Looks like Valve is introducing a new review system to filter out "unhelpful" reviews
Looks like Valve is introducing a new review system to filter out "unhelpful" reviews
Good. I'm sick of seeing the "pet this cat" reviews at the top of the list. Hopefully this changes some of that stuff.
5,000 Steam awards on the "review" too.
To be fair, what else are those points for other than blowing on awards to dump on reviews and guides?
I hope this is partly to deal with review bombing, but I also hope it doesn’t completely hide review bombing.
It can be really helpful to know that there is a social media shitstorm around a game.
But sometimes the shitstorm is a bunch of basement dwellers getting mad over nothing, and it makes it hard to see actual opinions about the game.
they already have a system for review bombing. i hope this is for stupid "joke" reviews that say nothing about the game but regurgitate the same fake review for the 1400th time.
I don't have a direct quote, but I remember reading a few years ago that valve was debating how to handle bombing. They said something along the lines of not wanting to silence the bombers, but to highlight it so it was clear it was a review bomb. I got the impression they were considering things like showing the unusual spike of reviews in a different color. This sounds like it might be the results of that.
If I'm grokking the feature correctly, people will have to review bomb the review bombers with "unhelpful" flags.
I've never discovered review bombing over steam. Either my peers mention it to me or I see it on social media.
Though to be fair, almost all of my decisions about buying games are made from watching videos of said game, rather than reading reviews. Steam reviews, for me, are either for very cheap games I'm buying impulsively or games where I have some insight but am still on the fence.
I used to read Rock Paper Shotgun as part of the decision making process, but I've found their input less useful the last few years.
If a game isn't overwhelmingly positive, I almost never buy it. I also find review bombs completely valid in almost every case and I'm not interested in funding games that have managed to outrage their player base. In every case I would be outraged by the same thing they are.
Take a look at games like Gta5 when Take2 tried to ban modding (lol).
You can now review reviews
Yo dawg...
Slashdot nailed this decades ago.
has it really been decades 😭
Always could
You could only not mark a review as helpful. You couldn’t provide context if the reviewer didn’t allow comments.
Does this mean “reviews that negatively affect profits” or does in mean genuinely removing irrelevant content?
You can mark a review as helpful. If it's that, then users decide about it.
It probably works based on whether users marking reviews as helpful or unhelpful and then uses some formula to remove the unhelpful ones. So it can be neither, but the key takeaway is that the users decide what ends up filtered out.
I would hope that it’s removing that one review about being a 40 year old dad that plays the game with his son that’s on every single game in the Steam store. And also hopefully that copy pasted one with the check boxes
Asking the real questions.
This is a good change, they have had the unhelpful/helpful/funny review system for years now, but I always found it weird it didn't do anything aside from boost on "helpful" rating. something that is majority unhelpful rated shouldn't be shown on the review page or arguably in the score in the first place.
Speaking of unhelpful, eurogamer.net is littered with ads. They add no value to the original Reddit post (https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1emb4ch/valve_is_finally_addressing_bad_reviews_issue/).
Really good change. Filtering out "funny" reviews are what everyone's thinking of, but I hope this also gets rid of those dumb reviews where people just fill out a long form rating everything 10/10 just because they like the game.
How I feel about your comment: 1 - it's ugly 2 - meh 3 - the graphics are okay 4 - it's pretty 5 - OMG it's like real life!
5/5
I wish they would also let us filter out unuseful guides.
PROS
CONS
3/10
at least these reviews are more informative about a game than the "just leaving this cat here" for thr billionth time
For every like I will eat a spoonful of salt
Reviews being a message board for grievances and memes really sucks. It reflects badly on gamers. Makes everything look trashy.
Memes? yes!
Grievances? That's exactly what a review is for! Telling other people what you do and don't like about a thing.
Please just give us a "maybe"
I wonder how many real reviews are going to get filtered as "unhelpful" because the developer or other people don't like what the review says, even if what is said is factually true.
One problem steam doesn't have is with fake accounts. They can be reasonably sure which accounts are legit and ignore votes from the more questionable ones
Or fanboys going through all reviews and downvoting any negative reactions. I'm willing to bet folding money that Hollow Knight's user score is going to go up because of this because their fanbase is toxic af
Who will review the reviewer?
I do enjoy a sprinkling of meme and unhinged reviews - especially as part of Northernlion Reads Hentai Game Steam Reviews segments - but overall this is probably a change for the better.
Should probably just filter them out by default, and then have a sort by funny or something.
Are ya winning, son?
Surprised steam would do something like this. Must of snuck it past Lord GabeN
What do you mean to imply?
A system to filter out copy-pasted meme reviews seems useful.
Which is why I said it's surprising that it's been implemented.
This is the kind of issue Steam either buries its head in the sand over (which it kinda have) or just pushing into the customers (which it also kinda has)
It would also likely affect GabeN bottom line so there's that too.
"unhelpful" review aka reviews that could make them earn less money.
What? You think they should run the platform out of the kindness of their hearts?
Why not? Don't people play games because they want to have fun?
The instance and platform you are using to comment isn't a corporation grinding billions.
Fucking finally. I love a funny joke but if you're looking for serious reviews, you currently have to wade through a sea of trolls, jokes and copy-pasted meme reviews in order to figure out if a game is interesting to you.
Community features are cool but if you're the most popular platform of your kind, you're gonna attract a lot of trolls who's content can be really out there. Filters are a good solution to this!
A lot of them aren't even about the game at all...
And people explaining what the game is instead of how the game is.
A review should tell you what the game is. It should also tell you what they like/don't like about it, but different perspectives about how the core mechanics work are absolutely critical parts of the discussion.
This is a side effect of YouTube content creation practices where a video will have an overview of the plot or story to pad out the run time or article. Often, because game journalism is basically long distance abusive relationships between the writer and the game publisher, the review is too mild to contain actual opinions and will draw on comparisons to other games instead of forming genuine critiques and admiration.
The end result is a generation of games and movies where the review is unable to provide enough genuine content to fill 10 minutes or 3 pages, so they instead spoil the game while riffing on very specific foibles. They don't know how to talk critically about mechanics or story or design.
Sometimes the game itself doesn't really tell you what it is. That's not completely shocking.
It's because sometimes I just want to "rate" the game, not "review" it but steam won't let me. So sometimes I just write "it sucks." or sometimes some random shit. Steam should have a idk 5 star rating system with optional reviews. Makes more sense but shit games will be bought less I bet.
I find myself reviewing way less now. I'm mostly playing on the Steam Deck. And they want me to type a essay with a controller? Nah.
There's this very nice template you can use to quickly make a more detailed review without having to write it all yourself. You can always just google "Steam review template" to find it.
This is what I hope it is. There's way too many joke reviews. I don't want to see review bombs get silenced because they are very informative when I'm not in the know about a particular developer/game's situation. I don't want to buy games that are outraging players. Chances are, I'll be one of the outraged too if I give them my money.