Valve no longer counts reviews of games not purchased on Steam

By admin On Sep 13, 2016

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Reviews from people who activated a game on Steam with a code are no longer counted in the total score. Only the reviews of gamers who buy the game via the platform are still counted. Valve says it is doing this to fight fraud.

Games on Steam are rated based on an average of all user ratings. Until now, everyone’s vote counted, but that was misused by game publishers and developers, says Valve. Game makers could influence the score by issuing codes themselves, for example by posting reviews themselves using fake accounts. According to Valve, there are also companies that leave positive reviews on Steam for a fee.

An analysis by Valve has shown that for at least 160 games, the review score is substantially higher if the review is posted by a user who has entered a code to activate the game. While that’s not evidence of abuse, Valve states that in many cases it’s obvious that these are auto-generated reviews, duplicates, or reviews from accounts linked to developers.

Due to the change to the scoring system, the score of about 14 percent of all games on Steam will change, according to Valve. Not only will scores go down, some games will also increase the overall rating. The changes are largely the result of small shifts. For example, a game that has 69 percent positive ratings will receive a “mixed” verdict, while it’s “positive” at 70 percent.

With the measure, Valve fights fraud, but also users who have no wrong intentions and who obtain their games through channels other than the Steam store will no longer have a voice when it comes to the overall rating of the game. It is still possible to leave written reviews and they will also be shown in the overview of reviews.

Valve gives users new options to filter reviews. For example, it is now possible to only read positive or negative reviews and you can choose between reviews from people who bought the game on Steam, or who activated a key. Changing the filters does not affect the rating shown.

Valve already implemented a change in May. Since then, two scores have been shown: an average of the ratings over the last thirty days and a total score over the entire life of a game. Valve came up with that adjustment to give a fairer picture of the current status of games.