(Important) We really need your help
What's up, guys!
This is the kind of post we don't like to make, but we really need your help right now.
We're facing a problem right now: we're getting bad reviews bombing on Steam.
Let us explain the situation better: We have no problem with a player buying the game, playing it and for some reason not liking it, or thinking that we need to improve in some aspects, this is perfectly normal.
The problem is that some users are buying the game solely to give it a bad review.
Some users have played 0.1 hours of gameplay at the time of the review, others have less than 1h, something like 0.6h at the time of the review, and this makes it clear to us that these users have not even played the game, so we believe it's some kind of fraud to try to harm the game's performance on Steam.
Another indicator that proves that our thesis is correct is that, when we analyze the review history of these users that we mentioned above, they have very suspicious attitudes, such as distributing bad reviews to a bunch of indie developers with very low game hours registered, as we mentioned above. So we're not the only ones receiving these types of attacks, but it seems like this is a bigger issue in the Steam environment as a whole.
Why is it important?
We know that, at first, this may seem like something unimportant and that it doesn't seem to make a difference, but malicious reviews really prejudice us.
As you know, we're a small indie studio, seeking to fulfill our dream of completing this game through willpower and determination. Furthermore, the help of you, our fans, is all we have in our favor. We don't have a superstructure, like the big companies in the industry.
The Steam algorithm takes these reviews into account to decide whether to promote the game more or not, and that's where malicious reviews get in the way, as they reduce the game's promotion, causing fewer people to know about it.
What can you do to help us?
We know that a portion of players make up what we call a "silent audience", which are fans who like and follow our work, but prefer not to interact directly or publish reviews, they just want to have their moment of fun, and that's okay.
But we kindly ask at this time that, if you are a fan of our work, bought the game on Steam, but just played it and didn't comment anything, publish your review on Steam showing your support for our work.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2348820/Living_in_a_Brothel
We ask for this because we know that only with the help of our fans will we be able to continue moving forward, and we're very grateful for everything we have managed to build so far.
If you can help us this time, we can quickly reverse the damage caused by malicious users and continue moving forward on Steam.
Thanks in advance to everyone who can help us with this!
Best regards.
Comments (6)
In our country i cant buy the game in steam ☹️ but i want. I played it already to 0.3 amd i like it very much
Are you from Germany? If so, Steam won't let you view the game's page because it says it violates local government rules. Despite this, we have already seen some Germans managing to buy it, although we don't know exactly how they did it. What I can recommend is that you pledge at least $10 in our Patreon and a Download Key will be generated for you, then just claim it directly in the Steam client. By doing this, the game will appear in your Steam library, regardless of the limitation mentioned above. We are happy that you enjoyed our work, thank you for playing and for your support! ;)
In the first poster you need to right click to promote the story. This is kind of untypical and unintuitive for Visual novels. A felt click or space would be the normal case. I could imagine this to be the source of your problem. Also I played the tutorial. Well goes very into deep and I really like, that you make the game playable with a controller. But in my feeling is a bit too much. Leave some unimportant things out...
I understand your point. But, as said in the post, there are some users who bought the game just to give a negative review, they didn't even play it (they have something like 0.1h of game time). It's different from someone who bought the game and didn't like it.
I have done my part. 😊 I hope that you'll have the success you derserve.
Thank you so much! This is really important to us. :)