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Even More Updates to The Steam Customer Review System

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madjoki

As of today, the recent and overall review scores we show at the top of a product page will no longer include reviews written by customers that activated the game through a Steam product key.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/24155/

Second update:

One frequent piece of feedback we’ve heard regarding the recent changes is that it has become more difficult to find and read the helpful, articulate reviews written by customers that obtained the game outside of Steam. We want to make sure that helpful reviews can be surfaced regardless of purchase source, so we're making a change to the defaults. Starting today, the review section on each product page will show reviews written by all users, regardless of purchase type. By default you'll now see reviews written by all players of the game, including Steam customers, Kickstarter backers, bundle customers, streamers, and other users that acquired the game outside of Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/24331/

What do you think?

8 years ago*

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498 Comments
Jagdtiger

But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose—you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally-reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.

-Radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett

Not saying this is nearly as severe but. It's the same kind of thinking. "Most criminals are X, so we should treat all X as criminals". I rarely if ever wrote reviews anyway, so it doesn't really affect me, but I don't take kindly to being treated as a criminal.

8 years ago
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HairyGoober

Was the same with mobile auth. Yeah, it adds another layer of security...but only for those with phones.

But hey, if you don't have one, clearly you're an idiot that's just waiting to be hijacked, so have some archaic restrictions!

8 years ago
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Hassat

If you have a phone, you're scam-protected. Unless you let them scam you.
But then it's totally your own fault... wait, wasn't that the reason we got that shit-system? Couldn't you say "Your own fault" before implementing it? :facepalm:

8 years ago
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talgaby

Those with Android or iPhones, to boot, which is a large chunk of phone users and a significant portion of Steam's user base, but far from being all of them.

8 years ago
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LanHikari

FUCK THAT'S HOW I GET MOST MY GAMES AND I'M A GAME REVIEWER

8 years ago
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talgaby

Welcome to the club. If this change would be retroactive beyond a few months, I would have lost more than 200 reviews from being counted in the overall scores.

8 years ago
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Hassat

I'm fairly sure it's retro-active from foreverr... just a whole bunch of cd-keys are erroneously marked as store-bought.
Since; well... Valve's winging it.

8 years ago
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Hassat

https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/52plzj/list_of_427_games_that_saw_the_biggest_change_to/d7niv5o

8 years ago
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AllTracTurbo

It looks like that list may not have all the games. The game Totem went from 88% to 0. Every single key activation review was positive.

Edit: Also, the game Rapid Squirrel is currently at 0%. If you count the key activation reviews it would be at 82%.

8 years ago*
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Hassat

Yeah, doesn't include this game either:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/436300/

Guess what, all reviews are from Indiegala costumers. Actually looking over the list there's pretty much 80% if not more from bundles, mostly indiegala. I guess this is the anti-Indiegala update. Guess people using that site are definitely out-of-sync with Steam purchasers?

8 years ago
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chairmankao

Weird. I can't get any of the key activated reviews to show. Valve still working out the kinks.

8 years ago
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AllTracTurbo

For Totem, you have to browse all reviews and then choose "all languages". Most of them are not in english.

I don't have any problems seeing key reviews. They show right on the main page for me (as long as they are in english).

8 years ago
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Shanti

Noticed a different colour on 'Mixed' scored games, apparently the hamsters at Valve were busy working on an update http://store.steampowered.com/news/24331/
"Average valve supervisor: Frank, we need to pacify the angry crowd. This review update has caused a lot of uproar. Here's some money for research & metrics, I want top men working on this to get a new system pronto. Remember, TOP MEN.
Frank/Average valve employee: Ready to Work!
-----3 days later-----
Frank: Boss, we spent thousands of $$$ and came up with a mind-blowing, revolutionary, unthinkable, unfathomable, heuristic, optimistic, slapstick new update for you!
Red colour makes people angry >=( CHANGE IT TO YELLOW/TAN =D"

And, that's how Gabe Newell found his new Vice President Frank.

8 years ago
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madjoki

Mixed doesn't actually mean bad, it shouldn't have been red. Stupid valve took this long to fix it.

8 years ago
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hyperxduel

Not a big fan of the new tan! Anyhow I changed it back to the old color using the Firefox / Chrome "Stylish" extension...with this CSS for those interested...

@-moz-document domain("store.steampowered.com")
{
    .game_review_summary.mixed {
        color: #A34C25;
    }        
}
8 years ago
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SickTeddyBear

They made some more changes, the best one being that your previous selection of which type of reviews you want to see is now sticky:

http://store.steampowered.com/news/24331/

8 years ago
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8 years ago
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SickTeddyBear

You still have to go in everytime and set the language to "All" so you get the review count and positive percentage of every review there is.

Oh, I see. So before, on the old system, even though I only wanted to read english language reviews, the non-english reviews would still be counted in terms of the overall score, but now, unless all is selected for language, they don't count either. Sigh.

8 years ago
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SickTeddyBear

OK, got it. This is such a mess. I hope Enhanced Steam comes to the rescue in this situation, even though that won't have any impact on the people who don't use it.

8 years ago
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8 years ago
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zeruel132

I love how people say that CD-Keys have more fake reviews. There are idiots everywhere. There are cheap, poor idiots with keys and there are kids with too much money to spend with purchases.

8 years ago
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Adelion

Came here to check if someone already posted the new changes and it seems SickTeddyBear was faster than me. I have noticed today that if I visit I Store Page the "All" section is the default one for me now. So it is either default for everyone now or the Store Page does remember my choice from before. Seems like the only difference between "Key" and "Store" reviews now is that the first do not contribute to the review score (which was the intention of the update).

Also if you check the reviews from an user through his Steam Profile they are no longer sorted by popularity but by creation date instead (going from last created to first created). Not that that makes much of a difference.

Personal question: Does anyone know how the Star Rating system for guides works? After a long time it seems one of my guides reached the necessary amount of votes to display stars. It got 3 of 5 (which is okay I guess). Does this mean that a bit more than half of people voted up and the rest down? Or is the number of votes going in there as well (so it would be impossible to get 5 start with only 25 votes even if everyone upvoted it)?

8 years ago
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madjoki

Yeah, this makes it a lot more tolerable for most.

Still good games, eg. mostly from bundles can still suffer due to lack of steam store reviews and bad games will actually benefit from that.

8 years ago
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