The Steam review award system has destroyed what little worth reviews used to have. Thanks.

[Overwatch]

User reviews are bad. They always have been.
They are so full of junk that SteamLabs had to make a filter tool to TRY to let us find the occasional helpful review in the stinking bog.

Adding the "funny" review tag made reviews even worse. Now people post things where REVIEWS go so they can get a tiny moment of internet attention. Great. Like I didn't have enough things to skip over.

But awards have made it SO much worse.

Before awards the reviews section looked something like:

• 70% - Garbage
  
  • Single line reviews like "LOL. GitGud" or "0/10 great would buy for my friends as joke"
    
  • 0.1 hours of playtime - "Can no start run on tostar ovn bad and return cant get monee"
    
  • People who think it's funny to post non-reviews like "Turtles are my favorite pocket fish"
    
• 25% - Sponsored reviews trying to pass as non-sponsored ones. Oh? You have 375 games huh? And you have reviewed 324 of them? You gave 6 of them negative reviews huh? How many of those games were you given keys for? 320 of them? Uh huh. Totally trustworthy...
  
• 5% - Actual attempts at a review. Which DOESN'T mean they are useful. Just that they are actual reviews. A review isn't useful at all unless you understand the tastes of the reviewer, and that relationship/understanding can help you evaluate how YOU might like the game. This is why user reviews aren't useful to begin with. A game could have 95% of people saying it's "too hard". But it might be JUST RIGHT for you. You won't know without a review from someone who you already understand their tastes, or you play it yourself. But I digress...

But now that awards are here, there has been a LARGE increase in people posting garbage/meme reviews to fish for awards. The system reinforces their bad behavior. Not just with internet points like before but with internet currency (that is used to buy things that get you internet points...)

And there isn't even a way to filter out these ♥♥♥♥♥♥ reviews.

Plenty of people play games for 10, 50, or even 100 hours before coming to post a meme. So that doesn't work.

Why can't I block "short" reviews?

Less than 100 words? Nope. GTFO.


But we'll never see a change. Because the awards system was added to make Steam money.

Sigh...

[Kaylia MoonRaven]

This is the first ive seen today that makes sense.. and i do agree.. for the same reason i never use steam reviews to check if a game is good or not, i use the interwebz for that..

Steam is just too messy and there is too far between useful reviews.. why bother using it when its clearly not working as it should?

[Garou]

Don't go to the guide section. It's much worse there.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Awards did the same for guides...

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/2976275080116322939/

[Start_Running]

Escrito originalmente por Overwatch:

User reviews are bad. They always have been.
They are so full of junk that SteamLabs had to make a filter tool to TRY to let us find the occasional helpful review in the stinking bog.

Adding the "funny" review tag made reviews even worse. Now people post things where REVIEWS go so they can get a tiny moment of internet attention. Great. Like I didn't have enough things to skip over.

But awards have made it SO much worse.

Before awards the reviews section looked something like:

• 70% - Garbage
  
  • Single line reviews like "LOL. GitGud" or "0/10 great would buy for my friends as joke"
    
  • 0.1 hours of playtime - "Can no start run on tostar ovn bad and return cant get monee"
    
  • People who think it's funny to post non-reviews like "Turtles are my favorite pocket fish"
    
• 25% - Sponsored reviews trying to pass as non-sponsored ones. Oh? You have 375 games huh? And you have reviewed 324 of them? You gave 6 of them negative reviews huh? How many of those games were you given keys for? 320 of them? Uh huh. Totally trustworthy...
  
• 5% - Actual attempts at a review. Which DOESN'T mean they are useful. Just that they are actual reviews. A review isn't useful at all unless you understand the tastes of the reviewer, and that relationship/understanding can help you evaluate how YOU might like the game. This is why user reviews aren't useful to begin with. A game could have 95% of people saying it's "too hard". But it might be JUST RIGHT for you. You won't know without a review from someone who you already understand their tastes, or you play it yourself. But I digress...

But now that awards are here, there has been a LARGE increase in people posting garbage/meme reviews to fish for awards. The system reinforces their bad behavior. Not just with internet points like before but with internet currency (that is used to buy things that get you internet points...)

And there isn't even a way to filter out these ♥♥♥♥♥♥ reviews.

Plenty of people play games for 10, 50, or even 100 hours before coming to post a meme. So that doesn't work.

Why can't I block "short" reviews?

Less than 100 words? Nope. GTFO.


But we'll never see a change. Because the awards system was added to make Steam money.

Sigh...

So basuically what you're saying is the fact that people who are not you are getting awards for reviews has siome how made it worse.
Geez the salt is real.

I mean according to you the reviews before were

70% - Reviews in a style or of content 'you didn't personally like'

25% - Reviews that cionflict with your bias and ergo must be sponsored.

5% - Reviews you actuially agreed with and liked the content and style of.

The problem in all 3 cases is basically you. Personally i'v actually seen better reviews, or no change at all. . RThe awards don't do anything to affect visibility If nothing else the awards and the desire to earn them have more people actually trying their hands at creating reviews and content. Which are rewarded by other people like yourself.

Yes. Other people exist in the world. Yes. They will spend their points to award things you don't personally agree with. Get over it or get better at writing content so you can actually earn some of those awards.

[reg1s7]

Escrito originalmente por F35:

Don't go to the guide section. It's much worse there.

Unfortunate truth.

Escrito originalmente por whiteknight plays:

hi this is for a badge

You do not need to post to complete badge task. You just need to use the search bar in discussion.

[kitt]

then put a filter on with a minimin Playtime, change it from Summary to Most Helpful.

25% - Sponsored reviews trying to pass as non-sponsored ones. Oh? You have 375 games huh? And you have reviewed 324 of them? You gave 6 of them negative reviews huh? How many of those games were you given keys for? 320 of them? Uh huh. Totally trustworthy...

how does make sense? so everyone with a lot of Games a lot of Reviews is not Trustworthy? jesus..

[Start_Running]

Escrito originalmente por kitt:

then put a filter on with a minimin Playtime, change it from Summary to Most Helpful.

25% - Sponsored reviews trying to pass as non-sponsored ones. Oh? You have 375 games huh? And you have reviewed 324 of them? You gave 6 of them negative reviews huh? How many of those games were you given keys for? 320 of them? Uh huh. Totally trustworthy...

how does make sense? so everyone with a lot of Games a lot of Reviews is not Trustworthy? jesus..

YOu're getting the joke now.
ANd yeah the playtime filter can be used, and honestly there's few reasons to change the review sorting to anything but most helpful, ever since the store page got divided between alltime and recent.

Its telling that this complaint seems to be tied to Awards. Something that has now bearing, or weight on visibility.

[Psychedelic Adventurer]

As other people have posted, it's just as bad in the guides section as well. Been making guides for almost 10 years now, I have never seen the sheer amount of bilge that has collapsed onto our heads. Yes, you had the odd joker who would make some low effort joke and throw it up, but it was generally the domain of instructional / aesthetics / software related works.

Inversely, reviews have always had a format which kinda promotes short, pithy comments, so naturally you're going to find some internet funny-men trying to be get the most humorous joke. With the awards system (which I actually overall like btw) I suspect this will just increase 1000x fold. Suddenly people who just wouldn't participate in reviews or guides, suddenly see a low effort benefit to spamming sections. Notice also, that these are often the same people who are spamming THE SAME review onto multiple games, in hopes of getting bites (also the same for guides).

[Gallifrey - CSSC Gaming Founder]

So far I haven't spotted a noticeable deterioration in the quality of reviews. I would just like to thank all the members of the community who took the time to write honest reviews of games for your assistance in finding good games which I have enjoyed playing. Even very short reviews can be of some assistance although the more detailed reviews tend to be more helpful - although not universally.

For everyone who has posted a false review for profit or for otherwise, or has posted a review without knowing whether it was true or false I'd like ... unpleasant things to happen to you. Your imagination on that front is probably nearly as good as mine.

S.x.

P.S. Actually your imagination on that front probably, I say probably, isn't as good as mine.

[Wehzi]

Yeah, they need to change some things around. Like only allowing awards on guides with 100 words or more.

[Start_Running]

Escrito originalmente por JoeRogan's spinning side kick:

Yeah, they need to change some things around. Like only allowing awards on guides with 100 words or more.

Because Its so hard tos tretch things out over a 100 words?" A little bit of ascii art would deal with that easy.

[Wehzi]

Escrito originalmente por Start_Running:

Escrito originalmente por JoeRogan's spinning side kick:

Yeah, they need to change some things around. Like only allowing awards on guides with 100 words or more.

Because Its so hard tos tretch things out over a 100 words?" A little bit of ascii art would deal with that easy.

1. Yes, and that constitutes spam by Steam's own policy, in a way that text memage doesn't.
2. Ascii doesn't have that large a word count unless it's massive. And that's also considered spam. So, if the mods do their jobs, both get deleted.
3. The principle is more important than the actual character number.

Big brain arguments on display here. /s

[Apathetic]

you think they are but look at curator reviews. its kinda the worst

[Start_Running]

Escrito originalmente por JoeRogan's spinning side kick:

Escrito originalmente por Start_Running:

Because Its so hard tos tretch things out over a 100 words?" A little bit of ascii art would deal with that easy.

1. Yes, and that constitutes spam by Steam's own policy, in a way that text memage doesn't.

Depends on how its used. Ifthe art is used as say a form of signature or graphical embelishment. Then its fine by Steam's policy.

2. Ascii doesn't have that large a word count unless it's massive. And that's also considered spam. So, if the mods do their jobs, both get deleted.

1-3 character(s) followed by a space, or line-break is all that is needed for something to be counted as a word. Again, thats not very hard to work within.

3. The principle is more important than the actual character number.

And the propblem here is your specific interpretation of the principle may not be in line with those moderating which would have those like you complaining. What this basically bopils down to is desiring things to reflect your specific and rather narrow views. Which is never going to work because there are always more people that are not yo than people who are you.

Big brain arguments on display here. /s

You can't really seem to handle the basic arguments. Whhy should I break out the advanced level stuff. bringing a BAR to a puppy fight.

[Realigo Actual]

While it is true that low effort reviews are implicitly worse than long-form point-for-point essay-style reviews, sometimes those reviews already exist. When I write a review I always take a look at the review space first.

If I don't feel I have anything particular to say, or if I have come to the game later and don't feel that I have new/temporally relevant information that needs communicating, I don't bother trying to leave a proper review; it's already done.

I have not noticed a phenomenon of the review section becoming spammed thanks to awards. I had noticed an increase there when Steam unveiled the new client which prompts a user for a review. If anything I have noticed that good reviews will often accumulate multiple awards making them even more visible than before.

I'd suggest perhaps more patience/persistence. It is not a life's work to parse a game's Steam review space for good information.

Additional filters would be nice but when it comes to the review system I'm a little touchy about asking for trouble. Suppose it spawns a meme of more ASCII? Maybe a Steam-specific Lorem Ipsum? I can see the Grayson headline now "Steam reviews are filled with ♥♥♥♥♥"