Steam Prioritizes Informative Reviews with New Helpfulness System
Steam reviews are notorious for being a mixed bag of helpful information, humor, and utter nonsense. Valve aims to address this by highlighting truly useful reviews.
Gone are the days of easily finding review bombs and copypasta on Steam... well, sort of. While these elements aren't gone entirely, Valve's new Helpfulness System will prioritize and rank genuinely helpful reviews, pushing them to the forefront of a game's store page.
By Julian van der Merwe, Published 08/14/2024
For years, Steam has grappled with the challenge of unhelpful reviews flooding its platform. From nonsensical copypastas and unoriginal jokes to users weaponizing reviews to protest microtransaction changes, finding reliable feedback has been an obstacle for potential buyers. While the validity of "review bombing" as a protest tactic is debatable, Valve has been actively combating unhelpful reviews for quite some time. One significant step was separating game ratings into "all reviews" and "recent reviews," providing greater context.
Now, Steam introduces its latest weapon against review shenanigans: a revamped helpfulness score. This system builds upon its predecessor by automatically placing highly-rated helpful reviews at the top of the list.
"User reviews that are identified as being unhelpful for potential customers, such as one-word reviews, reviews comprised of ASCII art, or reviews that are primarily playful memes and in-jokes, will be sorted behind other reviews on the game’s store page.” – Valve via Steam
Don't worry, meme lords and ASCII artists – your creativity isn't banned! Steam will still allow these forms of expression. However, the combination of the new helpfulness rating and Steam's internal review moderation team means that informative and insightful reviews will take center stage. It's important to note that this system won't affect how games are scored or how those scores are displayed. Gamers can still quickly gauge recent community sentiment and potential shifts in a game's reception.
