Steam has been doubling down on addressing review problems lately, starting with its attempt to counter review bombing. This has been a good thing, but it has led to a new sort of bombing, flagging several reviews as “helpful” or “not helpful” to afford extra weight to the positive or negative readings. So the storefront is bringing out new adjustments to help make reviews more fair, starting by affording less weight to users who flag huge numbers of reviews for a single game “helpful” or “not helpful.”
How the reviews are displayed on the store page will also change; rather than showing the highest-rated reviews, the overall proportions shown will match the overall rating of the game. So if the title has a 70% Positive rating, seven of the helpful reviews will be shown on the page. The hope is that this will, again, prevent players from launching personal crusades just to diminish a game’s presence; time will tell how successful these measures are.
