Steamis making some serious changes to how it calculates review scores, which could completely alter the way games are rated on the platform. Steam rates games on a scalefrom Overwhelmingly Negative to Overwhelmingly Positive, based entirely on an aggregation of user-submitted reviews. However, its system is a bit simplistic and can be abused for things like review bombing.
However, that could change very soon. Per a recentSteamnews post,the online gaming storefront will soon be switching to a language-specific model of calculating review scores. Instead of simply basing the ratio (and therefore the rating) on the proportion of “Recommended” to “Not Recommended” reviews, it’ll actively analyze the content of each review to calculate an overall review score, which will still be ranked on the same scale.
Steam Is Implementing Language-Specific Review Scores
How The Scores & Calculation Work
The new system of Steam ratings does seem a lot more complex than the simplistic thumbs-up or thumbs-down it’s replacing. If it’s able to analyze the content of reviews correctly,it should lead to more accurate ratingsoverall. For example, a tongue-in-cheek review with a sarcastic “Recommended” rating may not actually be counted as positive.
A system like thiscould also help prevent review bombing, a practice in which disgruntled users leave negative reviews en masse, usually to respond to an unpopular change or controversial piece of content.
Review bombingcan unfairly tank the ratingsof otherwise good games, especially when it takes place before unpopular changes are even instituted, or simply due to a character’s identity. If negative reviews that hyperfocus on one specific aspect of a game are counted less towards the overall review score, it could prevent coordinated campaigns from ruining review scores.
The system will have hiccups, though:Steam will calculate individual review scores for every language in which a game is reviewed (once it has enough to reach a certain threshold). That meansgames could have different review scores in one language versus the next, which may be a bit confusing.
However, you could argue that the quality of localization should be part of the player’s consideration when writing a review;a game may genuinely deserve a worse rating in Hungarian than in English.
This Change Could Alter How We Perceive Steam Reviews
A More Accurate Perception?
Currently,we look at Steam reviewsas a proportion of players who have recommended a game versus those who have not, expressed in a pithy phrase.It’s a passable system, but there’s not a lot of room for nuance; less-reviewed games can easily have their scores shaped by a few passionate reviews.
A more complex system that actually analyzes the content of written reviews could lead toa much more nuanced kind of Steam review. If a game is Mostly Positive, for example, that might not mean most users recommend it, but a few don’t; instead, it could refer to a game that’s fairly well-loved, despite one or two serious flaws.
Whatever the case, though, we’ll have to wait until the new review score system is implemented to judge it accurately. Only time will tell whetherSteam’s language-based review scores have the intended effect.
