Why Bethesda Responding to Starfield's Steam Reviews Is Part of a Rising Games Industry Trend
Bethesda Softworks stunned Steam users earlier this week when players discovered that Starfield developers were actively replying to negative reviews on Valve’s PC platform.
It was unusual to see such a major company diving deep into reviews, but what was even stranger was the replies themselves. Some eye-grabbing quotes saw Bethesda arguing that Starfield is, in fact, not boring, comparing its sci-fi video game to the level of excitement Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin might have felt when they landed on the moon.
These comments quickly made their way to social media, and when they did, many were stunned to see one of the biggest companies in the industry replying to crowds of displeased players. Some developers were quick to clarify, though, that developer replies aren't new for everyone.
“Yep, we've been doing this for a few years now,” Gloomwood and Dusk developer Dillon Rogers said in a post. “A lot of people will flip their review if you reach out and let them know you're working on the issue or helping them resolve a bug. It makes a big difference when it comes to the algorithm, actually.”
While the Fallout studio is somewhat of an outlier when it comes to replying to reviews in the AAA space, it’s far from the only developer to participate in this level of community engagement. It’s so popular that it takes only a few clicks to find studios of all sizes replying to negative and positive reviews of their own. Each does it for their own reasons, and none of them would craft the same response for any one review.
“Our team will respond to reviews. We also have had the publisher respond to a few reviews,” Jasper Cole, lead developer on Backpack Hero tells us. “I do believe that most review responses are directly from me.”
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