Steam reviews and keys

[Zelrune]

I read somewhere that if you did not purchase the game through the steam store, your reviews will not be counted towards the overall review count on that game's store page. I buy frequently from Humble Bundle.

I would appreciate it if someone could confirm this as true or false, and perhaps a link on where they got that answer, as I could not find any info for those on the steam review FAQ page. Thank you.

[cinedine]

Your review will not affect the aggregated "rating", yes.
You can see it by looking at any game (with enough reviews obviously) and hover over the all time "rating" and compare it to the amount of Steam purchases in the review filter. They are equal with the key purchases left outside.

It was done to counter gaming the reviewsystem with giveaways and throwaway accounts.

[Kargor]

Originally posted by cinedine:

It was done to counter gaming the reviewsystem with giveaways and throwaway accounts.

Actually, it was simply done because Valve wants to put more emphasis on their own store.

Things like the game counter depending on whether the game is still in the store or not are another change to that end -- for a user, it makes no difference whether a game is in the Steam store or not, as long as he "owns" it. Likewise, the game is going to be the same, whether it's purchased in the Steam store or elsewhere -- so the reviews end up being the same too.

"Gaming the system with giveaways" is something you can do for some trash games, and even then, you can get a handful of keys and that's it.
Most real games just don't get giveaways like that.

As for throwaway accounts -- if that's really a problem, they could just not allow limited accounts to make a review.