The only snag with this is that those of us who choose to use a different profile for posting to the one we use to buy our games on, will never be able to post reviews then. That said, I've only ever posted one official review and am probably unlikely to post more.

I'm exclusively a single-player though, so I have no need to make my real profile public. And if I did play multi-player games, I'd probably resort to having to create seperate profiles for each one.

As for the need to have a seperate profile for posting? In my case, off the top: privacy, freedom of speech and no preconceptions of bias. In other words, I am what I post.

Of course, most of these reasons can be attacked. Starting with "privacy", this is probably an illusion on my part. Data miners most likely already have my real profile downloaded when GOG switched profiles to public by default. And like others, I only became aware of this a couple of days after it had happened.

"Freedom of speech": this is probably the more important one. I'm free to say whatever I want on an "anonymous" profile. If it was my real profile, I'd have to censor everything I say in case it could be used against me... and since everything seems to stay on the web forever, that means you could be presented in 10 years time with something you said when you were in e.g. a bad mood at the time.

"No preconceptions of bias": people would definitely judge me by the types of games I'd bought, which means if I predominently bought shooters, I'd be seen as shallow, or if I'd predominently bought... whoops, now I'm doing it ;)

Honestly i don't get it. Your public profile is what matters to the community. What you post. I don't see how having your games on a different profile would protect you.

This.

I find the argument that a review doesn't touch on the game at all to be on the border of removing a review but to, imo, arbitrarily remove reviews because they don't 'own' the game? Either limit reviews to owners of the game or leave the reviews then.

In this particular case, the game is politically loaded, that's the whole point of the game, politics was going to be mentioned.

@Linko90 I guess it doesn't help that initially in your overview you made a distinction between reviews that were exclusively contained political views and fake reviews (1) and 2)) and are now saying 2) are such (fake) because of 1)

Real profile = real identity.

Posting profile = anonymous. If GOG were ever hacked for example, I wouldn't be impacted significantly. Also, I can use less secure computers to post.

Linko made it very clear what the line is: Reviews have to be about the game. "Reviews" that only serve to spread the authors political views are worthless spam. That's like giving Zool 1 or 5 stars depending if you love or hate Chupa Chups.

Which is why you own 50 of them. :P

So if I post a review of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and say this game sucks, it's just perpetuating the princess rescuing trope and is blatantly sexist, you would consider that a valid and useful review?
Yes, the game is set in an alternative future as seen by those with a particular political leaning, but that doesn't mean that disagreeing with those political leanings is a reason to hate or poorly review the game.
If you have bought the game and played it and can say that the gameplay is rubbish and it's just a poorly concealed way to spread a political message, go ahead.
But if your just assuming that is all there is to the game without even giving it a try then go find a game that panders to your political views and play that instead.

You don't see people arguing that we shouldn't release cyberpunk games here because they portray an anti-capitalist political agenda, so really what's the difference with this setting compared to any other dystopian future used as a setting for games?

Observe how flat that number will remain and despair. I've got ~800 on steam after all.

Sure, something tells me such a critique will increase a games sales though ;)

If you want to keep looking like bumbling clowns you can keep repeating your word salad overton window.

Are you going to keep shopping on Steam? :P

https://store.steampowered.com/app/733790/Not_Tonight/

They require purchase and time played before posting a review. As of my posting this there were 89 reviews; I counted three bad ones, two of which hated the game not because of subject matter but rather slow and repetitive game play.

They seem doing the exact same thing you are condemning GOG for or they are doing the same thing that GOG is ACTUALLY doing: keeping the reviews limited to the game itself and not political rants.

In the case of an overtly political game with a particular bias, it's possible to review the game and in the course of that point out the games politics. According to the mod the reviews removed had no value with regard to reviewing the game and were just political rants. If you reviewed a restaurant management sim by taling about recipes without discussing the game that would be a reason to get removed.

The best possible solution, as I suggested a page or two back on this thread, is buyer verification with the abiltiy to sort reviews by this criterion. That way anyone can still review a game but you can know who has bought it on Gog. Also a minimum character restriction would help keep reviews a bit more credible.

Out of curiosity... if I posted a review of Myst III ~ Exile which I own on CDs but not on GOG (no need to since the discs work perfectly fine, I made backup ages ago and the game runs well in ResidualVM) in which I praised it only for being fun and something I sincerely recommend, would that fall under your definition of a false review and be deleted? Such a review would be pretty shallow and not really reflect what the game is after all...

EDIT: And just for fun, I did it ;)

Pretty sure saying the game is fun would count as "a mention of the game"

If that's the case then saying the game is lame (or better shit) would count as "a mention of the game" as well or wouldn't it?