Last month, Slay the Spire 2’s controversial first beta balance patch inspired a massive backlash from its Steam reviewers, drawing over 9,000 negative reviews in the following 24 hours. In an interview with PC Gamer, Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano said the intensity of the feedback rattled some of the studio’s newer developers—but he wasn’t shaken by it.
Instead, Yano said he understands the motivating impulse behind the flood of harsh Steam reviews, even if it was “unfortunate” that the tone of the feedback suffered from regional restrictions on online activity—and the nature of Steam reviews themselves.
“It’s difficult for players to feel like they’re heard by developers, so I understand why they choose to use Steam and do something that would impact visibility in the store to try to portray their feedback,” Yano said. “I don’t really get mad at players for doing bandwagoning stuff.”
As the review bombardment intensified, reactions online were quick to judge its negative reviewers—the majority of which were writing their reviews in Simplified Chinese—for failing to use the Steam discussion forums or the feedback channel in Mega Crit’s official Discord. In China, however, those alternate venues for offering feedback are hampered by restrictions on internet activity.
Despite the general assumption that users in China are forced to use the stripped-down Steam China platform unless they use a VPN, reports from players in China indicate that the global version of Steam is usable within the country—for some, at least. Its community features, however, are not. As a result, Steam reviews are the only direct method users in China have to offer their feedback without circumventing platform restrictions.
“I think it’s really easy, if you’re a player in America, to be like, ‘Why don’t they just use these systems?'” Yano said. “I don’t really feel that way. It’s unfortunate that they feel the only way to be heard is through Steam reviews.”
Rather than trying to respond to the tone and intensity of the beta patch’s feedback, Yano said Mega Crit is more interested in improving lines of communication with Slay the Spire 2 players in China.
“We’re all just people, and we all have different restrictions. I don’t like to say things like ‘Chinese players.’ In my mind, I think ‘players in China,’ because they’re just in a different place,” Yano said. “They’re all just humans. They’re all trying to interact with the game and be heard. Being heard is so important, and we want to improve that.”
Yano said Slay the Spire 2’s Chinese audience was, fundamentally, sharing the same feedback as its English-speaking players—they were just using a different mechanism, voluntarily or not, for communicating it. Ideally, he hopes Mega Crit can find a way to make those mechanisms more productive for all its players.
“Hopefully we can both react to the things that people like and make sure they’re happy with the chances, and also try to improve the way we walk to each other,” Yano said. “That’s how I feel about it.”
Ultimately, Yano said Steam reviews—and the culture around reviews more broadly—is an imperfect medium that encourages us to oversimplify how we feel about the games we’re playing.
“It’s just one blanket. It’s one-to-five stars, or you like it or don’t like it,” he said. “There’s many things you like and don’t like about everything. And I think that nuance is extremely important.”
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