Does this mean “reviews that negatively affect profits” or does in mean genuinely removing irrelevant content?
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
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.
Thanks. That’s actually not too bad an idea. However, I’ll offer that it could lead to critics being silenced. Not necessarily out of nefarious purposes, but people love the downvote train sometimes.
For the same reasons that the YT algorithm is deliberately mysterious, Valve shouldn’t be letting people know how to game systems like this.
Yeah, that’s why I said it’s neither because people can be unpredictable. It might not filter out irrelevant content because people love to upvote memes and it might filter out criticism because sometimes people downvote criticism.
Overall like with some other Steam features the value of the feature is dependent on the community, and generally that value has been a net positive.
Asking the real questions.
You can mark a review as helpful. If it’s that, then users decide about it.
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!
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.
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.
That template is part of the problem
Why do you think so? I feel like they’re some of the most useful reviews I come across.
Cherry picking here but what use is this category when it lists the required size right on the store page?
It just makes it impossible to provide any nuance related to the elements of a review. It’s not just important to say “audio is very good”, but also what makes this audio very good. Everyone has a different idea of what good and bad means, rendering a bunch of biased multiple choice questions mostly useless for readers
I know, but these suck
Just let me rate 1-5 and leave a wall of text if I want to
Better than sex
- the most genius comedian of all time
Nobody will read this so I’ll just say it: I’m gay.
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.
For every like I will eat a spoonful of salt
Please just give us a “maybe”
You can now review reviews
Yo dawg…
Slashdot nailed this decades ago.
has it really been decades 😭
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.
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.
If I’m grokking the feature correctly, people will have to review bomb the review bombers with “unhelpful” flags.
Some review bombs are for legit reasons. I’ve seen a few for games that dropped support for a language well after release.
Is it even review bombing if it’s for a legit issue with the game in question?
Wasn’t it helldivers 2 that region-locked people months after release?
You mean the last game anyone anywhere ever bought from Sony?
Over 130 countries.
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.
Take a look at games like Gta5 when Take2 tried to ban modding (lol).
Reviews being a message board for grievances and memes really sucks. It reflects badly on gamers. Makes everything look trashy.
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/).
I wish they would also let us filter out unuseful guides.
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.
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.
