Proposal: Separate Early Access and Post-Launch Reviews on Steam

[Emperor]

Hi everyone,

I'm sick of Early Access review bombing killing decent games after they’ve been fixed. A game might start off rocky, but after months (or years) of updates, it can become something great—yet old negative reviews still dominate the score.

So, I have a proposal that could help both players and developers get a clearer picture of a game’s evolution.

🎯 The Proposal: A Dual Review System
🔹 Early Access Reviews (EA Score)
These reviews stay separate from post-launch reviews.
Score remains visible so players can see how the game performed in EA.
🔹 Post-Launch Reviews (Final Score)
When a game leaves Early Access, reviews reset for a fresh start.
New score shows the current state of the game.
🟢 Both scores would be displayed side-by-side, allowing players to see:

🔄 Did the game improve over time?
🚀 Did it go from ‘Mostly Negative’ to ‘Mostly Positive’ after launch?
❌ Is it still bad, or did the devs fix everything?
This system would give players a better-informed purchase decision and prevent greatly improved games from being buried under outdated complaints.

❓ Why Is This Needed?
🛑 Old EA reviews often mislead buyers about the game’s current state.
⚖️ Developers don’t get a fair chance to prove their improvements.
📈 Games should be judged based on their launch version, not outdated versions from months/years ago.
📢 Valve, Please Consider This!
I think this would be a huge improvement to Steam’s review system and help good Early Access games get the recognition they deserve once they’ve been fixed.

Let’s discuss! What do you all think? Would this help improve how we judge games on Steam?

[Brian9824]

I think i made a similar suggestion a while back, you can already kinda do this by filtering by date range, but a simple filter box to hide EA reviews would be nice and easy to implement.