When looking at the current sale I was taking a peek at Stronghold Crusader 2 and its 1/2 star ratings. While these are relatable and I think should be expressed I do not think the game itself is the right place. Sometimes publishers/devs you strongly agree with economically release games which are good or at least innocent of the bashing its overlords asking for. Also it does not help your fellow games whom might genuinely interested in what ppl have to say about the game itself.

This is where a new rating/review would be extremely helpful for all involved.

- The ones having some constructive(*) criticism about the company can express it without their input being eventually removed. (*avoiding animal names and strong language might help even if its hard to avoid in some cases).

- The companies who are not too proud to read up on said criticism.

- The games devs who see their game sold/reviewed on its own merits rather than the political decisions of their overlords.

- GoG whom might sell a few more units if the right criticism ends up at the right place.

- The devs from GoGs team responsible for programming stuff around the shop because they have new stuff to do which secures their job (okok, by now I'm grasping for straws ;) ).

Thanks for reading this far and have a great weekend. :)

This in addition to the verified purchase wish would be useful features.

Yep, already voted for that one. :)

I'd be up for rating companies' business practices separate from the art of their games.

In practice however, the system could and would be abused beyond belief, and this forum in particular has delivered ample precedent.

The truth is that there were (and still are) concerted efforts by a brigade of entitled gamers, particularly four years ago, to smear a whole bunch of game developers at all costs, especially at the cost of honesty and decency. The conspiracy theories made up about Double Fine alone could fill pages, and if such a "judge company" rating would be introduced, they would again.

The truth is that gamers rate companies by their game output first and foremost. That in itself wouldn't be a problem (though of course it would make company and game ratings very similar), but at the time, time-honored storytelling principles that draw on basic human empathy and/or analogy to the real world are under attack by a vocal bunch of extremely stupid gamers who seem to believe they've bought the entire industry with their pocket money.

The truth is that companies that seize on certain popular genres (like the "walking simulator" or the visual novel) are heavily ostracised, belitteled, insulted by a gross number of gamers with the demise of those companies as their obvious primary goal. A company rating system would reflect that as well. Look at the present game reviews that just politely say "this game is not for everyone, one star" and try to find those types of review in an FPS or RTS game, genres which aren't for everyone just as well. The bias is extremely strong here, and a company rating system would make it even worse.

The truth is that companies are hardly ever 'rated' by entitled gamers without devolving into extreme personal insults (and a quick search on this forum, say, with the search term "Pitchford", will give you more examples than you can shake a stick at). The truth is that individual employees are singled out, regardless of their position or influence, to act as a scapegoat for a game that entitled gamers feel to be bad.

The truth is that companies that made one mistake that got bad press would be ostracised forever by a review system that's flooded with the reviews of butthurt gamers at one point. And it doesn't even have to be a mistake. Telling a casually racist asshole streamer off, one tweet, one amply justified copyright strike, can spell a PR disaster for a company these days.

The truth is that companies that treat their employees badly, companies that rely on perpetual crunch time as a pillar of their success, companies in the US that hire and fire for single budgets, companies that fire employees according to mob pressure, companies that benefit from clear cut gambling schemes, are already getting attacked by the press. A negative "company rating" on GOG would be a worthwhile indicator for them how far they can go in being shitty without losing customers (or how shitty they have to be to actually gain customers).

And we all know how that turns out, don't we?

The AAA companies with abysmal company rating wouldn't sell one game less, but would stop putting their games on GOG because their entire company is associated with a "bad rating" there.

The indies under attack from concerted efforts to fuck with them would be broken to little pieces by such a rating, their heads would be paraded around at the tops of sticks and the cries of victory would embolden the already raging mob.

Should also filter out gifts and such.

GOG should just delete such worthless reviews, and those people, if they have to, can make a forum thread about how much they hate a company.

I can't see this ending well, it'd mostly consist of people giving 1* ratings to companies they don't like.

I agree to you guys; these are not the type of review that should be with the games and also are the types of reviews which could (and have been) abused. But here is where that idea kicks in: It does regardless and already is abused.

Some people are simply frustrated about some companies and their decisions and the only outlet they feel is proper enough to do something for the lack of an alternative is the game review.

So the gog admins can broom behind them cleaning stuff up if enough report it and we can scold them to use proper channels and what not: But that is already the situation we are in.

Hence the proposal of the company review rating.

Someone is emotional involved (which might not mean pissed; could be overjoyed as well) and clicks the review button; pop-up comes asking to review the gameplay experience or customer experience. One rates the game and the other one the publisher (whom now also have 1-5 stars under their name).

Some ppl would probably still just fire away and try to harm an innocent game for its creators masters douchey behavior; but I'm sure a lot of ppl would just be happy to contribute to the right channel. Also gog moderators wont have less 2nd thoughts; in a lot of cases the rating intend is clear if meant for the game or the company and would just move it to the proper section instead of either do nothing or agitating the situation by deleting it.

Its less about adding a platform for something new to do but rather a proper channel for something ppl do anyway right now for the lack of proper alternatives. Not only that, with such a channel they also have a means to contribute something. People not interested in it can just ignore it and will not be/be less annoyed anymore like they are now when reading game reviews and people interested in supporting the good guys can be quicker to filter out low rated publishers.

I could easily imagine some people now giving only a negative rating to a game because of a company would with both options available add the company review and might then after that add a more fairly higher rated game review to the game section (or vice versa in cases in which ppl love everything a certain company/devhouse does & how they behave, but just cannot bring them self to like their games).