A detailed analysis of Steam Reviews for the last 10 days.

[(XBOX)SweatyPick3L]

A detailed analysis of steam reviews for the past 10 days

**Statement**: I heard people review bombed warframe. Everyone's blaming Chinese afk farmers, wukong nerfs, and AOE nerfs. I went through a number of reviews and I found them to be not so monolithic. So being a good data scientist, I went in to take a deeper look.

**Objective:** Who's really doing the review bombing? Is it the Chinese? What are the reviews talking about? Are people really pissed about the nerfs?

**Methodology**: Using Steam's API, I pulled all reviews for warframe for the past 10 days, and dumped them into a document formatted with each review being a json line.

Then, I did a number of statistical analysis on them using a combination of python, regex, and clever use of notepad++.

For parsing, I used both English words and their Chinese equivalent. (sChinese only, I am not familiar with tChinese).

The json data makes use of unicode. For example, when searching for "wukong", "悟" is unicode 609F. So I would parse for both wukong and /u609F.

**Data**:

A total of 12629 reviews were pulled and parsed.

Of these, 10414 were from China, though not all contained Chinese characters.

10749 of these were negative.

1880 of these were positive.

\----------------------------------------------

Of these, 239 mentioned "AOE"

143 mentioned "Wukong"

1454 mentioned "Ammo"

280 mentioned "Nerf"

Average length of reviews is 800 characters. <--- this is hugely inaccurate (and inflated) because the dataset has mixed languages. I'm counting up the unicode, punctuation, whitespace, and all sorts of garbage here. I'll probably figure out a better way to count this later.

**Conclusion**:

Yeah, it's mostly the Chinese, or at least people using Chinese versions of steam.

**Artifacts and Evidence:**

[**https://anonymfile.com/nerB/review-230410.json**](https://anonymfile.com/nerB/review-230410.json)

Raw data here. Credit to “u/mithie007” 

[Voltage]

I read that Reddit post earlier today, and while it's an interesting data set, I feel like it really opens the can of worms of the different cultures behind a grind-based game. It's crazy how many years I've been playing myself and been a part of many meta AoE nerfs, and this one really isn't that bad or dramatic. I will say the landscape of the playerbase is vastly different though, so I can understand why the players nurtured by the long-lasting nature of Specter-based "gameplay" (or lack thereof lol) wouldn't be happy.

I also gathered that based on Steamcharts for the last month, all these negative reviews made no real difference in active players, meaning the Steam review bomb is either from players who are not actively playing, or the update replaced that demographic with fresh/returning players.

In the end though, this will probably go the same way as the time the game was review bombed following the termination of a volunteer translator for violating NDA; it will pass and nobody really cares afterwards.

[cute_moth.npc]

Legit, negative reception is perfectly fine to me. My own review on Warframe on Steam was negative from 2019 until literally last week (I actually stated in the review that my feelings were "neutral" but Steam does not support a neutral option), during the process of this review bomb though a lot of people seemingly left some very empty, angry reviews with no real feedback.

Valve responds to review bombings by combing them manually (they did 40 reviews in 2020) but it seems tricky if they need to then comb reviews in a different language? I hope that any legit criticism stays, which I think it generally has during their last reviews, but the "F U D E", etc. Ones are definitely going in the garbage sometime soon (and from what I saw, a lot of it basically came down to that)

That's science stuff on this though, thanks for sharing some background on it!

[(XBOX)Eye0fTyphoon]

cleaning possible before crossplay?

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

While some of the comments mentioned ammo, I honestly think it's more because DE "nerfed" a frame from their culture that just happened to be considered the #1 frame. I can understand the pride in that but I also understand the difficulty in being truthful about it in a review bomb because the community knew Wukong was too safe and simple. Age may be another factor and I would love to see the average age of the commenters.

[Leqesai]

What this kind of thing boils down to is people (largely adults) who never grew up enough to learn to accept the imperfections of associating oneself with the work of someone else. 

These are the same people who complain about their job day in and day out. The same people who want the world handed to them and don't want to work for it. The know-it-all know-nothings who justify their voiceless existence by shouting into an empty room, hoping that they're heard by someone who will acknowledge and validate their inadequacies. A really sad sort of person. 

To these people I say, put your big boy/girl/X pants on and act respectfully. Unless you're like 10 years old and haven't been taught how to treat others with respect you should know better than to act in such a nasty way. Be better. 

And at the end of the day, if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all.

[RichardKam]

1小时前 , (PSN)GEN-Son_17 说:

While some of the comments mentioned ammo, I honestly think it's more because DE "nerfed" a frame from their culture that just happened to be considered the #1 frame. I can understand the pride in that but I also understand the difficulty in being truthful about it in a review bomb because the community knew Wukong was too safe and simple. Age may be another factor and I would love to see the average age of the commenters.

Sorry to tell you, Chinese don't give a damn about Wukong. Thor and Odin are part of nordic culture but if you make jokes about them, you won't get review bombed. Wukong is the only Chinese deity you can safely portray in entertainment due to censorship but that's another issue for another discussion.

Let me give you some perspective. I am just stating the gaming environment in China and I am not being racist. There are lots of Chinese copy-and-paste manufactured, pay-to-win cash grab, 1 year life span online games, either on mobile or browser, none of them you have ever heard of outside of China. They can be automated. How far does that go? You have your main character on a 3D map. You want to complete a quest. You click on the objective once, and your character will automatically walk there and kill monsters along the way and getting loots and finishing the quest for you. Hands free. Total walk away operation. Surely not everyone enjoy such "game", let's say some of them do, because why not? You just click once or twice a day and your character become more and more powerful without spending any effort (except money for cosmetic). Free lunch is so enticing. 

But of course to become really powerful, you need to spend money. Some people spend big money on that kind of games. We are talking about 10-20k RMB (1.2 to 2.4k USD) per month here, just for cosmetic, or for some RNG on top of RNG on another layout of RNG just to get more shiny and powerful. Some people are the ultimate casual. They want stuff in a game but do not want to spend any effort playing it. If it can be automated, go automation. They solve the remaining problem with money.

People in China hate it. Such games are destroying the game industry in China. But what can you do? Companies love these kind of games because the market is big enough to be self-sustaining, and it is easy money. 

Now we go back to Warframe. The review bomb summarized by Reddit. I can read simplified Chinese. It is obvious some of the comments are written by those people enjoying automation. Some people do love automation and they are used to it. For those people, anything that cannot be automated is not a good game and is stupid and is a waste of time.

I say again, not *everyone* is like that, only *some of them*, how many of them is beyond me, I cannot comb through 10k review. From the reddit summary, I think the term "a substantial amount" is fair, I guess?

[Raarsi]

1 hour ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

While some of the comments mentioned ammo, I honestly think it's more because DE "nerfed" a frame from their culture that just happened to be considered the #1 frame. I can understand the pride in that but I also understand the difficulty in being truthful about it in a review bomb because the community knew Wukong was too safe and simple. Age may be another factor and I would love to see the average age of the commenters.

The data shows around ten times as many mentions about ammo as there are for Wukong, and you think the frame is the reason for the negative reviews?  Seems odd, especially since Wukong's not the only Chinese-inspired frame (and Nezha's still an incredibly solid frame to work with as well).

I'm wondering if all the complaints are because Steam review pages are more accessible than any Warframe forums provided specifically by DE--not to say they couldn't, but I'm guessing Steam forums are more accommodating for non-English languages.

[Leqesai]

2 minutes ago, RichardKam said:

Thor and Odin are part of nordic culture but if you make jokes about them, you won't get review bombed.

Oh you gonna get it. How dare you.

[RichardKam]

2分钟前 , Leqesai 说:

Oh you gonna get it. How dare you.

Last time I checked Thor Love and Thunder movie reviews are gre......never mind I should stop here. 

[Leqesai]

3 minutes ago, RichardKam said:

Last time I checked Thor Love and Thunder movie reviews are gre......never mind I should stop here. 

Oh you're talking about comic book characters...

I thought you were saying the bad things about our sacred heathen gods. Good thing you weren't otherwise

[AzureScion]

Its as it Wukong is the only frame we have that is based off of a Chinese deity. 

Naah, even if we had a frame based off of Hongkong or Taiwan with a kit that allows automated gameplay likr Wukong they still would flock to it.

If anything, they should be offended Wukong was turned into a passive AFK playstyle instead of the cunning, active, and agile the monkey king is.

Besides dont they have their own client server? Maybe they can revert his nerf there instead and leave us be?

[Marvelous_A]

50 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

Its as it Wukong is the only frame we have that is based off of a Chinese deity. 

Naah, even if we had a frame based off of Hongkong or Taiwan with a kit that allows automated gameplay likr Wukong they still would flock to it.

If anything, they should be offended Wukong was turned into a passive AFK playstyle instead of the cunning, active, and agile the monkey king is.

Besides dont they have their own client server? Maybe they can revert his nerf there instead and leave us be?

Warframe China is like the Korean MMO version of Warframe, which means it leans heavily to paid players and charge you on pretty much everything (including changing colors on a warframe, IIRC). Like how you'd imagine Warframe if it is actually ran by Tecent. So a lot of Chinese Warframe players stay in the global version.

[Tuskilion]

8小时前 , (PSN)GEN-Son_17 说:

While some of the comments mentioned ammo, I honestly think it's more because DE "nerfed" a frame from their culture that just happened to be considered the #1 frame. I can understand the pride in that but I also understand the difficulty in being truthful about it in a review bomb because the community knew Wukong was too safe and simple. Age may be another factor and I would love to see the average age of the commenters.

Im a Chinese myself and a veteran since 2014. I barely use Wukong and most of my friends dont give 2 damn about the nerf on this frame.

What we got mad was because most of us are part of the min-max community. We enjoy endgame content. The ammo capacity and mutation nerf rendered a lot of the weapon fully unusable. Since we are in hybrid melee era, most guns are used as stats proc'ing tool.  Now the nerf just nailed another one on the coffin. 

We dont give a sht about culture frame and you are being prejudices.

[George_PPS]

6 minutes ago, Tuskilion said:

What we got mad was because most of us are part of the min-max community. We enjoy endgame content. The ammo capacity and mutation nerf rendered a lot of the weapon fully unusable. Since we are in hybrid melee era, most guns are used as stats proc'ing tool.  Now the nerf just nailed another one on the coffin. 

This is why so many negative reviews. I'd also suggest everyone to compare the up and downs of playerbase between Destiny 2 and Warframe. D2 has always been growing. Warframe? What's purging playerbase regularly since 2017? Nerfs? Annihilation of player's favorite builds, warframes, and weapons? What could it be? 

[Marvelous_A]

26 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

This is why so many negative reviews. I'd also suggest everyone to compare the up and downs of playerbase between Destiny 2 and Warframe. D2 has always been growing. Warframe? What's purging playerbase regularly since 2017? Nerfs? Annihilation of player's favorite builds, warframes, and weapons? What could it be? 

I suggest those players to go D2 instead. Warframe is no fun and full of nerfs.

[(XBOX)K1jker]

vor 10 Stunden schrieb Voltage:

.. it will pass and nobody really cares afterwards.

Pretty much sums all the Warframe drama up pretty well. 

On that note, I still do enjoy the tears very much, so cheers! 🥂

[AkHannar]

15 hours ago, Voltage said:

I also gathered that based on Steamcharts for the last month, all these negative reviews made no real difference in active players, meaning the Steam review bomb is either from players who are not actively playing, or the update replaced that demographic with fresh/returning players.

Or they are *@##&#036;ing but still playing. Personally I believe that this is most likely the case.

The only thing that gets me is that some people discover games through Steam and the review bombing can potentially scare away some people who would actually really enjoy Warframe.

[SneakyErvin]

13 hours ago, RichardKam said:

Last time I checked Thor Love and Thunder movie reviews are gre......never mind I should stop here. 

That is less due to us that love our gods and more due to those "me allergic to strang wamanz!" that see woke, feminism or some other agenda in everything. At this point I'm not sure who is worse, the woke crowd or the other side. Lump em all up on a ship and sink them in the middle of the atlantic is my solution, though that may lead to environmental pollution and stupidity infecting the ocean life.

Personally I've loved all the Thor movies, even though they have very little to do with the actual culture I was raised on.

[Vit0Corleone]

16 hours ago, (XBOX)YoungGunn82 said:

Yeah, it's mostly the Chinese, or at least people using Chinese versions of steam.

Have you tried to correlate this to how many Chinese players there are?

That would be kind of important to figure out if this is really a "chinese" thing, or just a reflection of Warframe having a ton of Chinese players.

What would be the positive/negative break down for a different country, like say France?

[Circle_of_Psi]

1 hour ago, SneakyErvin said:

feminism

This alone is a issue

[SneakyErvin]

5 minutes ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

This alone is a issue

Depends if it is feminism or "feminism". One of which is a superiority complex with hate ideology logic, the other is simply about pure simple equality. I'm a very manly man that likes me wiminz in all kinda ways, but I'm also a feminist since I dont see a reason why there should be a differentiation between someone with a dinglydong or a hoo-hao when it comes to pay for the same job/duty and so on if both can perform it to equal standards. At the same time I dont think someone performing the job worse should get the same pay either, no matter if they have a dinglydong or a hoo-haa.

I also have no problem telling a "feminist" to go F themselves if they wear a man hating shirt or speak in a man hating way, or express that a man should sit with crossed legs just like a woman. Becuase they can really go F themselves if they have those idiotic ideas.

[peq42]

Or maybe just, no one liked the current nerfs, time gated "content" and lack of DE ever listening to the community

[kamisama85]

How many of those reviews have zero hours of play in the last two weeks because there are many reviewers who haven't played since patch or at all. Many alt accounts just posting for the sake of inflating numbers too.

[Galuf]

Ofc nobody is satisfied by the recent patch, in WF golden ages there was massive blogs on content each major patches, it's not at all like that anymore and since so many years now. The last big surprise content patch we had was Deimos and there won't be anything more. Content for now will be like that, yes new stuff but MVP stage material, slightly overly grindy used to justify a frame release and keeping metrics to get more prime access money later, it's well oiled and it's even pretty decent for an average GaS.

As 6% of players are from China and the cognitive inability of most player to just read(not write) long pieces of text, something is fishy there. Keep in mind that it is possible to generate constructed text and kind of automate the process of reviewing on Steam. There ar lots of fake stuffs online, gladly we are not at the point where there are bots making fake human videos but we are very close to that, like advertising you need to be mindfull of those kind of things on internet. It very well may be a campain agaisnt Tencent share value that went wrong. Sharks against sharks ^^. Just go against Riot games who publish constistently debilitating crap since 20 years; DE are not exempt of reproaches but they do have their spark or creativity and are decent writters when they put their minds and energy to it. I'm actually positive about their next licence, and my wallet will definitely be there day 1, DE provided me some very good moment over the years, I'm pretty sur the game will be tilting in lots of ways but there will at least be 1 or 2 interesting bits in there.

Keep your hopes up for the next game, DE really nailed WF core concepts(never transcended it due to architectural issues mainly) and they may very well overdo themselves with their next title. Reality hurts a bit when you're commited to a game, I hoped more for WF but it's what we have and it's not that bad. Now, if they reiterate the host based system as is and force themselves into the same exacts caveats I'm gonna loose it, it would be self sabotage at this point.