Steam updates user reviews with a helpfulness system

Valve has announced that it is updating Steam reviews with a new helpfulness system. It is finally addressing a problem that has plagued its platform for years.

Why does the user review system need to be updated? Let me highlight the issues to provide some context.

Steam reviews are often unhelpful

When players want to buy a game or a DLC, they may check reviews by outlets, gameplay videos on YouTube. But some prefer to check the reviews on the item’s Steam page, because unlike the other options, reviews on the store are relatively up-to-date. Personally, I find reviews to be helpful in learning about the state of the game, i.e. whether it is buggy, or if it is still being updated, or if the game has been abandoned by the developer, how long a game is, etc. These comments can assist you with your purchase decisions.

But sometimes the reviews can be utterly unhelpful. If you go to a game’s page and scroll down to the review section, there is a very good chance that you will run into some memes, bad jokes, fake stories, ASCII art, or even inappropriate and cringy stuff. I like jokes, but not in the Steam reviews section. This is not a social network, where you can post nonsense for internet points.

Imagine that you are an indie developer, and people start leaving reviews that are just jokes and memes, etc. The actual reviews of the game could get buried in a mass of spam, and this might ultimately hurt the sales of your game.

Another problem with Steam reviews is review bombing. This has been a major issue for years, but Valve handles the issue quite well, marking them as off-topic. While it can be used maliciously such as political bias, review bombing reviews may be justified in some cases, for instance, users might do it to get the attention of developers to force them to fix their game, or to express their displeasure about overpriced items, in-app purchases, and of course games that are buggy on release.

Steam has over 140 Million user reviews, unfortunately a good number of them are likely spammy.

Valve’s new helpfulness system for Steam reviews is great

The new Steam review system will filter reviews consisting of one word, ASCII art, memes, jokes, etc. as low priority. This will highlight useful reviews instead, helping users to understand why the reviewer liked a game. It does not affect the overall rating of a game. The new system is enabled by default for all users, both on the web, and in the Steam app.

Valve's new helpfulness system for Steam reviews is great

Steam uses a combination of user reports, its own moderation teams, to determine if reviews are helpful or not. The thumbs up and thumbs down buttons are not a factor in deciding whether a review is informative, but it does take into account when users mark a review as helpful. Valve says it also employs some machine algorithms that are designed “to help scale the human judgement calls”, to filter the reviews based on their content.

The announcement says it may take a while to evaluate existing and newly posted reviews, but the system already seems to have taken effect, and it’s fantastic. Take a look at the screenshot, it’s for the same game (Stray) featured in the first screenshot, the latter is so much better.

Steam user reviews are much better now

Valve admits that it cannot delete user reviews even if they have been reported as unhelpful, because it wants players to express their opinion, even if the users don’t explain why they dislike the game. What that means is that the new helpfulness system doesn’t remove the low-effort reviews completely, you can enable an option to see them while you browse. Users who want to use the old review system can scroll down to the review section, and unselect the “Use new helpfulness system” option.

Summary