Valve changes reviews again in order to have more helpful entries

Valve is changing the review system once again to make it a more helpful feature. We had covered news about Valve trying to fix its Review problem after a ‘tragic’ event more than 2 months ago. It showed us that people could be, ehm, ‘intentionally misleading’ for stupid and unnecessary reasons. Seeing this fact, Valve ‘shut down’ these review trolls and tried to fix its review problem. However, as they probably are not satisfied enough, they decided to take another step to make Steam reviews more helpful.

In a Steam post, we can see that they want to promote and make ‘useful reviews’ more useful. Let’s take a look at the post and see what is going on.

Reviews should help paint a picture of what it’s like to play the game and how well the game has been enjoyed by the people who have already played it. A good review typically describes some of the factors that directly impact the experience of playing the game, which can include a wide variety of things like how well the matchmaking works, how buggy the game is, or whether the game represents a good value for the price.

It is sad to see that the ‘representation of human nature online’ is not satisfactory. Valve could have asked any gamer who had at least a small experience about competitive games, and they would have explained it right away. Yes, the gaming community is something we are ‘sometimes’ proud of. But most of the time, people do not reflect the ‘good’ in them. We all know that and it kind of became something ‘normal’. Here is what Valve plan to do in order to make Steam a more helpful platform:

1. Firstly, our system will use a new method of calculating the helpfulness of each review, taking into account the users that are trying to manipulate the system. One way we’re doing that is by counting the helpful ratings on reviews differently for users that are far outside the norm. Ratings from users that follow normal patterns of rating will continue to be counted the same way that they have, whereas accounts that rate an excessive number of reviews on an individual game will see the weight of each individual rating count for less and less.
2. Secondly, store pages will now show the default helpful positive and negative reviews in a similar proportion to that of the overall review score for the game. For example, if the game is reviewed positively by 80% of reviewers, then the ten reviews shown by default on the store page will be 80% positive, showing eight positive and two negative. This should keep the reviews shown on a game’s page from being so easily manipulated by a few determined players and should more accurately represent the overall sentiment of the people playing the game.

I personally hope that it will make thing much better in the future. Steam is a platform which is used more than 11 million people around the world. That means there are more than 11 million people who might exploit the platform. People pay money on the products they want to have. And misleading people shouldn’t be a thing in this platform. Good to see that Valve is taking another step to make Steam a better place.

Keep your hopes for a better Steam future and stay tuned for more fellas!