Valve changes how Steam's user reviews work, seemingly to counter review bombing

There are two ways I work out whether a game is for me or not. First, I check critic reviews, especially from critics I respect and whose tastes align with my own. Then I check the Steam reviews. I tend to filter by players who've put serious hours into whatever game I'm checking out, but the overall consensus helps, too. I'm a little weird in that I like checking out games (and films, and books) with 'mixed' reviews rather than five-star classics, but the consensus helps make the decision all the same. However, Valve is making changes to how user review scores are presented on its storefront, which could change how we see aggregates going forward.

Valve announced the change to Steam user reviews to give "a better indication of user sentiment." Steam's user review system has been in place for nearly 12 years with only minor iterations, but Valve is now adding language-specific review scores for games that reach large enough numbers of players.

Whether you're playing one of the best FPS games or an indie gem that's hit the big time (looking at you, Balatro), you may encounter a review score aggregated not from the overall player consensus, but the average of players writing in your language specifically.

In a press release, Valve explained its reasoning, saying that, "customers in different regions of the world may have vastly different experiences from each other for the same game." They cite translation issues, cultural references, poor network connections, and other reasons, but there's an elephant in the room.

Review bombing is a practice where players showcase their distaste for a particular game by spamming bad reviews in a coordinated fashion. It's different from just reviewing a game poorly because the reviews are posted in bad faith, or as a reaction to news rather than an accurate portrayal of the game. Review bombs can be enacted for numerous reasons, including changes to monetization, perceived self-censorship of explicit material, or just because your favorite game didn't win Game of the Year.

The latter example was a widely publicized review bomb from predominately Chinese players who wanted Black Myth: Wukong to win the prestigious award. Unable to leave reviews on the winner, Astro Bot, because it's not on Steam, players turned their anger on Baldur's Gate 3, as Larian's Swen Vincke was the one to announce Astro Bot's win.

Steam's new rules may prevent such language-based reviews from impacting the scores you see. Alternatively, it might encourage would-be review bombers to learn English or utilize translations in order to impact the review scores for English-speaking players.

If you're not a fan of the system, however, you can head into your Steam settings to change it back to showing the Overall Review Score, disabling the new update if you so wish. However, with high thresholds for showing language-based reviews (a minimum of 2,000 publicly visible reviews and at least 200 written reviews in a given language), it seems like it will be harder to game the system going forward.

If all this talk of reviews has got you yearning for something great to play, our list of the best free PC games has some gems. Otherwise, make sure you pick up one of the best gaming monitors so you can read these reviews in crystal clear definition.

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