We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Valve making steps to address 'off-topic review bombs' on Steam

By - | Views: 27,227

In a blog post today, Valve announced a pretty simple change to the way Steam games get a review score, to help with review bombing.

What is Review Bombing? To put it simply, tons of users going to a Steam page and leaving a negative review that's not always to do with the actual game in question. It's been something of a hot topic, since it became a tool for users to show their feelings about various things, most of the time something directed at the developer or publisher.

A recent example, would be how the Metro games on Steam got waves of negative reviews when Metro Exodus was announced as a timed-exclusive on the Epic Store.

So what are Valve doing? Well, they're going to remove what they say are 'off-topic review bombs' from the overall review score for that time period. However, the reviews themselves will still be left up for all to read and users on Steam can actually opt out of this removal system to continue seeing a review bomb as normal.

In a two question Q&A at the end of the blog post, Valve also mentioned a flaw in the system being that any review made during this period will no longer count if you leave this system turned on, which presumably means positive reviews too.

Valve did say they're working on "some other features around User Reviews" but they wanted to get this out as they thought it was "worth shipping by itself".

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam, Valve
19 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
59 comments
Page: «6/6
  Go to:

facePlanted Mar 18, 2019
(TheQuartering)
Steam Betrays It's Users & Further Shields Publishers From Backlash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvz7Tce0CwU
Doc Angelo Mar 18, 2019
Wow. So many people go nuts about something that can be configured. Steam shows how this should be done so that everyone gets what they want, but some people blindly assume that something has been taken away from them and go nuts. For those people, it doesn't seem to make sense to actually read if their fear is true.

I'm sure there will be people review-bombing Valves games because of that. In their view, they show how right they are about their behavior. In my view, they show that this configurable feature is needed.


Last edited by Doc Angelo on 18 March 2019 at 11:45 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Mar 19, 2019
I started watching that video and I didn't really like its attitude. And I am generally in agreement with you that this Steam policy is OK. But,
Quoting: HoriRemember that you can't fight fire with fire.
You can, actually. It's a well known technique in fighting forest fires to do a hopefully controlled burn somewhere the main forest fire will be passing through, to get rid of the fuel. And in general it is often perfectly practical and appropriate to fight a set of tactics by using similar tactics. If you're sitting at a chess board and somebody starts making chess moves at you, you can fight them by making chess moves back.

And I do think review bombing, although it seems often abused, has a place. Which is why I'm glad Valve are doing this the way they're doing it--not taking down the actual reviews, and allowing you to access what the review score with review bombs would be if you're interested. I would actually be upset if, say, the policy was that reviews identified as part of a review bomb were taken down. That would be bad.
Eike Mar 19, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.
Nevertheless Mar 19, 2019
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.
TheSHEEEP Mar 19, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.
That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.
stretch611 Mar 20, 2019
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.
That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

Yes, but if things change and you are required to play for one hour to leave a review, it is easy just to leave something running on your computer when you grab some lunch. That takes very little effort and people will do it if it is needed.

In general, only a small percentage of people leave reviews.

Factorio has sold over 1 million copies and has only 37,000 reviews. That is less than 4% of the players (though it hit 1 million almost 2 yearw ago and I think it is closer to 2 million which would make it only 2%)
Rimworld also has sold over 1 million copies and only has 30,000 reviews. That is only 3% of the players. (again, it is probably more in sales by now.)

Those are 2 indie games with highly motivated players. (both 98% positive.) It requires motivation to write a review... forcing a little in-game time is unlikely to stop someone from creating a review.
TheSHEEEP Mar 20, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: stretch611
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.
That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

Yes, but if things change and you are required to play for one hour to leave a review, it is easy just to leave something running on your computer when you grab some lunch. That takes very little effort and people will do it if it is needed.
You underestimate just how lazy people truly are. As a developer myself who sees a lot of interaction between support and users (and in the gaming business, too): Incredibly lazy. It is a fact one simply has to accept and deal with.
The few people that do leave short-playtime negative reviews are not highly motivated to do so, they are barely above the motivation threshold to do so. Increase the threshold and it is 100% guaranteed to decrease the number of those reviews.
Obviously, a few would do shenanigans like you described, but that will only be a minority among a minority.

Positive and negative reviews are also different to begin with.
A positive review is almost always left after a longer time of playing (for obvious reasons), so the minimum time requirement is a non-issue here.
While a negative review can also be left after a longer time of playing (making it a non-issue), many negative reviews are left after a very short while - and the main reasons for many of these are:
- Players did not inform themselves before their purchase and blame the game for not being something it never tried to be - which is pointless criticism. "I don't like my new blue car because it isn't red"...
- Review bombing because they disagree with the dev on issues not related to the game.
- Bugs or other severe technical issues.
- Design flaws so obvious and numerous that really only such a short time is needed to come to valid conclusions.

Of those four main reasons, only the last two are truly valid in judging a game's quality.
Which does make such a minimal time requirement a bit of a double-edged sword. From what I've seen over the years on Steam reviews, though, the part of the first two reasons is much larger than the last two, so I'd still be in favor of such a requirement.

Alternatively, Valve could do what they do with review bombs themselves, allowing reviews at any playtime, but not making them a part of the (default) score.

Anyway, review bombs come not only from those short playtimes ones, but also from normal players that simply didn't post a review before and now something non-game related cause them to lash out. Nothing other than Valve's measures will stop that. At least I couldn't think of anything right now...
Doc Angelo Mar 21, 2019
Quoting: stretch611In general, only a small percentage of people leave reviews.

Thats true because not many people feel the urge to write their experience down so that other can read it. However, many people have a strong motivation to somehow express their frustration with something. I'd say that review-bombing is typically done by people who wouldn't write actual reviews.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.