Include reviews from Steam Keys in the default overall review summary

[VigorousJammer]

Hey everyone, over the past few months or a year or however long since they've changed things, the Steam review summary has become increasingly worthless.

If you're not sure which change I'm talking about, the "Steam Review summary" (a.k.a. - the thing at the top of that page that says "positive", "mixed", "negative", etc.) now only accounts for games that were purchased directly through Steam. Any person who got the game by redeeming a key they purchased on some place like the Humble Store or some other third-party seller no longer apply when we're talking about a game's overall user rating.

If you ask me, this means that games are getting higher praise than they deserve.

Take a look at "Woodle Tree Adventures":
http://store.steampowered.com/app/299460/Woodle_Tree_Adventures/

It's rated as "Mostly Positive" by the roughly 1,400 people who bought the game on Steam itself, but if you scroll down and factor in all roughly 2,500 of the English-language reviews, you'll see that it should actually be "Mixed".

Let's take a look at another example:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/297020/The_Culling_Of_The_Cows/

A game called "The Culling of the Cows", which looks like a middling Flash game you would've seen circa 2005, and it has "Mostly positive" reviews. Ah, but wait, let's scroll down, and factor in all of the reviews. Now we see, there's a much more honest "mixed" rating.

These are just two examples, but there's plenty more.

To me, I feel like this is very much the result of Steam allowing for refunds, which is fine and definitely appreciated... but if you don't have the game in your Steam library, you can't review it at all. Thus, I think any users who are unsatisfied with a game just return it before reviewing it, and the only reviews remaining for people who purchased the game through Steam are either people who played too long to get a refund, or the most loyal supporters of a game.

I realize that perhaps I'm complaining about something relatively small here, especially since there's still a way to view what I consider the "real" overall consensus, but... it just seems dishonest to push only some of the reviews to the top of the page, especially when it's mostly from only the most loyal supporters of a game.

Steam should still allow people to see reviews only from people who have purchased the game directly through steam, but they really should revert the score at the top of the store page back to how it used to be... to reflect ALL users who have reviewed the game.

[Start_Running]

They factor them out because devs used to basically give out free keys for good reviews, in order to boost their ratings. At least with the steam one you're likely getting the reviews of people who actually paid for it on the steam platform and not.

As for the refund question... A person can review a game before they refund it. If they so choose.

[dynastystar]

You do know that there's a tab to click to let you specify which reviews you want, right? https://imgur.com/YXEoZZ6

[MrL0G1C]

It was done to stop developers handing out keys for good reviews - which was happening by the sounds of it.

You could do a stub of a review before refunding and beef it up later.

[VigorousJammer]

Originally posted by dynastystar:

You do know that there's a tab to click to let you specify which reviews you want, right? https://imgur.com/YXEoZZ6

Yes, I already mentioned that.
However, that doesn't change what's shown at the top of the page, and it doesn't change what's shown in search results.

How about Steam give us this option but have it be a permanent one in user settings?
Instead of being something you have to scroll down and manually do every time you want to know.

[Pheace]

Honestly I'd revisit what you consider 'dishonest'. That's like, the entire reason they aren't part of the default rating anymore.

[VigorousJammer]

Also, as much as devs might be crappy and hand out keys for an influx of positive reviews...

Devs could just as easily pay people to buy the game direct from Steam. The keys they get aren't free, after all, are they? It's lost profit either way.

You're also losing all of the reviews from legitimate owners of a game who may have got it from Humble Bundle or some other bundle site. Which I would imagine would be a much larger number of people than whatever free keys got handed out.

So, really all that's happening is you're losing a large portion of the sample size (sometimes even over 50% of available reviews) many of which come from a much wider array of game players.
With the amount of people who wait for deals and shop on places other than Steam nowadays, those reviews should absolutely be included. Especially with something like Humble Monthly existing, where people can get a 10% discount if they don't buy directly from Steam...

On top of all that, I'm also just kind of annoyed that if I review something it won't be counted just because I bought it from another storefront. My review is essentially considered worthless, just because I didn't buy the game directly from Valve. It's a bunch of nonsense. To me, It makes the Steam reviews more worthless than they've ever been before, and that's saying something.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by VigorousJammer:

Originally posted by dynastystar:

You do know that there's a tab to click to let you specify which reviews you want, right? https://imgur.com/YXEoZZ6

Yes, I already mentioned that.
However, that doesn't change what's shown at the top of the page, and it doesn't change what's shown in search results.

How about Steam give us this option but have it be a permanent one in user settings?
Instead of being something you have to scroll down and manually do every time you want to know.

YOu have the option at the bottom buut for steam's purpses it only counts those acquired through its store front.

[VigorousJammer]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by VigorousJammer:

Yes, I already mentioned that.
However, that doesn't change what's shown at the top of the page, and it doesn't change what's shown in search results.

How about Steam give us this option but have it be a permanent one in user settings?
Instead of being something you have to scroll down and manually do every time you want to know.

YOu have the option at the bottom buut for steam's purpses it only counts those acquired through its store front.

Like I said, I want a permanent toggle that can be set in user settings that would be applied to the search results and the default review consensus at the top of a game's store page. Not a temporary one that I have to click through, scroll down, and set every time. That's super user unfriendly.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by VigorousJammer:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

YOu have the option at the bottom buut for steam's purpses it only counts those acquired through its store front.

Like I said, I want a permanent toggle that can be set in user settings that would be applied to the search results and the default review consensus at the top of a game's store page. Not a temporary one that I have to click through, scroll down, and set every time. That's super user unfriendly.

That's probably not gonna happen.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by VigorousJammer:

Originally posted by dynastystar:

You do know that there's a tab to click to let you specify which reviews you want, right? https://imgur.com/YXEoZZ6

Yes, I already mentioned that.
However, that doesn't change what's shown at the top of the page, and it doesn't change what's shown in search results.

How about Steam give us this option but have it be a permanent one in user settings?
Instead of being something you have to scroll down and manually do every time you want to know.

It should be an option, or better yet, it should just show a Steam purchaser score and an overall Steam user score.

[Pheace]

Originally posted by VigorousJammer:

The keys they get aren't free, after all, are they? It's lost profit either way.

No, the keys they get are 100% free.

[Darren]

Originally posted by Pheace:

Originally posted by VigorousJammer:

The keys they get aren't free, after all, are they? It's lost profit either way.

No, the keys they get are 100% free.

Basically if they make people buy through the Steam store it costs them 30% of the games price per copy that they don't get back. If they give someone a key it costs them nothing as Steam will generate effectively unlimited keys for a developer for no cost.

Sure in both cases they aren't getting profit for the sale, but usually the people they are giving these keys to for reviews aren't people that typically would buy their game anyway. Think of a bot farm of accounts whose sole purpose is to rate up a game using free keys. They'll never actually play the games merely idle for a random number of hours to make the review look legit.