Steam is going to take measures against fake reviews

Steam has indicated that it wants to tackle so-called review bombs. It has built a tool to recognize when offtopic reviews are posted in quick succession, after which they are excluded from a game’s overall review score.

The plans are outlined in a blog post from Valve, in which it explains how to combat the phenomenon of review bombing. If a large number of reviews that are suspected to be fake are posted within a short period of time, the developer will be notified and the reviews that fall within this time frame will be marked as offtopic and then hidden and will not count for the total review score of that game.

A tool has been developed that can determine in real time whether suspicious review activity is occurring, after which a team within Valve is notified. That team will then conduct further research and determine whether the reviews should actually be marked as offtopic.

Valve admits that labeling something as a review bomb is subjective in some cases. The company itself describes a review bomb as a ‘period in which players post many reviews in a row in a short time with the aim of lowering the overall review score of the game’. It remains possible to see the offtopic reviews, should Steam users choose to do so.