Steam User Reviews Might Actually Be Useful Now
“Good.” “I found a team and a fortress too.” And one review that’s just a full transcript of Valve’s Meet the Heavy video. These were the top user reviews Steam showed me for the popular game Team Fortress 2, at least until I turned on the “Use new helpfulness system” filter.
Steam, the popular PC games storefront, has a bit of a meme problem. Users love to leave jokey reviews on games, so much so that there’s an official filter that shows “funny” reviews, and while that can be great for in-jokes, one word reviews and the like aren’t always helpful to people looking to actually buy a game.
That’s why Valve today updated Steam with a “New helpfulness system” that tries to surface content with more effort put into it.
In a post to its site, Valve wrote that it was “ready for public testing of a new system that changes the way Steam sorts user reviews on store pages.” The new system will prioritize “reviews that can best help players make a purchase decision about the game,” filtering out “one-word reviews, reviews comprised of ASCII art, or reviews that are primarily playful memes and in-jokes.”
The company says that some humorous reviews will still be peppered in, but that prospective players should “see them less frequently when trying to learn about a game.”
The change has been generally well-received on X, with game developers celebrating. Of particular note is a post from Matthew Castle, who formerly co-hosted the Mystery Steam Reviews series for Rock Paper Shotgun. According to Castle, who has seen hundreds of Steam reviews over the years, “There’s no community as crushingly unfunny as Steam reviewers.”
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All hope is not lost for anyone still looking to win t3h internet, though. While the new helpfulness system is enabled by default, users can toggle off the filter under “Display” above the user reviews list to go back to the old sorting method. The new filter also only applies to the Summary and Most Helpful views, so using the Funny or Recent views will also disable the system.
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt
Hopefully, the solution will let everyone be happy, while allowing developers a better chance to look at genuine user feedback and prospective buyers a clearer idea of what they’d be getting into.
Valve says its categorization techniques involve user reports, some machine learning, and human judgment calls. The company also explained that it’s not deleting reviews categorized as unhelpful so that players who want to express an opinion about a game but who don’t want to write much can still do so using the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons, which will still be counted in the game’s total user reviews score.
Whether this will continue to be the case in the face of review bombing, which involves coordinated campaigns to lower user review scores that may not represent how the average player feels, remains to be seen.
Steam users who value detailed and informative reviews may appreciate the fact that the new helpfulness system on Steam will prioritize reviews that provide substantial information to help potential buyers make a decision about a game. On the other hand, entertainment-focused Steam users who enjoy reading jokey and humorous reviews might find fewer of these in their feed due to the system's focus on helpfulness.
