Epic Games has added a long-awaited feature to its store: user ratings. The company says only those who have played a game for at least two hours can rate it on a five-star scale. Also, not everyone will be able to rate a game. Epic randomly offers players the chance to score a game after finishing a playing session. The company believes this approach will prevent review bombing and ensure that reviews come from people who actually play the games.
An overall rating is calculated based on player scores and is displayed on a title’s Epic Games Store page. The goal, of course, is to help users figure out if a game is worth playing. Store pages already featured critics’ reviews to help people make decisions about buying or downloading something.
Epic says it probably won’t ask for ratings for every game or app, and its randomization approach will help prevent spamming of players. That sounds like a good call to me. For example, it’s a little annoying that Microsoft asks for feedback after every Xbox Cloud Gaming session.
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In addition, Epic may ask you to answer a poll after a gaming session. There is a wide range of questions, such as whether a game is better to play with a team or how challenging the battles are.
Epic uses data from polls to create tags for store pages. Eventually, tags will be used on category pages and to create tag-based categories for the homepage. The idea is to improve discoverability and help people better understand what to expect from a game.
Separately, Epic is releasing a set of cross-play tools for developers. Epic Online Services now offers an overlay that can merge Steam and Epic Games friend lists and help players find their buds, send friend requests and play multiplayer sessions with cross-platform in-game invites.
Epic has broader cross-play support ambitions than Steam. It works to support other PC startup programs as well as macOS and Linux. It will later add cross-play tools for consoles and mobile to the SDK. Several of Epic’s own games – including Fortnite, Rocket League, and Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout – have full cross-play support.
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