Steam Game Reviews

[BillyBozarth]

Is Steam manipulating user reviews to make games appear more highly rated than they actually are?

Over the years Steam has changed up how it displays user reviews on games. Here are some changes I have noticed:

1. They added an "off topic" review filter that was set to on by default. This was supposedly to help with review bombing however I never noticed Steam remove positive reviews in that metric. Essentially it appears as if Steam only removes "off topic" reviews when they are negative. Recently I have noticed this asterisk completely disappear altogether. Has this "feature" been removed?

2. Recently I have noticed the numbers not adding up in the review scores. For instance Battlefield 2042 currently shows the following numbers for reviews under all time:

Mixed 44% are positive
All 241,424
Positive 101,507
Negative 139,917

Simple math (101,507 / 241,424) * 100 = 42%
Where is the extra 2% coming from?

All these numbers are using standard filters and are related to each other (another words I am not applying different filters for the denominator and then numerator ect..)

3. They recently changed the color on the mixed tag to be less yellow. This isnt manipulating numbers but is considered a "nudge" in marketing terms to try and make a product appear more appealing than it is.

It would make sense that it would be in Steam's best interest to manipulate all game reviews towards a positive skew as they make a percentage profit off of their sales.

TLDR
Am I missing something here or are Steam reviews not to be trusted.

[Crazy Tiger]

Spawn not just was an ex moderator, but also a regular on the forums. Most of us regulars have learned a thing or two over the years about how Valve and Steam work. some of us also like to read up on things like the official Steamworks documentations.

It's indeed not transparent. I do agree that it's not misleading, but I'd say in a way it also is misleading. But that's just because I don't fully like that key activations and such are excluded from the average rating. I understand why it is like it is (devs giving out keys in exchange for positive reviews, for example, is why key activations don't count anymore), but still...

[BillyBozarth]

Publicado originalmente por Crazy Tiger:

Spawn not just was an ex moderator, but also a regular on the forums. Most of us regulars have learned a thing or two over the years about how Valve and Steam work. some of us also like to read up on things like the official Steamworks documentations.

It's indeed not transparent. I do agree that it's not misleading, but I'd say in a way it also is misleading. But that's just because I don't fully like that key activations and such are excluded from the average rating. I understand why it is like it is (devs giving out keys in exchange for positive reviews, for example, is why key activations don't count anymore), but still...

Its a shame Steam isnt more transparent in this area. I am actually more trusting of the reviews knowing the full story. I also agree that excluding keys that werent purchased directly is unfortunate but after your explanation it makes sense why they would do this.

[BillyBozarth]

Publicado originalmente por alumlovescake:

No but Valve are deleting steam threads that talk negatively about a game

That may be the game developers. From what I understand the developers can censor anything on their forms. It may not actually be Steam moderators.

[Crazy Tiger]

Publicado originalmente por BillyBozarth:

Publicado originalmente por alumlovescake:

No but Valve are deleting steam threads that talk negatively about a game

That may be the game developers. From what I understand the developers can censor anything on their forms. It may not actually be Steam moderators.

Yup. Game hubs in general are moderated by the game developers/publishers and their appointed moderator teams. Assistance with the report queue from the Steam paid mods is enabled by default, but game developers/publishers can opt out of that. Enough do, btw.

Valve actually discourages censorship, deleting criticism or even getting involved much. But as is often with advice it can be ignored and plenty of game devs ignore such advice.

[Sen no Rikyū]

What if some game ratings and reviews are alternate steam accounts with a copy of the game?

I mean, steam could easily create steam accounts and do reviews with them.

Bots exist, false viewers counts exist and so do false votes likes and subscribes/follows.

They own the platform is not hard to imagine?

Just judge the games yourselves dont focus too much in numbers and what the "rest" opinion is on something, form it yourself.

[Zefar]

Publicado originalmente por alumlovescake:

No but Valve are deleting steam threads that talk negatively about a game

Valve only delete reviews that are not reviews. Often those that get removed are from people who just insult the developers.

Publicado originalmente por BillyBozarth:

Publicado originalmente por alumlovescake:

No but Valve are deleting steam threads that talk negatively about a game

That may be the game developers. From what I understand the developers can censor anything on their forms. It may not actually be Steam moderators.

Only Valve can remove reviews.

Publicado originalmente por Sen no Rikyū:

What if some game ratings and reviews are alternate steam accounts with a copy of the game?

I mean, steam could easily create steam accounts and do reviews with them.

Bots exist, false viewers counts exist and so do false votes likes and subscribes/follows.

They own the platform is not hard to imagine?

Just judge the games yourselves dont focus too much in numbers and what the "rest" opinion is on something, form it yourself.

So what about Overwatch 2, Battlefield 2042 and many many more games that got high amount of negative reviews?
It'd be in Valve interest to make these those two games being highly positively reviewed because they are bigger titles. But that didn't happen.

If Valve only wanted positive reviews it would surely been spotted pretty quickly.

[Sen no Rikyū]

That's fair and I see your logic, but who knows, maybe some devs dont need the reviews push to get attention, I mean certainly Microsoft doesn't care about reveiws pfft, and Dice well, I think for decades call of duty and battlefield have been the kind of thing that is like cocaine for many, it may suck and be hated even like Windows, but people use them anyway.