I can has steam street cred.

Tigris, no offense but your posting is kind of chaotic. It's not personal but it's personal. You're proud of being an asshole but you are sorry for being an asshole. You won't stop "telling the truth" but if anyone is offended you will "drop it". I'm not sure your approach is very effective for making a solid case for what you're trying to argue...

Okay, that was funny!

That's exactly the sort of thing that will keep people from bothering to migrate to the official Godus forums if they're opened to the public.  Going somewhere even more controlled by 22Cans just doesn't appeal.  I have enough trouble motivating myself to respond to things on Steam as it is...

Although Muir was somewhat justified in instructing Gandalf to "Tell us why you think Godus is the worst game you've ever seen, why you believe it's boring, and what the devs can do to fix it.", because it is more clearly helpful to do so, it was a bit premature and came off as almost goading Gandalf (or any of the "negative" users) into flaming even more... not that I feel that was his reason, but it just wasn't necessary yet. Gandalf's post was borderline if anything, but certainly didn't come off as trolling as far as I could tell. Preemptively warning people in-case they potentially consider violating the rules is kind of 'Minority Report'-ish, don't you think?

And another thing; Do you (the CM's) really, really feel it's prudent or constructive for users to write up a complete outlined diatribe or memorandum of our opinions with facts and other such ridiculousness EACH and EVERY time we respond to a post? Seems a bit unnecessary given the scores of topics over multiple pages filled with the same repetitive statements (and that's just on the Steam community forum). That's why my answers to these questions - when I feel inclined to participate in the Forums game - is usually, "Go do some research by actually reading stuff" - which I feel is a fairly constructive suggestion (tho abrupt and to the point) and not troll bating or flaming and any way in the least, and yet might be considered as such when measured against the "Post something Constructive" standards. Yet another reason so many shy away from the Steam forums now (and lovingly migrated to here). Because of this, I don't expect many of them will populate the new Godus forums any time soon.

Honestly, I think maybe deciding if it goes against the Steam rules perhaps is best left to Steam's Mods; send them a notice addressing the post and individual, and let them handle it. And what ever happened to using the PM feature to warn users instead of publicly shaming them? It almost seems like it's being used as some sort of whipping post tactic. Almost. Of course all that's just my opinion, obviously.


As always, just keeping you CMs honest and on your best behavior!
See you after the weekend, mates.

I find this worse:

steamcommunity.com/app/232810/discussions/0/46476145476576811/#c46476145594059211

What is the sense of a discussion board if people aren't allowed to post a contrary opinion?

Worse, earl just provided facts (stating that this wasn't the first time peter cried in front of a interview), nothing trollish and no hate, just pointing out a fact. And Muir accused him of being off-topic...

So according to muir its not even ok to provide facts that are actually highly related to the topic (because that's off-topic...).

He also exhorted to respect the OP, I don't think that providing facts or disagreeing is a form of disrespect...

Thats what the store page is made for. Also it would be much easier for them to simply create a blog and disable comments if they want to freely advertise their product.

Also the main board is called "General Discussion & Feedback"...



There are the steam rules and its not against the rules to point out facts or disagree with the OP. Though Muir likes to interpret them the way he pleases.



Glance at other boards of big and serious gaming companies. Blizzard doesn't give a damn about negative critic on their boards including harsh critic. Eventually they will actually listen to that feedback (for example they removed the real money auctionhouse).

Other devs on Steam are also way more casual with their moderation.

Though they have no reason to care, they still have plenty of fans and gamers and their games are well received.



I don't think having a negative and positive board were the negative one has hundreds of threads and posts while the positive one doesn't even reach the second page is desirable.

If they would restrict people to post about either on or the other they would prevent any actual discussion happening.

Also, Streisand-effect.

I know, I didn't wanted to make it sound otherwise.



Have they ever said that they allow non-constructive? They do allow negative critique as long as its constructive. (there is still plenty of negative reviews and posts that haven't been warned or deleted on the steam board... Just look at my post history over there :P).

What is constructive though is arguable, godus is also kind of a border-case since at its current state its just a exceptionally terrible game with slow development and many lies and open promises that on top of that has a F2P port and plays and feels like a F2P game.




I don't think that it would hurt Steam if people write negative reviews or comments for one product. I mean rating a product with 1 star and writing something mean on amazon won't hurt their sales (amazon) either.

After all Steam offers internal reviews and shows them sorted by user-rating of that individual user review.

store.steampowered.com/app/232810/

If you scroll down you see that almost all user-reviews that show up on that page give a thumbs down and are an echo of the boards.

For steam it shouldn't really matter if they sale a good or bad game for 20$. Though its possibly even beneficial for Steam if they give users the possibility to prevent mispurchases and become disappointed. They surely want happy customers.

I also don't think that Muirs interpretation of the steam rules is always the way steam intended them, not even in a vague way. For example Denny Crane definitely breached some of them without a doubt and earlparvisjam pointing out facts was surely nothing against any rule of steam.

I don't think this is a 22cans problem, it is a Muir problem. There's a pattern. Every weekend George goes home and takes a couple of well deserved days off and Muir is in charge. Muir then starts policing the rules he's made up in his head. Things like not posting views that counter the OP, not posting overly negative posts. I get there are rules set by steam but none of this has anything to do with those rules. Yes steam is not neutral like this forum but it belongs to valve not Muir or 22cans. There are steam forum rules and not Muir rules. It's time the mods started focusing their moderation on the rules intended purpose - making it a safe place for people to be and keeping spammers and real trolls under control. Real trolls post comments to inflame the discussion, nobody objects to the comments being made except Muir. He just wants to be involved and the centre of attention.

As mentioned a few times, always feel free to reach out to us personally about such things. To date, I've not received any messages, emails, Steam chats, or otherwise about any of our moderators but that's typically the best way to get our attention on that kind of stuff so that we can start a dialogue and decide how to proceed. 



So glad you mentioned this! I admit, this has weighed on me a bit as of late. There's a bit of a catch 22 (hur hur) in that we're always genuinely interested in getting a specific player's opinions and elaborations (player to developer interaction can sometimes be much more insightful than a summarized report of the ubiquitous 'masses'). However, at the same time, I hate that it sometimes comes off as an implication that we're trying to challenge the player's criticisms by requesting elaboration. A bit of a "elaborate in great detail or gtfo" kind of silliness which, obviously, isn't at all the kind of vibe we're trying to give. Something for me to ponder on then. Anywho, good feedback General. Appreciate the candidness.



To speak more broadly about the last page and a half of this thread:
I'll talk with the rest of team and see if we can revise the way that the rules are enforced and, perhaps, the rules themselves. I know that there's a tendency for rules to be extremely detailed and wide in breadth just so that all bases are covered, something that can be important on the wild west forums of Steam. At the same time, I've always felt that the only rule any community really needs is "Don't be a dick.", otherwise known as Wheaton's Law by many here on the interwebs. That's the kind of community I want us to be (the collective community, that is; not speaking about any one forum). Believe me, I think about these things often. In fact, here's a pretty decent read that echos many of my own sentiments, give or take. There's also a pretty good interview with Dan Amrich, a fellow community manager, where he talks a bit about this. Here's an applicable quote selection from that interview:


Naturally, there are many of you who are extremely constructive, candid, honest, and generally awesome individuals that I'd love to have a pint with sometime. I'm just offering up some perspective on where my headspace sometimes is in a broad, if not somewhat aimless, sort of post. So I'll chat with the rest of the community team to see if we can't get a bit of clarity and consistency in regards to the rules. In the meantime, Wheaton's Law is still the best rule to default to.