I'm sure you've all seen some of the more playful user reviews on Steam, but they're not exactly helpful for figuring out if you want to buy a game and so Valve have a new "Helpfulness System" they're testing.
Valve said in the announcement of the new Beta that this new system will not impact the actual review scores, just change the ordering of what reviews are actually shown. As Valve explained:
User reviews that are identified as being unhelpful for potential customers, such as one-word reviews, reviews comprised of ASCII art, or reviews that are primarily playful memes and in-jokes, will be sorted behind other reviews on the game’s store page. That doesn't mean players won't ever see these humorous, but unhelpful posts, but it hopefully means that they’ll see them less frequently when trying to learn about a game. If you enjoy seeing these sorts of reviews when browsing the store, there's an option on the store page to include them when browsing.
How do Valve determine which to show? They said they use a mixture of techniques, including user reports and the Steam moderation team looking directly at reviews, along with some "machine learning algorithms". They found that a lot of the unhelpful reviews were easy enough to spot but it's all a work in progress. And of course, considering the amount of user reviews on Steam, this could take a while to get through.
For example, looking at Persona 3 Reload without (first picture) and with the new system activated (second picture) and yeah…the results of this new system are pretty clear:
Linux_Rocks Aug 15
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Put an end to those steam point farmers, tired of all the "If this gets 400 likes and 40 community awards my friend will buy me a 4090 and a sack of lemons" or "I will eat a spoon of hot sauce for every 5 likes this review gets".
Now just make jesters give you no points to stop incentivizing toxicity
Quoting: MrSeatbeltYES!Those types of reviews are the worse and I'll be glad when we don't have to see them ever again.
Put an end to those steam point farmers, tired of all the "If this gets 400 likes and 40 community awards my friend will buy me a 4090 and a sack of lemons" or "I will eat a spoon of hot sauce for every 5 likes this review gets".
Now just make jesters give you no points to stop incentivizing toxicity
Mountain Man Aug 15
Mountain Man Aug 15
Quoting: MrSeatbeltNow just make jesters give you no points to stop incentivizing toxicityI approve this message.
Quoting: MrSeatbeltNow just make jesters give you no points to stop incentivizing toxicityYes. The introduction of the jester award with points seems to encourage a lot of spam.
Quoting: a0kamiI'm way more frustrated by troll/shitpost steam guides than reviews tbh, might have grown too old for the internet alreadyThose are kinda hidden. The reviews on the other hand show right away when you go to a store page, which was unprofessional from a Valve perspective.
slaapliedje Aug 15
Bah, maybe I'm just old, get off my lawn!
Linux_Rocks Aug 15
Quoting: slaapliedjeI just wish there were a way to get the steam store to ignore sound tracks... anyone else remember when you bought a game on CD, that the vast majority of them were just CD Audio tracks you could rip/convert! Imagine a world when you didn't have to pay 10 dollars extra just to listen to the video game music?I like soundtracks on Steam. 👀
Bah, maybe I'm just old, get off my lawn!
What I hate is when the older ones aren't recategorized as such and still act like they're game DLC. Cause it makes getting all of your music easier when they're actually treated as soundtracks.
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