Do you run a paid review scam but hated those pesky SJWs downvoting the product? Fear no more!

They should show a graph of reviews and allow you to select a zone if you want to limit the shown reviews to a particular time. Maybe show posts from the developer over that period too.

This news is a shame, because I relied on Steam reviews to gauge general reception and look for problems in the past - better than most of the game journalists around to be honest.

Not sure if poll is in the mood of the post or is completely serious (and that evah does not help) - decided to leave sarcastic vote anyway :)

Making Helpful User Reviews More Helpful™

Unfortunately, if you're a monopoly you can get away with basically anything.

So slightly more rigged reviews. Are they keeping the most recent reviews on the side as well though? It'll be great if that was kept, regardless of the biased %.

Steam reviews were hardly useful to begin with, but the recent changes to them... Now they are just there for mild entertainment, but I really feel no need to write any 'review' on Steam anymore.

Just checked Fallout 4 and GTA 5 reviews. Before all shown red, now most positive.
Yes, fuck you too Valve.

Every time they royally screw up before a sale, boycotting this now too. No loss for me.

Do devs still pay for reviews anymore?

Surely it's just a case of giving a few keys.

I don't pay any attention to any (steam) reviewers or curators.

I either go off my gut (probably a 50% success rate), or a few trusted reviewers on websites like eurogamer/PC Gamer.

On some games the "reviews" amount to little more than a single word, or sometimes even two!!!

Surely, in many cases, curators amount to little more than rigged reviewers, right - especially the ones who do giveaways / constantly plug some random CSGO gambling site?

i get easily frustrated or annoyed at a game.
some nasty words to publishers like BMC, microids, etc... bought a set of followers that downvote in groups of 4.
I guess i no longer got an attitude problem. :P

Volvo has more toxic practises than users could ever imagine. That's time for fans stop sucking Gabe's stick and demand transparency.

nice, now all the construcive critics who get mass downvoted by all the fanboys cant be seen and will be completely ignored.

I disliked when they implemented this system on another site I use, so obviously I don't like it here either - but as per usual, it would be incredibly surprising for them to revert this change despite negative user feedback so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As long as everyone, who only played 10mins of a game, is allowed to write a review.. the Steamreview system is not worthy to look at.
At milds it is a light indicator of the current main public community of the game, at its best stake.
(or just a random rant of a user with a bad rig complaining he cant play the game...)

They need to construct some kinda limiter to it, in combination of like playtime, special achievements & steam user level. IDK
(in general, only a small group of users check the mass on reviews , or even the guys behind one of it)

But well the rant is up and developers all kind of em, will have their issues, in combination from the steam limitaion of gamekeys in contrast to the review rates.. xD

Doesnt feel right and will force small indiegroups to leave steam, while reviewpaid achievementwhore cardscam games are always on top ^^

I get what they're trying to do, but as a reviewer I like seeing the downvotes on my own reviews. It reassures me that someone not on my friends list might have actually read them =P

Like many others have already said, reviews are pretty useless in general. The information provided by the devs themselves is usually more than enough to figure whether the game's good or bad. Basically whenever you see "this is an innovative whatnot featuring a deep storyline, unbelievably deep characters and awesome this and that" - the game is crap. When you see something like "the game is set here and there, and tells the story of this certain someone who went somewhere to do something" - then you can proceed to step two and look at the screenshots. If those don't look like crap, then the game could be worth a try. Probably. Maybe.

Sure, nothing is certain, but what I said above is true in 9 out of 10 cases. Especially when you've played at least a couple dozen games and generally know what you like and what you don't. :)

As a "developer of sorts", I don't like not seeing how many people didn't found a review helpful. Helpful reviews help improve games (either directly or indirectly). Knowing what people agree with and what not is always helpful.

As a "gamer of sorts" I find it really weird.

In general I've always found the whole most/least helpful reviews system to be worthless. I'm not sure what Valve could do to fix that, but this isn't it.

Huh, whatever they like to do, as long as store/devs don't start hiding picked reviews from access. In any case if they will lie too much to people who pay them, system will self-regularize and people remember harm longer than good.

If I ever need to check reviews (rarely), I look only at negative and their ratings do not matter as long as I find speaker reasonable and honest. Everyone just values different things in games.

Not showing number of negative votes.. well I can relate that reviewer can be bullied by groups of people downvoting every review but it is part of life to learn to handle situations, and this one is not dangerous, hence a good lesson. Can't say this being forced is an improvement, only makes being a reviewer too comfy. If this will trigger masses of mediocre reviewers loose, then it is a terrible thing :#

Thing is 80% of the reviews are not reviews. It is a joke and complain box and rarely used as it should. The problem here is that its one way the costumers can make their voice heard.

Have faith in that serious customers will usually browse the reviews properly before deciding whether to buy the product - and if not, they only have themselves to blame, really. No matter how hyped the product, people have always had to ignore the tons of fake/troll reviews and find some serious negative reviews in order to thoroughly line up pros and cons. This only makes it a little bit harder than usual.

Might sound strange coming from someone who wrote a fair number of reviews, but do people actually pay much attention to them as an aid in buying games?

Most people (of the small percentage of users who actually do reviews) don't update old reviews - that no.2 change is BS :(

time to hide reviews, they have became more useless than ign.