It really sounds like you’ve misunderstood what this change is actually doing. This isn’t steam forcing you to use a particular language, those settings aren’t going anywhere. It’s also not going to force you to see reviews in the game’s native language either, so your worry about “french reviews of French games made in france” is just… wrong. What it’s doing is sorting reviews by language, under the idea that reviews written in the language you use are probably more relevant to you. And if even that is unacceptable, you can disable the whole system to keep it just the way it is.
This actually means you’re MORE likely to get reviews that are more accurate. First, because it limits the impact of regional review bombing. Now if a game upsets one particular population, their review bombing doesn’t render the whole score meaningless. It’s worth pointing out, games have been heavily review bombed for the sin of competing with, or beating, other regionally popular games for awards. It also means that if the content of a game hits better, or worse, for a demographic based on language, that will be reflected here. If the game is getting rave reviews where it was made, but the translations and voice work for YOUR localization are terrible, you will see reviews that reflect that. You probably don’t care how great the voice acting was in the native Chinese version if you only speak English, and what may seem culturally brilliant to a Japanese audience may lose a lot of the impact for you.
I just want to use my currency and being able to just speak English.
That doesn’t really read to me like a good sign. If Krafton is willing to do what they did to Subnautica’s team, then basically no contract they sign is worth the paper it’s written on. Seeing them effectively murder their own project and dismantle a proven successful developer like this doesn’t inspire confidence that they’ll be more graceful in handling others.
I think suspicious is the wrong word. Suspicious seems to suggest doubt or a lack of certainty, but the criticism is pretty predictable. Industry forces could afford to ignore it when it looked impossible to get the signatures, but now that the signatures are in the bag they’re having to take a different tactic.
SOME of the criticism is certainly genuine and exactly what it appears to be at face value, but it was inevitable that those doubts would be artificially boosted now.
Is it SELLING for that price? Or is it LISTED for that price? I could put my beat up left shoe up for sale for $10,000 if I wanted to, but until someone actually buys it at that price, which nobody will, it’s meaningless.
Maybe see what player counts look like in a few months before making great and grand plans? People want a fresh take on The Sims, but maybe without the backlog of a hundred DLCs and other EA shittery. But, inZOI may not be it. Apart from the pervasive and distasteful use of generative AI, it may just not have that special something.
So give it a while, lads. Maybe it really will be a hit, but sales in the first week mostly just say that people wanted a fresh swing at The Sims, not that they really want what inZOI is.
With any luck they’ll single handedly keep “AAAA” from catching on, because nobody with a shred of pride would want their multi-million dollar project connected to anything that was said to be AAAA.