Steam Update Adds "Recent Review Score," Easy Free Game Disclosure

Lizzy Finnegan

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Mar 11, 2015
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Steam Update Adds "Recent Review Score," Easy Free Game Disclosure

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"Recent review score" will show positive ratings for the past 30 days.

Valve has announced that Steam will be updating user reviews in order to show the most recent reviews and scores. This is being done in order to reflect how players currently feel about a game, as they often change over time with patches, updates, and dlc. In the post, Valve wrote that it is difficult for newer reviews to be seen and voted on in order to be determined "most helpful," with reviews labeled as such often describing "an outdated view of a game that might have changed dramatically over the course of Early Access or post-release development."

"That review score that appears at the top of a product page didn't always reflect the dynamic nature of the game," the post reads [http://store.steampowered.com/news/21695/]. "We'd previously only been compiling an overall score using a simple calculation of the percentage of all reviews that were positive. This let us be really transparent in how the score was being calculated, but didn't accommodate cases when a game has changed a lot (for better or worse) over time."

In order to reflect the current view of a particular game, a "Recent Review Score" has been added, and will show the game's positive percentage of reviews over the past 30 days (assuming the game has been on steam for 45 days or more and has enough reviews posted in that time frame). The overall score will still be present.

Some other changes include a "Summary" tab that focuses on recent helpful, and recently posted, reviews as well as a checkbox for easy disclosure if you received a free copy of the game.

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flying_whimsy

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Dec 2, 2009
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I'm glad they noticed the discrepancy. I've always just been going down and viewing the most recent reviews anyways, because often that overall score definitely does not reflect the current state of the game. This will hopefully cut down on returns and such because a game has changed so much since early access or the servers have been shut down. I'm a little worried less scrupulous devs and publishers will try to game the system with shill reviews during sales and such, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I wonder if they'll implement something that will just let you see reviews for the current version of the game, but that could be a problem for stuff that is updated constantly.
 

FPLOON

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Jul 10, 2013
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Fucking finally! Now, I can buy more/less games with a more "accurate" representation of my feelings regarding a particular game...

Other than that, considering my last review is over 60 days old, I don't think its reaction will change anytime soon...
 

LonePunman

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Jan 3, 2016
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Someone at Valve finally started reading the internet again, it would seem. Must have been the same guy that let YouTube know their content claim system was shit.
 

K12

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Dec 28, 2012
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This is definitely useful and should have been available for early access games from the start because you never know when it'll get abandoned or ruined by later developments.

I kind of wish there was a seperate "performance" section because, while that's very important, I'd still like a simple way to judge whether I should wait for patches to a game or just ignore it entirely.
 

Metalrocks

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Jan 15, 2009
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certainly is different. last weekend they have had a free weekend of ghost in the shell. the overall reviews are "mostly positive" and mine is positive as well which is not even 5 days old, the new reviews are "mixed". which would be interesting to see how it will be in a month when things hopefully change since the game is still in early access.

im actually very curious how reviews will be of users when doom is released.
 

Baresark

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Dec 19, 2010
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Good, that was a necessary change. Especially when a bunch of people review bomb a game because something doesn't quite work right on launch. This will save the trouble of forum posts always asking whether the game is worth it well after launch.