Steam critiques are typically a medley of significant, useful, jokey and meme-y, however Valve is trying to swap that vibe up a bit. The corporate has began publicly testing a brand new “helpfulness” system that can convey helpful critiques to the highest and successfully demote the enjoyable ones, relying on what the person desires to see.
“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,” the corporate mentioned.
The brand new “helpfulness” button is toggled on by default and works solely if you’re within the “summary” and “most helpful” views. When enabled, you will see critiques with the best scores by way of helpfulness up high, with jokey however comparatively ineffective critiques pushed down beneath. Unticking the helpfulness field will convey again Steam’s outdated overview system.
Feedback each unfavorable and optimistic are evaluated utilizing AI algorithms, person stories and Steam’s moderators. In a FAQ, Steam mentioned it can “take quite a while” to fee the 140 million+ current critiques, and longer nonetheless for just lately revealed ones.
“That doesn’t mean players won’t ever see… humorous, but unhelpful posts, but it hopefully means that they’ll see them less frequently when trying to learn about a game,” Valve wrote. “The primary goal of Steam User Reviews is to help potential players make informed decisions about the games they are considering purchasing.”