Steam review scores weigh only Steam Store purchaser views

[HEXUS]

If you got a Steam key from a third party or developer your opinion won't affect the score.

Read more.

[cheesemp]

Little bit of a hatchet job to fix a splinter! As someone who mainly buys games from outside the steam store it removes my ability to leave proper reviews. I'd be less bothered by this if steam prices didn't seem to be increasing recently with less and less sales worth bothering with...

[mattburnzy]

Little bit of a hatchet job to fix a splinter! As someone who mainly buys games from outside the steam store it removes my ability to leave proper reviews. I'd be less bothered by this if steam prices didn't seem to be increasing recently with less and less sales worth bothering with...

You can still leave a proper review. It just wont go into the Steam Purchasers filter.

[Vorlon99]

I get keys from Humble Bundles and the like, as well as direct through Steam, surely a review *score* from a Humble purchase is no less valid a contribution to the overall score than a direct purchase.
The only consideration would be that you might score it less harshly the less you paid for it, but that would be true of direct steam purchases too.
Obviously its hard to weed out the self-promotion that some publishers indulge in.

[cheesemp]

You can still leave a proper review. It just wont go into the Steam Purchasers filter.

But then it has no effect on the overall score... Thankfully you still have metacritic but I can't help but feel they could have done something better.

[Pleiades]

But then it has no effect on the overall score... Thankfully you still have metacritic but I can't help but feel they could have done something better.

Metacritic is awful though isn't it? Well I think so anyway, just so many fanboys giving 10s and others giving zeros to try to balance them out LOL.

At least Steam are making an effort in this regard, unlike Amazon with their paid 5 star reviews....

[TooNice]

Metacritic is awful though isn't it? Well I think so anyway, just so many fanboys giving 10s and others giving zeros to try to balance them out LOL.

At least Steam are making an effort in this regard, unlike Amazon with their paid 5 star reviews....

I think that Amazon's "best rated" positive/negative review works well enough.

I think that generally speaking, the outliners do not make enough difference to matter most of the time. The odd time where there is a game that is highly divisive resulting in a majority of 10s and 0s, you should probably approach it like Marmite (or, ahem, Brexit): recognise that it is a highly divisive game, and assume that you'll be rolling the dice if you buy it, especially if the praise and criticism from players and professional reviewers aren't swaying you either way.

[jim]

I think that Amazon's "best rated" positive/negative review works well enough.

I think that generally speaking, the outliners do not make enough difference to matter most of the time. The odd time where there is a game that is highly divisive resulting in a majority of 10s and 0s, you should probably approach it like Marmite (or, ahem, Brexit): recognise that it is a highly divisive game, and assume that you'll be rolling the dice if you buy it, especially if the praise and criticism from players and professional reviewers aren't swaying you either way.

I agree with you on the big titles, but to my mind the problem is more about much smaller games.

There are plenty of budget games which will have a whole stream of extremely positive reviews that are completely unjustified. Naturally with these, there aren't enough genuine reviews to balance them out - and then you've got a dreadful game that appears to be great.

Of course, there's nothing to stop the devs putting it on sale for the first 5 days and buying loads of copies through fake accounts, but it should be easier to spot than if they're giving away codes to legit users in exchange for reviews.

[pastymuncher]

What does it matter where you bought the game from? As long as you have it and give a honest review then it should be counted towards the score. Going to have to check a game out more carefully now.

[aniilv]

What does it matter where you bought the game from? As long as you have it and give a honest review then it should be counted towards the score. Going to have to check a game out more carefully now.

"Honest review" chuckled

This system makes perfect sense

[azrael-]

This seems mainly a move by Valve to incentivise buyers to buy directly off Steam. Have to keep the money flowing into Gabe's pockets. The man is starving...

One thing did cross my mind, though: What if you bought a game on Steam, wrote a review on it and then asked for a refund and got it? Would that alter your review status?

[pastymuncher]

"Honest review" chuckled

This system makes perfect sense

Why does it make perfect sense? What makes my review of the game worth any less just because I wasn't mug enough to pay the price that Steam is asking.

[shaithis]

Perhaps now some people will understand why screaming for Steam to be the online content delivery system is a really bad idea and very short-sighted.

[jimbouk]

Well if they're making any effort to reduce artificially inflated reviews then that's a good step IMO. Devs could hand out 50 keys in return for positive reviews, easy win for them at a cost to Steam and a the credibility of the Steam platform. Better than some sites that default to showing reviews highest rated first, one of my current bugbears!

[Scryder]

Wish I knew this earlier! I just spent £100 on the Humble Bundle Store buying Steam games. Just because a few devs are screwing around with inflated review score, guess my reviews are not valued by Steam anymore.

I just recently got a gaming PC, having not played on PC for over 3 long years, and frankly Steam is now looking like a bit of a mess with all the indie and obscure titles... sales used to be decent, but now it's hard to find anything. Steam seems to have devolved pretty badly from a few years ago.

Oh well, in the 7 years I've had a steam account, I've only left 1 review. And since 75% of the new games I've bought since getting this PC were on Steam, but not from the Steam (although a lot of the prices were the same as steam!), guess I won't bother leaving a review for them.

Off topic, this does seem familiar to Amazon reviews for stuff on their Daily deal pages. I got an action camera from them, a cheap Chinese knockoff of the gopro. But looking at the 10 reviews, all had 5 stars (8 said they got it for review for free, the other 2 looked like also fake reviews). I knew I couldn't trust any of them, but it was fun reading them... all over-inflated praise. The camera works and is OK for the price I paid, but battery life is crap (can only film for about 45mins before discharging) and I'd probably give it a 2 star at best!

End of the day, this does seem like the DRM argument from back in the day, punishing genuine customers for the behaviour of a few rotten apples. Will piss off genuine customers. Also, what's to stop a dev from giving money to the fake reviewers to buy the game from steam (instead of codes)... you'd still have the same problem.

[Strawb77]

`only those reviews by gamers who purchased via the Steam Store contribute to a game's overall score.`

and people who were gifted or had traded their games?