The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Alienman]

"Only reviews with 7000 hours played"

 

[Caim]

Add a new feature that shows if the person has the achievement you get for beating the game.

 

[ds]

"Only negative reviews with 7000 hours played"

 

[Chuck Norris]

I have no problem with any Steam reviews except for the ones that say: "No one is going to read this, so I'm going to say that I'm gay" or "X number of upvotes and I will put 100 cucumbers up my ass". I wanna shoot the people who write these.

 

[Melcar]

You guys read reviews?

 

[Modron]

You guys read?

 

[markec]

You guys read reviews?

Sometimes when wanting to learn more about some less known indie game.

 

[Alienman]

You guys read reviews?

The higher rating, the more suspicious I get. Those negative reviews are usually gold worth, since they will usually be attacked by fanboys.

Edit:
I should clarify the good reviews, that point out broken & tedious (that I find tedious) mechanics, etc.

 

[Don Peste]

Alienman Your avatar looks like a chicken with two big white eyes on each side.

 

[Alienman]

I identify as a space lizard, thank you very much.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/4326355263805583415

Update to User Reviews: New Helpfulness System
Testing a new system aimed at showing more helpful user reviews

With today's Steam update, 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. This new helpfulness system is now enabled by default, and can easily be toggled within the user review settings for each game.


The Goals Of User Reviews
The primary goal of Steam User Reviews is to help 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. 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.


New: Prioritizing Informative Reviews
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. That doesn't mean players won't ever see these humorous, but unhelpful posts, but it hopefully means that they’ll see them less frequently when trying to learn about a game. If you enjoy seeing these sorts of reviews when browsing the store, there's an option on the store page to include them when browsing.

This change doesn't impact how review scores are generated for each game; it is simply changing the order that reviews appear on each store page.


Have Feedback?
As always, we learn from your feedback, so please feel free to leave a comment below.


Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: How does Steam determine which reviews are not informative?
A: Categorization work is a mix of techniques, including user reports, the Steam moderation team looking closely at a lot of reviews, and some machine learning algorithms to help scale the human judgement calls. Our team has found that a lot of the unhelpful reviews were easy to spot, so we're targeting those first. This is a work in process, and will likely take quite a while for our team to evaluate the existing reviews and newly posted reviews.

Q: Does it matter anymore if I mark a review as Helpful or not?
A: Marking a review as helpful or not is still taken into account.

Q: Can I help identify reviews that are not informative?
A: Our moderation team looks closer at reviews that are reported by other users, so the best thing you can do is report the review with a brief description of why. Please see Reporting Content in the Steam Community for more details.

Q: How can I compare this new system to what the old one returned?
A: You can easily do so by unselecting the option "Use new helpfulness system" under the "Display" drop-down just above the user reviews.

Q: Does it matter if a review is positive or negative during this evaluation?
A: No, the blue thumbs-up and red thumbs-down are not a factor in deciding whether a review is found to be informative.

Q. Got any interesting trivia about user reviews?
A. Steam players have posted well over 140 Million user reviews to date.

Q. If you've identified a review as unhelpful, why not delete the review?
A. We have found that many players want to express an opinion about the game, but don't always have the words to describe their experience with the game, or aren't interested in writing much. Their indication of whether they would recommend the game is still valuable data, even if they are not able to articulate why.

Q. Where can I learn more about the rules for User Reviews on Steam?
A. For more details, please see Rules and Guidelines For Steam: Discussions, Reviews, and User Generated Content

 

[PlayerEmers]

Maybe HL2 will get it's own anniversary update?

 

[Caim]

Half-Life 2 came out November 16th 2004, so we'll see in three months.

 

[ferratilis]

I have to replay it with MMod before they render it incompatible.

 

[Rövtomte]

Maybe HL2 will get it's own anniversary update?

Hell yeah! Can't wait to get disappointed!

 

[Morgoth]

Would be cool if they shadowdropped the Ravenholm expansion. Arkane nearly finished it.

But of course Valve isn't cool anymore...

 

[Alienman]

I'm curious how this timeline would look, if Steam never became a thing. Would something else take its place? Would we still be able to buy “DRM-free” disc based PC games? Would PC gaming be dead, or perhaps in a better place, with less shovelware? Would the indie sphere ever explode without a store like Steam? Etc, etc.

 

[ds]

I'm pretty sure someone else would have eventually tried to build a digital game distribution platform not quite unlike Steam. Seeing as streaming has also overtaken anything else for music and movies I don't believe that gaming would have turned out better even without Steam and perhaps it would have been even worse if introduced slightly later where always online has become a more feasible requirement.

 

[Modron]

Would the indie sphere ever explode without a store like Steam?

Are you aware that itch.io has about 10000 times the yearly releases steam does?

 

[ds]

Would the indie sphere ever explode without a store like Steam?

Are you aware that itch.io has about 10000 times the yearly releases steam does?

And almost no one pays any attention to it.

 

[Alienman]

Would the indie sphere ever explode without a store like Steam?

Are you aware that itch.io has about 10000 times the yearly releases steam does?

I have not used it much, only own a few games there. But yeah, I guess the endless wave of shovelware would not be too different.

I'm pretty sure someone else would have eventually tried to build a digital game distribution platform not quite unlike Steam. Seeing as streaming has also overtaken anything else for music and movies I don't believe that gaming would have turned out better even without Steam and perhaps it would have been even worse if introduced slightly later where always online has become a more feasible requirement.

Yeah, I guess, but I think Steam got big because of their friendly customer basis. I have a hard time seeing a typical mega corp, like EA or some such, manage that, but perhaps it wouldn't matter. Someone else would be the biggest platform, but maybe not having such a big share of it, like Valve does now. I kinda want to believe that in this timeline we still got dvd releases with manuals, maps, and everything

 

[StrongBelwas]

I'm curious how this timeline would look, if Steam never became a thing. Would something else take its place? Would we still be able to buy “DRM-free” disc based PC games? Would PC gaming be dead, or perhaps in a better place, with less shovelware? Would the indie sphere ever explode without a store like Steam? Etc, etc.

A problem that would probably have emerged is the size constraints of DVDs vs. the poor quality of most early PC Blu-Ray Drives (Which often had obnoxious DRM of their own.) Some publisher would have had to have been bold enough to be the first one to force everyone to pick up a Blu-Ray drive and they would be taking a risk doing so without the heavy market control a console manufacturer has. Nowadays the physical PC market (When it isn't a glorified code in a box) is enough of a niche that either making 10 discs or being a Blu-Ray disc (I think I've seen those in European retailers a few times) isn't a big deal.

 

[Morgoth]

Steam has certainly made impulse buying more convenient. You would think twice about grabbing a retail disc as you don't get the instant gratifiction shot that click-download-play does.

That impulse buying is basically 50% of publisher's business model today, with the other 50% being grooming Streamers and other lower humans. So on balance, I think Steam has probably harmed games as an art form while helping it explode as an industry.

 

[ind33d]

Steam has certainly made impulse buying more convenient. You would think twice about grabbing a retail disc as you don't get the instant gratifiction shot that click-download-play does.

That impulse buying is basically 50% of publisher's business model today, with the other 50% being grooming Streamers and other lower humans. So on balance, I think Steam has probably harmed games as an art form while helping it explode as an industry.

i buy games now that i have no intention of playing just because I own a deck

did valve intend to enter the handheld market back when steam launched? this is like a supervillain's long-term plan

 

[PlayerEmers]

I'm curious how this timeline would look, if Steam never became a thing. Would something else take its place? Would we still be able to buy “DRM-free” disc based PC games? Would PC gaming be dead, or perhaps in a better place, with less shovelware? Would the indie sphere ever explode without a store like Steam? Etc, etc.

Someone would eventually create a digital store but I bet PC as a gaming market would probably be way WAY smaller. I also believe without Steam, the indie game scene (and to some degree the game engine market) would be heavily impacted since 99% of them relies heavily on the current PC market (that was only possible thanks to Valve/Steam).

i buy games now that i have no intention of playing just because I own a deck

I'm also buying games solely to play on the deck. Been using it as a backlog machine and nostalgia tripping playing and replaying old stuff. Probably removed about 100 games from my backlog since last year and still doing it.
Funnily enough, my backlog list actually increased quiet a lot because I bought even more stuff + picked forgotten games from my library that I never touched (keys from humble bundle and other random stuff)