I don't get why they won't allow voting on a game without being required to write a review, if Steam already figured out that this is a reason for the existence of many not informative 'reviews'.
Oh well, it's certainly a good ambition and I welcome any improvement.
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I always thought a simple 5 star system, just like GOG does, is superior to what Steam has. GOG let you give rating without a review but for some reason Valve don't want to go that way. I'm sure the rating count would be much higher if people didn't had to write reviews.
I agree that's the main reason not informative reviews are there. And they even added fuel to the flames with Steam Points on reviews. As a result people try to be funny more than being informative. Hopefully this would at least fix some of it.
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A 5 point system is effectively binary, as most people will think negatively of scores under 4. Similar to how IGN used to (or still do) review games, a 7/10 would be a very average game, 8/10 good, and 9/10 great. A 6 was terrible.
It also has the potential to be far more damaging, especially from "unfair" reviews. Like those on Amazon where someone gives 1 star because the delivery was late, or they don't remember ordering it, or that a box of screws didn't come with an electronic drill, which was shown on a demonstration photo. So a system where a single 1 star review takes at least three 5 star reviews to "cancel it" (ie. 1+5+5+5 averages 4) does more damage than in a binary system.
Basically, it requires users to be rational both when assigning a rating and reading it, which is unfortunately unreasonable.
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It's true that many people react to this as a binary system but IMDb proves that a vast majority uses even a 10 point system as intended. And they managed to weed out the binary people by ignoring a share of the highest and lowest ratings. This works pretty much perfect for 99% of all the content.
I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to achieve the same for games, even if the weirdos represent a larger share. 😁
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So, psychology. That's a shame. Though I think that can be fixed with writing the overall score from 100 (just like on Steam) next to it. If a star rating is 3.9, that's basically 78/100.
Yeah, I guess that would affect mostly small indies. However, it'll be the same, just different number system. If you have enough sample size, it won't affect you. But that would be unfair for small devs indeed, at least for the beginning.
Basically, it requires users to be rational both when assigning a rating and reading it, which is unfortunately unreasonable.
That's unfortunate.
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That'd be nice to see, 3.9 looks much worse than 78/100 or even 7.8
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My personal theory is that Valve wants to purposefully discourage users from leaving a rating without writing a review and that every single part of the system is meant to send the message of "if you don't have a well defined opinion that you can put into words then please don't use this functionality", probably because they want to leverage user reviews as a selling feature of the Steam store.
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I must admit than that is a good counterargument and I don't really have an answer for that. I guess the only ones that know for sure are those working at Valve and I don't think they're gonna explain it unless someone asks about it during an interview or something.
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Well, they most likely want people to write reviews, that's for sure. They also admit that "there is nothing wrong with posting ASCII art, funny reviews etc.". The dose of those reviews were actually acceptable until they introduce Steam points. And then a new kind derived, the ones that try to fool people: "I'm 56 years old single father...", just to farm Steam points.
Not sure how are they gonna find helpful reviews but that looks like a good step in the right direction. However, they should remove awarding Steam points, maybe completely. Because it ruined reviews and guides.
I think if they allowed rating without reviews, this problem would probably solved itself. Though they most likely want developers to be able to reply to bad ratings, so that requires reviews.
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Not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but I think the answer to your question is because nobody is going to verify 700 000 reviews for elden ring to see how many of them are reviewing and how many are baiting for attention, and then go to the next steam game out of I don't know the 100k games listed on steam. Like steam ain't going to pay anyone just to spend 8 hours a day and read reviews, nor would the devs themselves, and even then suppose someone did, they're bound to make mistakes and people would crap on them, or of course for devs to abuse the system.
Edit: I was misunderstanding ty AiKirika and adam1224
Then I guess that changes my answer to valve probably never intending a simple thumbs up/down to be the factor that decides a game rating % without any sort of explanation behind the reasoning as it can provide tons of abuse that way and create useless confusing as to what is and what isn't worth to count as creditable. A dev could give 100 keys away in exchange for thumbs up, and that'd give them 100 positive reviews, if you have to write 100 different reviews you can at least start spotting some bots and it requires some effort many abusers aren't willing to go through. I guess in order for steam to do this, they'd have to not count the thumbs up or down in the actual reviews, they wouldn't show anywhere including the steam users reviews because it wouldn't be a review(unless steam would add a thumbs section separate from reviews on people's profile to look at what was thumbed up or down which sounds... dumb to say the least), and at that point, why even implement it as a feature? It would be useless to do it. It's like redundant with less features than the review feature.
I think what they want to do is step away from meme reviews slowly case in which imo they should filter accounts that do meme reviews, and prevent them from reviewing again, and put a min game ownership to 10-25 games per acc in order to be able to review anything.
All in all it sounds like a good thing they did as you go onto a new games page and multiple out of the first 10 reviews to show were memes.
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Hmm, maybe I'm interpreting it wrong, but didn't he state that he's confused as to why steam wont allow reviews unless they are reviews, if they are aware that many of these reviews aren't actually reviews? If that's not the case, what did he mean and if it is the case, my comment applies I guess?
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i think you misunderstood.
steam wont allow you to simply vote: Yes or No to the question "Do you recommend this game?" without also writing a review.
he doesnt understand why valve wont allow to just say yes or no, because he feels that this is the reason why there are so many useless reviews.
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In my opinion, it can't get worse. Most of the time that I want to read reviews of a popular game, I have to scroll past several cats to be petted, several statements how "I used to have small pp, I still do but the game is good", etc ..
I'm curious to see this new system in action, but almost anything they do will be an improvement.
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Cool, but I would rather they do something about the point farming joke guides.
The popular games are overrun by trash guides.
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Warthunder is a prime example of trash guides. One of the worst guide sections. https://steamcommunity.com/app/236390/guides/?browsesort=mostrecent&browsefilter=mostrecent&requiredtags%5B0%5D=english&p=1
Objectively useless, fishing for points.
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I'm afraid you're right. But honestly, it can't get much worse. I'll take AI summary over useless joke reviews any day of the week.
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IMO that's a great change. Annoying morons spamming same review for all games hoping to get some likes and enlarging their digital cock. Question is how it will be implemented and how it will function. As annoying are the "wannabe reviewer" copy/paste reviews where they try to use overly complicated structures and long paragraphs to end up saying nothing.
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I am a 45 yo father, probably one of the oldest people playing this game. I am a single father to my Son, who is 14 now. My son got this game for Christmas in 2021 from his uncle, so we installed it on his computer and he started playing. By the end of the week he had 24 hours on this game. This was horrible for me, as it was already hard for me to find ways to spend time with my son, as he is always out with his friends or just watching YouTube. So i decided to make a Steam account and get this game to see if I could maybe play alongside him. I loaded into the game, picked my character and world and started playing but I was stuck on what you where supposed to do. I asked my Son for help and he hosted a game for me to join. I loved it as it was the best time I had spent with my Son since my wife had died. This game has ever since brought me and my son closer again and now we actually spend time together outside the house together as well. This game reminded me that there's fun to be had in everything, and it has brought both me and my Son many happy memories.
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I've found a better one:
Introduction
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Character Development and Emotional Depth
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Educational Value
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Final Thoughts
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Sometimes I wonder, do the people posting these AI generated reviews do not realize its obvious as hell?
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Personally, I'd like to see a 'neutral' option.
This specific update isn't particularly meaningful IMO since it doesn't really address actual issues such as paid review farms, copy/paste reviewers (such as a particular review bomber with like 12k copy pasta reviews), nor does it address reviews that plagiarize other reviews and are never removed. Points farmers and meme reviews are such a minor thing in the face of all of that.
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"Joke user reviews are still approved, but Valve's new Steam system helps players learn what others actually think before buying a game.
More changes have hit Steam, this time for its user reviews. After being spotted by players last week, Valve has implemented a helpfulness system that prioritizes informative reviews on a game's store page.
As Valve explains it, helpful reviews have typically been sorted by the number of user votes designated as such. But that system's been easily exploited and made it so jokes reviews (or memes) can take center stage and go viral, which is substantially less helpful.
With the new change, one-word reviews, or ones made of memes or ASCII art, will be placed behind actual reviews. Even so, the developer acknowledged those "humorous, but unhelpful posts" can be toggled back onto the store page proper through the "display" drop-down menu.
Valve also said the new system "doesn't impact how review scores are generated for each game; it is simply changing the order that reviews appear on each store page."
The system is a work-in-progress, and the studio said it will take "quite a while" to analyze new and current reviews to determine their helpfulness. It's unclear how this system will work when it comes to concertrated review-bombing efforts which inevitably involve harassment campaigns.
More information on the new helpfulness system and how Valve categorizes user reviews as such, can be read here."
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/valve-launches-helpfulness-system-for-steam-user-reviews
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