One of the new features that has been missing from the Epic Games Store since the beginning (that has been requested by a lot of the store’s users) are product reviews, which have now been added but in a very unruly and bizarre form.

According to PC Gamer, the Epic Games Store utilizes OpenCritic reviews, albeit with its own special algorithm mixed in to oust unsavory pieces laden with emotion crushing mean words:

    OpenCritic has clarified how the reviews displayed on the Epic Games Store are selected. It’s done through Epic’s algorithm, which determines what to display based on “publication notoriety,” the disparity between the outlet’s score and the average, as well as a few other factors like swearing (they’re “generally tossed out”) and if the review mentions non-PC platforms.

Of course, despite this clarification, new questions arise as to how much users will need to deepthroat Epic Games in order to achieve this “publication notoriety” as well as other factors the algorithm uses when selecting the right reviews to display.

Additionally, the Epic Games Store does not display aggregated scores from all the featured reviews but instead opts for using a number calculated from the number of reviews that recommend the game:

    One thing that tripped me up is that Epic doesn’t actually display the aggregated score—the number is just based on how many outlets ‘recommend’ the game. In the case of Darksiders 3, for instance, only 36 percent of reviewers recommend it, but the top critic average is actually 69.

The nebulous nature of the system could be open to a lot of company-side manipulation that would serve to mislead their customers.