Valve To Stop Steam ‘Review Bombs’ Affecting User Scores

Steam To Stop Review Bombs Affecting Scores

There has been something of a tradition in recent years that if a developer should do something with a game the community does like, they respond by organising a mass campaign of negative reviews against a game.

The idea behind this is to manufacture the significant fall in the user recommendation level used by Steam. A ‘review bomb’ can effectively turn an ‘Overwhelming positive’ game to ‘Negative’ within days.

In a report via PCGamesN, however, Valve has announced that new changes to the Steam review system will mean that while ‘review bombs’ can still occur, they may no longer affect the overall scoring for a game. It kind of depends on how relevant the ‘review’ is.

Algorithm To The Rescue!

Valve has revealed that a brand new algorithm has been put in place in order to detect comments/reviews which it deems ‘irrelevant’ to the game itself. This can include, for example, criticism of the use of Denuvo, DRM or changes to the EULA.

From this, while the reviews will still be posted, the ‘thumbs up/down’ will not have an impact on the overall user score.

Valve has said: “Our reasoning is that the ‘general’ Steam player doesn’t care as much about them, so the Review Score is more accurate if it doesn’t contain them.”

In fairness, this is a move that many should’ve seen coming. If anything, the only surprising factor is in how long it has taken Valve to react to this. In fairness, however, review bombing as an act gives questionable results anyway.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!