writing a negative review about how the community or game is dead, while counterproductive to the playercount of the game is valid critism. people are risking 10 dollars on a game and if they want a game with an active and large playerbase, which blockland does not have, its absolutely fair to point out that the game has a low playerbase.
There's nothing inherently wrong with pointing out that a game has a low playercount. My point is the melodramatics of "Blockland is DEAD/DYING, THE DEVELOPER ABANDONED US" is handicapped and drives people away. I'm not suggesting that you lie and say the playerbase is thriving, but you don't have to make it seem like nobody plays the game.
also, people are not obligated to buy or to not buy a game based on its steam review scores.
???
I never said this. I said that negative reviews lower the review score, which might make players not want to buy the game, because it has a low score. I didn't say anything about obligation; I think you need to read the OP again.
blockland could have a mostly negative or mostly positive on steam and the people who like blockland enough to buy will still enjoy it.
Do you honestly think that people would willingly buy a game that's been flooded with bad reviews telling people not to buy it?
"the people who like blockland enough to buy will still enjoy it."
How would they know whether or not they like it? Maybe I'm blind, but I don't see any mention of the demo on the Steam store page, so there's no way of telling whether the game's good or not other than reviews.
you also point out that most of the negative reviews are from people with large amounts of playtime invested into it. consider two things
1. people wrote this review early into their playtime when they didnt enjoy and theyve come to enjoy it now
This is a fair point. Maybe they should make a new review then.
2. the more likely option; most people liked blockland at one point but have lost interest in the game, either because theyve outgrown it or because they think the game is dead.
If they've outgrown it, then that's fine, but it's absurd for them to say they didn't get anything out of it, or that other people won't either. They can't recommend it because they've personally "outgrown it", despite the fact that they've sunk hundreds or thousands of hours into it? Bullstuff.
If they think the game is dead, they're just being melodramatic. Again, the whole "BLOCKLAND IS DYING GUYS!!!" does nobody any favors. If they want to point out the declining playerbase, that's fine, but they shouldn't pretend that the game has no value. If you can't recommend the game because the average playercount isn't 200+ anymore, that's pretty lame.
