Starsand Island, a cozy farming sim from developer and publisher Seed Sparkle Lab, released in Early Access on February 11 and things are already off to a rough start. Kickstarter backers have reported not receiving their release codes, the Xbox Series version is reportedly a mess, its $20 cosmetic DLC ticked off its crowdfunding backers, and the “virtual goods” clause in its EULA has raised some eyebrows.
Those issues were quickly overshadowed by a wave of seemingly suspicious Steam reviews posted for Starsand Island at launch, many of which were reportedly from users with less than an hour of total playtime and zero other reviews listed on their profiles. I say “reportedly,” because while several threads on Reddit and the Steam discussion board have discussed said reviews, dozens of these suspicious reviews have since disappeared from Starsand Island’s Steam page.
Unfortunately for the devs, the Starsand Island Steam review rapture ended up bringing even more attention to the game’s strange launch. Yesterday, Seed Spark Lab released a community update post on the life sim RPG’s Steam page and its official Discord titled “Announcement Regarding Artificial Comments.” It takes aim at the “large number of overly positive ‘praise’ comments about Starsand Island appearing across various social platforms.”
“Is this some kind of overpraise as an attack? We have no concrete evidence, but it does feel as though someone may be doing this intentionally,” posits Seed Spark Lab. “What makes it even more puzzling is that this approach is not cheap, since leaving a review requires purchasing the game. (We later discovered that some of these accounts refunded the game after posting their reviews.)”
They also noted that they believe the majority of these overly positive reviews “appeared to be AI-generated,” and “kindly” requested that whoever is behind the reviews “to stop.” Naturally, regardless of whether Seed Spark Lab’s plea was made in earnest or not, the community post has drawn even more negative attention to Starsand Island. There really is no way to prove who is behind the reviews, so there’s little point in pointing fingers, but I have to wonder how anyone would benefit from damaging Starsand Island’s reputation by trying to inflate its rating on Steam. Reverse review-bombing with AI bots? What will PC gamers think of next?