Like Many Others I have Lost All trust In MSM game journalists, I pretty much consider there Opinions Worthless when I want to checkout if a game is actually worth my time and money.
If I want a real genuine or Unbiased Opinion I will turn to youtube or Read actual reviews from gamers themselves as I find them much More Valuable.
This is why the Epic Store needs user reviews section Just like steam Has.
I know I am not alone in this because I have seen many others criticize this Point about the Epic store, in the game related places I frequent.
I know its early days But I think it would go along way to make it clear that the store is going to adopt this very popular section also.
The review section of Steam is kinda ****. Lots of joke reviews, barraging, 0/10 reviews for things not directly relating to the game, poor reviews that are irrelevant after the latest patches.
^ this.
Unless the system is moderated and/or has some kind of vetting system in place, no.
Nonetheless, it’s still better than no reviews at all.
The Epic store Is being slaughtered On Line and On youtube Over this feature and the way the Metro Game has been handled.
Its all good and well having such an amazing environment for us DEVS and much better Profit margins , But that’s no good if Consumers will flat out boycott the store
because of the way this is being handled.
Something really needs to be done because Epic is burning through all the good will gamers had when they announced big competition for steam.
And as both a dev and a gamer I can totally see why they are not happy. Please EPIC do not make this Mistake, change course before its too late.https://youtube.com/watch?v=yCbLTtizaBshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xl2hPQX7ls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnhKhc03YUk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Ogwf9FzVA
I too think this situation has been handled rather poorly… and the landscape looks dangerous for people wanting to develop for epic’s plattform…
The only thing they can do (besides avoiding more bad PR), is to improve the store and be as “pro customer” as possible, that is: “reviews, game page, in game overlay + achievements, etc”.
Epic is trying to be steam’s direct competition, so it should amp up resources there.
I’m trying to stay away from talking too much about all this, given that i think i wouldn’t exactly be an impartial party, but it is worrysome how people compare epic to being a totalitariam and evil company (especially by how tencent own big part of them, which seems to be a fairly common point when bashing them)
Some really dumb moves by Epic/Deep Silver, which is really sad since competition to Steam is a godsend for gamers and the pricing by Epic is extremely helpful and fair to devs. On paper this is great for everyone, but the execution is smearing ■■■■ allover the place. Can’t we have one month in this industry without some collection of knobs self-immolating and taking down yet another release?
Yes, customer feedback is joke reviews, great job…“Not directly relating”, mate, they are the customer, they paid you money in exchange for a product, they get to review it, how is this such a hard concept?. Also don’t release half-arsed crap that is broken and needs to be patched every 3 days. Seemed to work really well in the 90s, before any of this patch crap. When you went and bought the game on disc on a system that had no ability to patch, and it actually worked, remember that?
Not what they said.
“Lots of joke reviews”, as in leaving irrelevant reviews for the lulz.
No matter how you feel about patches - which, agreed, I remember those days too - the Steam review system is still broken.
It has long been a dumping ground for bug reports and a tool ripe for abuse.
And more often then not, the people leaving the negative reviews are not a paying customers.
For the most part, they come from people that buy the game, review it negatively and refund it 
Yeah, it was great fun as a young teenager hunting around on poorly designed websites and having your siblings download trojans for official game patches. Patches which later couldn’t be found anywhere when the studio went bust and couldn’t host them anymore. Yes some do abuse the available system to their advantage these days, but that’s hardly what this thread is about - and I’d strongly argue that the convenience of being able to fix genuine mistakes quickly and give your game a better chance at surival vastly outweights the occasional developer which abuses it.
And sure, you paid for a product - but Argos don’t have to print your review of one of their products in their catalogue do they? Having a storefront host your “review” is a privilege, not a right.
All of this being said - I agree that user reviews should come to the Epic launcher, but until the launcher as a whole is more widely accepted by the gaming community it’s not going to happen, because the community will abuse it and it will be utterly self-defeating and pointless. Metro games are already being review-bombed on Steam ('cause that’ll achieve a lot) - can you even imagine the absolute state of the reviews if the Epic launcher had them right now?
Reviews should be in reference to the product you bought - but we don’t live in a perfect world and instead they are too often abused as a platform for the stupid to voice their unfounded opinions on the industry as a whole.
Around 2015 I’ve already noticed the Launcher was slowly designed to accommodate a future game store, but I wasn’t expecting Epic would open it up to indies, I thought they’d put together a dedicated store for custom engine licensees only…
I also didn’t expect them to handle things the way they’re doing right now. If they want to be hated as much as EA then this is the way to go.
So your answer to that is “no reviews”?
I get it that as an Epic moderator you can’t talk good about the competition, but this is ridiculous, and for most parts baseless slander. The Steam reviews are okay, they reflect the player base of a game. If you feel reviews are bad, then that is because of the mentality of the games playerbase.
Or do you also complain about that Subnautica has an Overwhelmingly Positive review score (which by the way helped a lot in making a huge amount of money for Epic), with most of them being idiot one line reviews?
Hiding reviews just because you are afraid of negative ones is not the way to go, just create a better rating system.
Yes because people have no other way of making their frustration heard about Deep Silver promising Steam keys when preordered, and then suddenly before release making it an Epic exclusive.
This review bombing didn’t just fall from the sky (pun pun), it happened because Deep Silver went over the wishes of their customers and treated them like idiots. If they had handled the situation better then there wouldn’t be no review bombing.
Not sure the best solution.
A Steam Curators type system. Requires a lot more work from Epic’s end, but I love the idea of following “your” favorite reviewer curators.
A free for all user review system. This exists on Steam, Amazon, Metacritic, Reddit, etc. Not sure why Epic Store needs one when there’s reviews like this all over the internet.
Some sort of review site partnership. Could pull the review scores off Metacritic, or some review aggregate site, or off particular gaming review sites. Possibly the easiest, very little curation needed. But there’s a vocal group of gamers that hate larger review sites. Still probably better than nothing.
Refer previous:
If Epic creates a user review system like the Steam user review system, it would be better not to have it.
If Epic creates a user review system that is moderated and/or has some kind of vetting system in place, I would completely behind it.
In relation to being an Epic moderator, that has no bearing on how I talk about Steam or other companies.
Epic moderators are volunteers - not employees.
Got a cool t-shirt though 
Also, I bag out UE4 plenty whenever it frustrates me
But anyway… what I say about the Steam review system is based on my own personal experience with it as both a user and, more recently, as a developer.
If you feel I am being unreasonable harsh, I invite you check out our title on Steam and read the negative reviews.
A good number of them actually go into some detail, which I’m all for.
That gives users something to go by and helps us as developers to know what to improve.
Others… ugh.
I mean I get it, I personally think Steam is an awful platform and most reviews are ridiculous, into both extremes (either unreasonably negative or unresonably positive).
However, that’s because most people who buy games on steam are underage kids with let’s say questionable parental education. But that’s not the fault of the review system, it’s everywhere like that, people just don’t make thoughtful responses.
The Steam review system has A LOT of room for improvement… But at least it allows me, as a customer, to get an idea about how the game is generally perceived, and I can find out in the “most helpful” comments whats great or whats wrong with a game.
Considering that there is, e.g. in the case of Subnautica, very little articles or Youtubers who aren’t doing copy-paste praise of the game, it would be really hard for me to find out that playing Subnautica in VR sucks.
Sure as a Gamedev studio it sucks when your game gets dragged down by unresonable reviews, but in my opinion these things just don’t happen for no reason; You will always get a bunch of unresonable negative reviews, but you should always be able to balance that out with a great game and great community support (even just responding to peoples comments in the discussion forums will usually turn around a negative review, because the people feel you care about them).
And honestly, in Steam people are way too forgiving about Games these days, but that is just my personal opinion. 
PS: The idea about Epic creating a review system that is moderated is nice, although it would concern me that Epic might be biased then about titles they produce or have exclusive deals about.
PPS: If Ground Branch is your game, then you have an average “Very Positive” and a most recent “Mostly Positive” review score, I don’t see what the problem is? That is quite good already, as most people never read the reviews. And most of the negative comments I see seem resonable enough to me.
I agree that reviews are essential for assessing whether you should make a purchase or not - but If Epic adds reviews right now, it would be bombarded with garbage because of the various controversies surrounding the launcher atm.
The launcher won’t suffer because of that, but the games will. The direction the launcher takes from this point on will very much be influenced by how it’s received by the “gaming community” at large, and so far it’s not exactly being welcomed with open arms.
Curated reviews are also needed - but can you imagine the uproar and conspiracies that would be met with? Steam needs a competitor and IMO Epic are the first company that have a real chance at being that competition - I’d rather they didn’t risk that success on the whims of the general public.
This backwards thinking.
With no user reviews the launcher will NEVER become widely accepted by the gaming community, It just WONT happen!, and its already an issue this early.
Also the thinking of not having any reviews because there might be some trolls posting random nonsense is dumb , and along the lines of saying we should ban all cars because there might be some accidents.
will there be stupid reviews ? sure ! but that’s what moderation is for and also any thinking person knows what there are and just moves on to the next and judge the reviews as a whole.
Stop trying to create a safe-space for us devs where user criticism willl not be tolerated, Its what Helps
Before you get mad I should clarify that this is purely speculation - I don’t know what Epic are doing about it.
I also don’t neccesarily agree with it, but I still think it’s likely that this hasn’t been implemented yet because Epic don’t want the reputation of their new store being tarnished by angry sh*tposters - which in some ways is fair enough.
I’m not talking about creating a “safe space” - I’m all for critisicm. But IMO, reviews need to be implemented in a way which keeps them relevant to the product at hand, and not to enable the ramblings of someone who’s upset that, for example, a game switched to another platform last minute. The latter is not a review. For me as a buyer, I want to know if a game works and if it’s any good. I don’t give a monkeys about an individuals personal plight with the developers, or whether the game switched platform last minute, if I cared about that I’d visit a forum or watch a YouTube channel that specializes in ranting.
Have a little faith. It makes no sense to think that reviews won’t come to the launcher eventually (even if Epic state they have [well founded IMO] concerns about it right now). They’re an essential part of any online storefront - but personally I’d rather they waited until they can ensure that they will be used constructively. Just saying “well you could moderate reviews” isn’t something you can implement overnight.
The point is that Epic already jumped the shark… so they better go full throttle now… reviews are something they should be tackling soon, and they WILL get a whiplash because most of the damage is already done, specially in regards with how the situation was handled.
Now… IMO they need to look as customer friendly as possible, because most of the hate, comes from “but epic’s store doesn’t have this…”.
Let’s see what happens from now on.