The Epic Games Store has launched its own version of user reviews and tags, via randomised game ratings and polls it hopes will avoid the kinds of review bombing seen frequently on Steam.
The ability to rate a game on a five-star scale will be randomly offered to owners of that title who have played it for more than two hours.
“Because these requests are randomised, we won’t spam our players, and we probably won’t ask about every game or app used,” Epic Games’ Craig Pearson explained. “This approach protects games from review bombing and ensures people assigning scores are actual players of the games.”
Instead of a rating, players may alternatively be selected to answer a quick question on the game, with the answer used to over time build up a set of game tags.
Examples given include quick questions on whether a game is better played with teammates, or whether combat in a particular game was challenging.
“After enough players have responded to the polls, their answers will help generate tags for the respective product pages. These tags can be used to filter games and apps within the Epic Games Store.”
Such questions shouldn’t take up more than a few seconds of users’ time and will only appear sporadically. Epic Games’ own Fortnite occasionally polls users in a similar fashion after a match has finished, and asks for a quick rating on particular items, modes or weapons.
