Say goodbye to Steam’s short and funny reviews. Valve has rolled out a significant update introducing a new system of improving user reviews.
Traditionally, reviews have been sorted by the number of 'helpful' votes they receive. This update, now in public testing, prioritizes reviews that are most helpful. This will combat the unhelpful ASCII arts and meme content. While entertaining, these posts don’t always provide the most valuable information for those considering a purchase.
The new feature is currently enabled by default. However, users can easily toggle it on and off in the review settings for each game.
Valve hopes that with this new adjustment, gamers can make informed decisions by highlighting what other players liked or disliked about a game. It still works the same as before, but with reduced clutter.
How does Steam sort out these helpful reviews? According to its FAQ, it is a combination of its Steam moderation team and machine learning algorithms. Valve has learned to differentiate the shitposts from the well-written reviews.
"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."
The new Steam update will also mitigate the ongoing issue of ‘review bombing.’ By filtering important and well-thought-out opinions, Steam user reviews will now be filled with more users talking about a game’s pros and cons instead of two or three sentences spewing vitriol.
These changes are still a developing feature. The classic ‘Blue Thumbs’ and ‘Red Thumbs’ remain but they are not a factor in deciding whether a review is found to be informative. Players who marked reviews ‘Helpful’ and ‘Not Helpful’ are still taken into account.
For more information, you can see Valve's review update FAQ.