely because they hardly ever align with anything resembling consistent intentions since we'll hear a desire to improve the game and the situation, with no followup commitment on that.

"We limited posting privileges to reduce trolls," okay. How does limiting subforum visibility factor into those changes? Fact of the matter, as I see it, is that it doesn't. If you can offer up some coherent explanation as how they in any way do, that isn't simply, "it changes nothing for owners," I'd love to read it.

TL;DR:
-It's not an explicit statement on 22cans part that they would prefer users to buy the game uninformed, it's implicit in its forum handling.
-This is because, despite the accessibility of information elsewhere, often users will resort to user reviews/community discussion to discern the current state of a game.
-Any reduction in the accessibility of this more immediate source of information amounts to an either explicit, or implicit, desire to reduce users' ability to discern the current state of a game.
-As such any seemingly unnecessary tampering (i.e. anything not involving banning spammers/harassers/etc.) with this immediate source will appear an attempt to distort the image of the game's status, typically towards a more favorable view, should it be successful/effective whether this is intended or not.

Hope that's clear. This response may not seem terribly sensible or rational, especially when you know your intentions, but that's not unusual when you slip up and only half-explain your intents, especially when associated with an organization with a track record of mistakes.

P.S. Sorry for the longwinded post, feel free to skip straight to the still sorta long TL;DR, as I believe I sum up my points pretty well there with less fluff. I tend to keep fluff for the express purpose that it may help better frame the points and lead to understanding. *shrug*
Yes, check my thread here to see a rundown of what's changed. Alternatively, you can just check the forums without being signed in via your browser here and see the changes yourself.

Did you even need to say that? trying to make it look like your refuting my points, with a single sentence reply, when in fact your adding zero to the conversation.

And your statement is also technically incorrect, I do own godus on the mobile (cost of ownership is free) so I am a game owner, yet I'm limited to which forums I can see & post into, you may want to consider phrasing your sentences correctly in the future to avoid causing unnecessary confusion when making public statements (especially when considering that for some of the community, English is not their natural language).




You stand by your statement? really? dragonstryk72 Reports moving & merging of posts very recently.

You actually now have a wonderful new stealthy way of deleting posts without needing to delete them, just move them into one of the sub forums that only PC game owners can access, and you remove it from view (effectively deleting it, without actually needing to delete it) for a majority of your forum members that can't see those forums.

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Edit: Just noticed this post by Gmr Leon over in the How not to PR thread, confirming exactly what I've just said.