Valve overhauls Steam reviews with updated ‘helpfulness’ system

Throughout 2024, Valve has been consistently updating Steam with a ton of new and welcome additions/changes. Alongside a revamp of library sharing; alterations to Steam demos and more, Valve have now changed the way reviews are handled – introducing an updated helpfulness system.

Making the announcement on their blog, the team at Valve said “we are ready for public testing of a new system that changes the way Steam sorts user reviews on store pages with the goal of prioritizing reviews that can best help players make a purchase decision about the game.”

According to Valve, the purpose of this change is to focus more on helping “potential players make informed decisions about the games they are considering purchasing by understanding the attributes of the game that other players like or don't like.”

Explaining how this differs from their prior review system, they continued, “Historically we've sorted reviews by the number of ‘helpful' votes given to each review by other players. However, we’ve seen that many players use reviews for sharing jokes, memes, ascii art and other content that might not be the most helpful for a potential purchaser. That content is usually fine, and often a lot of fun for existing customers of a game, but it doesn't always help new players in making informed purchasing decisions.”

Valve did reiterate the fact that this new system isn’t changing the impact of review scores, but will simply prioritise more informational reviews at the top.

Steam is easily the most comprehensive digital gaming store when it comes to the accessibility and availability of customer reviews, and so this most recent change is a welcome bonus. That said, it is nice to see the joke reviews will not be going away any time soon.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of this latest change? How often do you rely on Steam reviews? Let us know down below.

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