I know there might be game critics who get the game ahead of release time for reviews and that would affect that small amount of people but it’s upsetting to see haters give games low ratings before the game has even come out just out of spite.
This was the case with Call of Duty Modern Warfare II and now I’m seeing it with the upcoming Dragon Quest III HD remake:
Maybe certain users who are game critics/reviewers could apply for special permissions to rate and review games ahead of release date?
Or maybe allow ratings for everyone before release date but users also have to write a review instead of just anonymously giving a star rating without an actual review of why they gave that score.
This is on my list to do. It doesn’t normally end up mattering since it’s typically done on high profile games that are going to get a lot of reviews anyway, but it’s still annoying.
The only real issue I’d be worried about is the correctness of release dates. It doesn’t matter all that much on big games because those get taken care of pretty well, but it would be a bummer if some small indie game just doesn’t get the date updated correctly, and then it sits in some kind of weird limbo where someone can’t give it a rating and just doesn’t say anything.
I see, maybe another solution could be to hide ratings to the public before release date but still allow users to give a personal rating?
So, publicly, the game will look like it has zero ratings/reviews but users can still rate it and see their personal rating for personal use. Then on release date all these ratings become public.
I think this would also discourage users from giving false/hater ratings since they would not be to damage the game’s reputation with their single pre-release vote.
Maybe, or it could also be that all ratings are hidden for a week after release except the ones that have a text body with an actual review. I do think it’s helpful to check reviews from people who play the game from day 1 and give a review of their first couple hours of gameplay.
I think that would discourage haters/trolls because they would have to actually write a review and when it gets posted their rating wouldn’t be anonymous anymore. Even if they just spam random hater text and not an actual review, there’s at least a post with their username on it and they can be banned.
This has never really struck me as a big problem, exactly for the reason @peter cites above. Usually it’s only a handful of people rating a small number of games before launch and it never constitutes what I’d call a review bombing. And in the long run these reviews don’t have much of an impact once actual reviews trickle in. Ultimately, I don’t think that any of the reviews or rating posted are going to ruin a game’s reputation.