After the last few days of viewing, Valve has finally officially introduced the changes to Review of the utility system From users on steamwhich aims to highlight the most useful ones and, conversely, hide the less useful ones. The new system is now active by default for all users.
As explained in a post on Steam , reviews were previously sorted based on the number of “helpful” votes assigned by other users. The problem is that it was quickly noticed that some users were exploiting the reviews to create ASCII graphics, write jokes, memes, and other content that might not be very helpful to those looking for information about a game at the purchase stage, which led to the game’s popularity increasing. Steam’s curators are making significant changes to how the system evaluates whether a review is actually helpful or useless, not banning funny posts entirely, but moving them to a secondary position.
How Steam’s New Review Tool System Works
As stated on Steam, “User reviews marked as useless For potential customers, for example those that consist of one word, ASCII graphics, or are basically memes and jokes, will be Ordered after other reviews. On the game store page. For fans of this type of post, there is the possibility of activating the custom option to make it appear while navigating.
But how do we determine whether a review is helpful or not? Valve explains that it’s “a combination of technologies, including user reports, the Steam moderation team carefully examining many reviews, and some machine learning algorithms that help human judges rate reviews. Our team found that it was easy to spot many unhelpful reviews, so we targeted those first,” noting that this is a “work in progress” and that it will take some time for all new and existing reviews to be evaluated.
“Incurable internet trailblazer. Troublemaker. Explorer. Professional pop culture nerd.”
