Borderlands 2 has been undergoing a digital onslaught as of late, courtesy of Gearbox announcing that Borderlands 3 will launch as a six-month Epic Games Store exclusive. Since people can’t get in touch with the publisher through any other way, they decided to review-bomb previous Borderlands titles on Steam.
Valve fixed review bombing, however, as their new filtering system does wonders to prevent such community-based outbursts and quickly repairs the score, depending on the given context. Details on how it all works are down below.
Valve's new anti-review bombing system works in such a way that it first automatically detects anomalous reviewing trends, as was the case with Borderlands 2 (drastic shift from overwhelmingly positive to negative), and then forwards said information to Valve employees, who then move in to check out what's actually going on.
Valve employees have to confirm whether negative reviews are off-topic or not, and if they are, they set a time period for the duration of which no reviews will be factored into the game's total review score. These reviews are still readily accessible for reading, keep in mind, so nothing's being censored in any way, shape, or form.
Furthermore, Valve also mentioned that they'll make a distinction between valid complaints such as ones which might be left after a bad update or botched content release, as this decision will never be made by an automated system, but rather an official Valve employee.
In the case of Borderlands 2, the system works phenomenally well, so Valve's definitely off to a good start.
