Other changes have hit Steamthis time for user reviews. After being noticed by gamers last weekValve has implemented a utility system which prioritizes informative reviews on a game's store page.
As Valve explains, helpful reviews have traditionally been ranked by the number of votes from users designated as such. But that system has been easily exploited, allowing joke (or meme) reviews to take center stage and go viral, which is substantially less helpful.
With the new change, one-word reviews, or those made up of memes or ASCII art, will be placed behind actual reviews. However, the developer acknowledged that those “humorous but pointless posts” can be reactivated on the store page via the “display” dropdown menu.
Valve also said that the new system “does not affect how review scores are generated for each game; it simply changes the order in which reviews appear on each store page.”
The system is a work in progress, and the studio said it will take “quite some time” to analyze new and existing reviews to determine its usefulness. It's unclear how this system will work when it comes to concertrated review bombardment efforts that inevitably entail harassment campaigns.
For more information on the new utility system and how Valve classifies user reviews as such, you can read Here.
