Why Bethesda Responding to Starfield's Steam Reviews Is Part of a Rising Games Industry Trend

The game sucks, and they can't fix it by just replying bad reviews... what a joke... they need to add vehicles, less loading screens and better role-play immersion, with interactions that make sense. Now it's too late to "fix it" after charging 70 euros for standard edition and calling it "next gen game".

Sounds like in Bethesda's case it's a vain corporate attempt to manage the games reputation. Having a mixed rating definitely hurts their sales; it gives you pause before deciding to spend $90 on a game. You'd hope that the next step for them would be to retrospect on why people are finding the game meh, but that rarely seems to happen.

"Am I out of touch? No, it's the players who should enjoy landing on an empty planet."

If steam were owned by anyone other than Valve (not to say they're perfect), I'd be expecting reviews to soon go the same way that dislikes did on YouTube for similar nonsensical reasons.

This absolutely cannot backfire.

I understand the point this article is making but I still think there's a world of difference between the developers of small games like Gloomwood, Backpack Hero and Hydroneer replying to a negative review to explain they're working to fix the issues the player faced to fucking Bethesda replying to say "ackshually our constant loading screens are justified because our world is just too big 🤓☝️" and I say this as someone who likes Starfield

Just comparing the look and feel of Cyberpunk now to this game is wild. I can't understand how one of the biggest game studios churns out something like this.

It's an interesting article and worth a read. I feel like a majority of it was about how different publishers view and handle responding to reviews rather than about Bethesda and Starfield