The new system uses machine learning to determine how informative your game review is.
Steam remains the main PC game store for so many people. Moreover, it’s a place to share thoughts and experiences — including via Steam user reviews. While it is certainly fun to scroll them for jokes, memes, and ASCII art, the main purpose of the reviews is to inform other users on whether a game is good or not. Valve decided to interfere and adjust the sorting system for user reviews on Steam. Here are all the details.
“Unhelpful” Steam user reviews
The company shared information on this new feature via the official Steam news. The post explains that the reviews should help other people to decide — to buy or not to buy this game. This type of user reviews is considered helpful by Steam.
The system used to evaluate helpfulness by the number of upvotes and downvotes. Still, this pattern doesn’t work for hilarious posts and really good ASCII art. People enjoy them and upvote them, but that doesn’t make this review a real recommendation.
To solve this situation, Valve introduces sorting Steam user reviews by their helpfulness. It’s active by default, and unhelpful reviews have low priority.
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How to see funny user reviews on Steam?
The notes on this update clearly state that memes and other creative posts will not be deleted. You can scroll down to find them or just activate a different sorting principle. To do so, you need:
- Find the Steam reviews section on a game’s page.
- Scroll to the very bottom and press the Browse all reviews link.
- Click the drop-down menu Most Helpful (all time) to select a different one.
- Choose Funny to see memes and hilarious posts.
Who decides on helpfulness?
Valve uses a mix of approaches: the work of their moderation team and machine learning. Sure, it is impossible to check all Steam user reviews manually — the store has over 140m such posts. However, the company says that it is easy to spot patterns of helpfulness and distinguish what reviews should be sorted on the top of this new system.
The algorithm is in development, so Valve promises to improve the reviews sorting over time.
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