User reviews on Steam are causing a stir. Valve is now backtracking and accommodating the developers.
Just a few days ago, Valve, the operators of the gaming platform Steam, decided to no longer consider certain user reviews in the “score” of a game.
Equal Display of Ratings
Anyone who received a game key directly from the developer could no longer influence the actual rating of the game. With this, Valve aimed to prevent developers from “pushing” their own games by simply distributing free keys or even using them themselves to present their game in a better light.
But that was not the only change: those who unlocked the game via a key and wrote a review had their reviews treated as secondary. They were displayed much later, so potential customers who only took a quick look at the game (and the reviews) never got to see them.
This regulation hit games hard, especially those that started through crowdfunding or an “Early Access” campaign. Because the most loyal fans, who had been there since the beginning and could best describe the development of the game, were presented much less prominently and appeared very late in the rating list. Users could manually change this, but who actually does that?
To address the developers’ complaints, Steam has now changed the user default settings so that all reviews are displayed equally – regardless of whether the game was purchased on Steam or a key was activated. If enough users mark a review as “Helpful”, it will appear higher up – regardless of the purchase method of the game.
However, these reviews still do not influence the actual “Steam score”.
