Valve has changed the way Steam reviews work again. Now they separate user reviews from people that bought the game through Steam, and people that activated a key.
As a result of this, we are making some changes to how review scores are calculated. 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.
Customers that received the game from a source outside of Steam (e.g. via a giveaway site, purchased from another digital or retail store, or received for testing purposes from the developer) will still be able to write a review of the game on Steam to share their experience. These reviews will still be visible on the store page, but they will no longer contribute to the score.
This does mean that the review score category shown for about 14% of games will change; some up and some down. Most changes in the review score category are a result of games being on the edge of review score cut-offs such as 69% positive or 70% positive. A change of 1% in these cases can mean the difference between a review score category of “Mixed” and “Positive”. About 200 titles that only had one or two reviews will no longer have a score at all until a review is written by a customer that purchased that item via Steam. In all of these cases, the written reviews still exist and can easily be found in the review section on that store page.[/quote]
I understand their reasoning, although it’s certainly an imperfect solution and may indeed cause the scores to be less accurate assessments (by having a lower n) than potentially “influenced” scores were causing. What will be most curious is which games will see more dramatic shifts.
On release day the Stellaris game page was filled with Thumbs Up reviews that also noted “This key was received for free”. Almost every single review featured on the page was like that. Not saying there was a conspiracy but it was bad optics.
I think this is a good change. Too many easy, extremely cheap, or free ways to acquire and redeem a key on Steam.
As someone who gets a lot of games via keys (through press, Humble or Groupees bundles, Kickstarter, etc), I’m not 100% how I feel about this. On the one hand, I see where Valve is coming from, but on the other hand, not everyone gets their game through Steam itself, and this seems a bit discriminatory. We’ll have to see how it pans out, I suppose.
Since I’m now receiving a steady trickle of Kickstarter games–games which I love, for the most part–this makes me a little sad to know that I can’t contribute to their scores anymore. Or for games that people on Qt3 have gifted me!
OK. But remember, the issue is not a consumer’s “right” to have their review considered by others. The issue is filtering out bought-and-paid-for reviews from shills or fake accounts. That seems important enough that it would, on balance, benefit everyone, including those few who get some games free. And you’re still the go-to reviewer for space games for all of us here ;)
It’s important to note that the scores from key activations are still there, and it is pretty easy to put them all in one basket to see the old overall score. Obviously, still a blow for devs with a lot of pre-release keys, but Valve had really no choice once devs started posting fake reviews.
Well, they did have a choice: commit to staffing enough people and implementing firm and clear enough rules to police this stuff manually. It’d be expensive, time-consuming, and horribly boring–all traits Valve’s bizarro flat structure discourages–but it’d also probably be fairer, in the long run.
I guess I don’t really understand the problem - as long as everyone can still review the game, why does it matter that there are two scores - one for people that bought from Steam directly and one that activated a product key? In theory, won’t the two scores end up being roughly the same? Why does this matter, other than providing more transparency to prospective buyers?
My feelings exactly. I am in the same boat, the majority of my games are registered by key, not purchased directly through Steam. I wonder too how this affects reviews by people who purchased a retail copy of the game, like say I bought Fallout 4 physical retail box from Amazon and obviously had to register the game with Steam (since it’s a requirement). Does my retail box registration not count the same as a digital purchase through the Steam store?
I’m not sure I like this new policy at all. On the other hand, I don’t even have time to play all my current games, much less review them, so in reality it will have little effect on me personally.
[quote]
Customers that received the game from a source outside of Steam (e.g. via a giveaway site, purchased from another digital or retail store, or received for testing purposes from the developer) will still be able to write a review of the game on Steam to share their experience. These reviews will still be visible on the store page, but they will no longer contribute to the score.[/quote]
I think it’s more an issue for devs than reviewers, in the strictest sense. The default displayed ratings are gonna be based off the “steam-purchases-only” rating (in fact, in tinkering with the filter controls, I’m not sure if I can update the “overall consensus” rating to include non-Steamers, even when I click to view their reviews). For customers doing a quick glance at a new title, their opinion will be informed without the inclusion of non-steam-purchasers.
For most games, that’s no difference at all. But Steam’s own blogpost outlines that there’s a not-insignificant chunk of games whose ratings have already been directly affected.
The biggest problem I can see is there are a lot assholes out there nuking reviews because of a given feature they felt they deserved to have in the game they paid good money for, or it crashes on their potato and so they give it a thumbs down and etc. Those people probably exist from retail and non-Steam digital distributors as well.
Now, if people that get the game from non-Steam sources can’t contribute in some way to the overall, that’s going to be really dumb.
Valve is not fixing the problem - it’s turning everyone who doesn’t buy games on Steam into second-class citizens. It’s not their first step in that direction - for instance, in the activity timeline, Steam only shows the games you bought on Steam, not the ones you bought elsewhere and activated - but it’s a troubling development to say the least.
In short, that change creates more problems and barely solves anything. It’s a terrible move.
This is how I feel about it, honestly. How is my time with a game, if I acquired it with a key, less valid than someone who purchased it via Steam directly? It’ll likely skew reviews because folks who played the game, yet got a key, will likely not feel compelled to write even a positive review.
How coincidental. I was reading about a TD game last week “TD Ultimate” where fortunately a person had done some sleuthing and had discovered that almost all the positive reviews were fake. He got into a discussion with the devs.
I noticed about… a year ago that more and more Amazon reviews were becoming the kind where they receive the product for free for ‘testing’ and in return write an ‘honest’ review.
The reviews were always 5* and some products would have 20+ of them, heavily distorting the average rating.
I’ve seen similar in Steam (without the disclaimer).
Requiring some sort of disclaimer won’t help. Policing is unrealistic. Giving them a lower weight won’t necessarily help.
I’m all for this change - I always err on the side of the consumer.
Perhaps the dev of Maia should improve his game in a more timely fashion rather than complaining about the review system. The reviews would not be so bad if it had not lingered in Early Access for the last three years.
I have mixed feelings about this one. As a KS backer of projects and someone who occasionally purchases keys to activate on Steam I feel like I am being made a second class citizen on those purchases. At the same time Steam has found evidence of widespread abuse of the review system by developers. This may be one of those times that a few bad apples ruined the bunch and perhaps there is a better way to solve this issue but at least they are taking some action rather than ignoring the problem altogether.
