madgreatgrandpa

@(Unverified)

As mentioned in the post, it's only temporary until they've got the underlying issues worked out. ;)

@DVMGames Richard

"but *not* destroy it", rather.

@26b7cd8c

It wasn't the Operative who shot the mine in the video - it was someone else (look at the class icon). The reason an Operative would spot the mine but destroy it is because they'd lose their disguise if they shot it. ;)

@zoron007

Because of this - http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/04/13/graphic-design-firm-contracts-script-for-5000-xbox-live-silver-accounts/

I do welcome Microsoft taking action to prevent further abuse in the future, but I find it disappointing that they won't be attempting to remove the abusive votes. The most recent suspicion of the source of the abuse is that there were automated bot attacks on the ratings via Xbox.com.

I'm not familiar with the inner workings of the ratings system, but I'd have thought that searching for ratings made by Silver accounts created and submitted on Xbox.com with 0 GamerScore and created from March 1-Now would yield few false positives.

The thing is, these ratings will likely never recover on their own - many games hold their Top Rated position for a matter of several months or years, but the shift in rankings for some highly-rated games has been unprecedented recently. For example, one game had consistently held a Top 30 position since before the start of the year. In the last month it's dropped outside the Top 150. And it's by no means an isolated case.

These games are already showing reduced visibility and earnings, so unless Microsoft reassesses the feasability of removing the ratings, the affected developers will continue to lose sales (which very few can afford to have happen) through no fault of their own.

@Revengez

An interesting thing about a potential scenario where ratings are only restricted to people who've purchased the game - it'd make it *even easier* to abuse the ratings system than it already is, given the way ratings work.

Imagine that I've got a really terrible game - an absolutely rubbish one. And the trial's so bad that no-one buys it, so no-one can rate it. Because of this, it has 0 ratings.

It takes just 10 ratings on a game for it to be ranked on the Top Rated list, which appears to be based on the mean rating of each game and nothing else - so a game with a mean rating of 4.5 will rank above a game with a mean rating of 4.3 regardless of how many votes each game has.

So with as little as 800 Microsoft Points, I could purchase my game 10 times, rate it 5 stars 10 times and now my terrible game is the #1 best rated of all time! And here's the best bit, to rate my game down, other people have to buy it meaning more money for me!

This is easily repeated for any game and pretty quickly, the whole ratings system becomes worthless.

To avoid this scenario, there'd have to be a pretty big overhaul of the way ratings are calculated across the system. This is one of the reasons why I'm opposed to restricting ratings to purchasers only - I'd much rather have it be restricted to people who've at least played the trial. But the current fix should be sufficient to prevent the suspected automated bot abuse via Xbox.com.

@supersonic124

The evidence would definitely imply there's been some manipulation (though not necessarily related to Lacrosse) - CStW has consistently held the #4 US Top Rated place since its release late last year, until about two weeks ago when the game started to plummet, reaching the #20 position yesterday.

It's statistically really unlikely that this would happen and I believe some developers have done the math and reckon that it'd only be possible if the game had received hundreds of one-star ratings in the past few days. It's also worth noting that this hasn't affected ratings in other countries where CStW still maintains its high position (i.e. if there is manipulation, it's being done with the US ratings only).

@theangryheretic

It's a nice idea, but people would be unlikely to buy games they didn't like, so if it was restricted to purchasers only then it's probable that all the ratings would be positive.

As has been said by others, it's in all likelihood because of German law. XNA games are submitted on the basis of a 'one world policy', meaning that when games are reviewed, it's made sure that they're suitable for the strictest country in which XBLIG are available.

So to allow games with Nazis, you'd have to withdraw XBLIG from the whole of Germany in order to change a rule that affects a *very* small number of games.

Potentially, some sort of system could be set-up whereby there could be different versions of the game released to different countries, but this would negate a lot of the work that's gone into making releasing games quite simple for indie devs compared to how complex it can be for big publishers.

I'm not aware of any rule strictly prohibiting the killing of humans in games - there's a rule against 'Distasteful Violence' but I've never seen that as directly meaning no killing humans whatsoever - more of a restriction on the 'strength' of the content. I mean, I might be wrong on that count, but I've been around XNA for a few years now and it's nothing I've ever heard of, personally.

Anyone who'd like to see exactly what content's strictly prohibited on XBLIG may do so at the link below. There are a few more things that aren't allowed based on context, but that's Microsoft's insta-fail list, if you like.

http://create.msdn.com/en-US/resources/help/peer_review_prohibited_content

@XperimntNterror From this post on their blog, it'd seem like they're defintely going for a release before the end of the month, hopefully sooner rather than later. :)

http://zeboyd.com/2010/12/06/cthulhu-saves-the-world-progress-report-indie-games-winter-uprising-extension/