Re: Steam's Revising Reviews

On Fri, 16 Aug 2024 09:38:50 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 16/08/2024 02:34, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

As for unhelpful reviews, here's a good example "I was expecting more.
It gets boring and repetitive very quickly. I lost interest after
playing it for 2 hours..." Why bother writing that, how does it help
anyone decide whether they should buy the game. I'll gladly see the back
of them.

From my understanding, the sort of review you suggested WILL remain
available. As Valve pointed out, some people aren't good at expressing
themselves and -honestly- I think there is some merit to a short
comment like that. Even _I_ tire of overlong reviews sometimes and a
quick, pithy comment can be a useful indicator.

No, the types of reviews targeted are more the ones that have
/nothing/ to do with the game (or even the antics of the developer),
but are mostly there to give visibility to the reviewer. The ones that
are just a link, or some ASCII art, or some overly-repeated meme, or
praise for something completely unrelated.

So overall, I think I'll reserve judgement.

AFAIK, Valve considers the whole attempt to be still 'in testing';
e.g., they don't consider its initial attempt to be the perfect, and
if it's not working out they're willing to roll-back and remove it
entirely.

But it's definitely becoming more necessary that they take SOME step,
since this sort of pointless review has been proliferating. I have
some suspicion that they are a result of Valve's adding the ability to
reward reviewers with Steam Point awards (although what actual value
those things have, I've no idea). But ever since that became a thing,
the number of pointless 'look-at-me' nonsense-reviews have exploded.