this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024

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Looks like Valve is introducing a new review system to filter out "unhelpful" reviews (www.eurogamer.net)

submitted 3 months ago by neme@lemm.ee to c/games@sh.itjust.works

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[–] Donut@leminal.space 166 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Fucking finally. I love a funny joke but if you're looking for serious reviews, you currently have to wade through a sea of trolls, jokes and copy-pasted meme reviews in order to figure out if a game is interesting to you.

Community features are cool but if you're the most popular platform of your kind, you're gonna attract a lot of trolls who's content can be really out there. Filters are a good solution to this!

[–] magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 55 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Better than sex

the most genius comedian of all time

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 38 points 3 months ago

Nobody will read this so I'll just say it: I'm gay.

A lot of them aren't even about the game at all...

[–] Lojcs@lemm.ee 12 points 3 months ago (3 children)

And people explaining what the game is instead of how the game is.

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 39 points 3 months ago (4 children)

A review should tell you what the game is. It should also tell you what they like/don't like about it, but different perspectives about how the core mechanics work are absolutely critical parts of the discussion.

[–] all-knight-party@kbin.run 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Indeed, sometimes I really appreciate a heads up of if I can save in the middle of gameplay or if I have to complete a whole run before it saves progress, things like that are not deal breakers but it can definitely affect how I play a game

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

There's stuff like that, but it's also as simple as most game pages just not accurately depicting what the core gameplay loop is. The number of games with 10 cinematic trailers that combine for 3 seconds of gameplay and have descriptions full of setting with maybe some features but don't mention whether they're a card game or an FPS is way too high.

Screenshots can probably resolve my example, and tags are "OK", but marketing trash is just so abundant that a lot of pages are genuinely hard to figure out pretty basic elements of what the minute to minute experience is.

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[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is a side effect of YouTube content creation practices where a video will have an overview of the plot or story to pad out the run time or article. Often, because game journalism is basically long distance abusive relationships between the writer and the game publisher, the review is too mild to contain actual opinions and will draw on comparisons to other games instead of forming genuine critiques and admiration.

The end result is a generation of games and movies where the review is unable to provide enough genuine content to fill 10 minutes or 3 pages, so they instead spoil the game while riffing on very specific foibles. They don't know how to talk critically about mechanics or story or design.

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[–] tfw_no_toiletpaper@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (6 children)

It's because sometimes I just want to "rate" the game, not "review" it but steam won't let me. So sometimes I just write "it sucks." or sometimes some random shit. Steam should have a idk 5 star rating system with optional reviews. Makes more sense but shit games will be bought less I bet.

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[–] restingboredface@sh.itjust.works 67 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Good. I'm sick of seeing the "pet this cat" reviews at the top of the list. Hopefully this changes some of that stuff.

[–] hand@lemmy.studio 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

5,000 Steam awards on the "review" too.

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[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 62 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I hope this is partly to deal with review bombing, but I also hope it doesn’t completely hide review bombing.

It can be really helpful to know that there is a social media shitstorm around a game.

But sometimes the shitstorm is a bunch of basement dwellers getting mad over nothing, and it makes it hard to see actual opinions about the game.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 37 points 3 months ago

they already have a system for review bombing. i hope this is for stupid "joke" reviews that say nothing about the game but regurgitate the same fake review for the 1400th time.

[–] Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world 37 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Some review bombs are for legit reasons. I've seen a few for games that dropped support for a language well after release.

[–] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Wasn't it helldivers 2 that region-locked people months after release?

[–] Lesrid@lemm.ee 15 points 3 months ago

Over 130 countries.

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[–] Bezier@suppo.fi 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is it even review bombing if it's for a legit issue with the game in question?

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[–] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't have a direct quote, but I remember reading a few years ago that valve was debating how to handle bombing. They said something along the lines of not wanting to silence the bombers, but to highlight it so it was clear it was a review bomb. I got the impression they were considering things like showing the unusual spike of reviews in a different color. This sounds like it might be the results of that.

[–] RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They already have something for it, when I look at a review bombed game it specifically tells me that theres been unusual activity with the reviews. I believe you cna choose to hide or show the review bombs in the settings somewhere.

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[–] Routhinator@startrek.website 5 points 3 months ago

If I'm grokking the feature correctly, people will have to review bomb the review bombers with "unhelpful" flags.

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I've never discovered review bombing over steam. Either my peers mention it to me or I see it on social media.

Though to be fair, almost all of my decisions about buying games are made from watching videos of said game, rather than reading reviews. Steam reviews, for me, are either for very cheap games I'm buying impulsively or games where I have some insight but am still on the fence.

I used to read Rock Paper Shotgun as part of the decision making process, but I've found their input less useful the last few years.

[–] tehmics@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If a game isn't overwhelmingly positive, I almost never buy it. I also find review bombs completely valid in almost every case and I'm not interested in funding games that have managed to outrage their player base. In every case I would be outraged by the same thing they are.

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[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 months ago

Take a look at games like Gta5 when Take2 tried to ban modding (lol).

[–] shy_mia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 47 points 3 months ago (4 children)

You can now review reviews

[–] fossphi@lemm.ee 11 points 3 months ago

Yo dawg...

[–] Bookmeat@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Slashdot nailed this decades ago.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 41 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Does this mean “reviews that negatively affect profits” or does in mean genuinely removing irrelevant content?

[–] Maalus@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

You can mark a review as helpful. If it's that, then users decide about it.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It probably works based on whether users marking reviews as helpful or unhelpful and then uses some formula to remove the unhelpful ones. So it can be neither, but the key takeaway is that the users decide what ends up filtered out.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Thanks. That’s actually not too bad an idea. However, I’ll offer that it could lead to critics being silenced. Not necessarily out of nefarious purposes, but people love the downvote train sometimes.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, that's why I said it's neither because people can be unpredictable. It might not filter out irrelevant content because people love to upvote memes and it might filter out criticism because sometimes people downvote criticism.

Overall like with some other Steam features the value of the feature is dependent on the community, and generally that value has been a net positive.

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[–] steel_nomad@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Asking the real questions.

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[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 38 points 3 months ago

This is a good change, they have had the unhelpful/helpful/funny review system for years now, but I always found it weird it didn't do anything aside from boost on "helpful" rating. something that is majority unhelpful rated shouldn't be shown on the review page or arguably in the score in the first place.

[–] bradbeattie@lemmy.ca 25 points 3 months ago

Speaking of unhelpful, eurogamer.net is littered with ads. They add no value to the original Reddit post (https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1emb4ch/valve_is_finally_addressing_bad_reviews_issue/).

[–] simple@lemm.ee 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Really good change. Filtering out "funny" reviews are what everyone's thinking of, but I hope this also gets rid of those dumb reviews where people just fill out a long form rating everything 10/10 just because they like the game.

[–] all-knight-party@kbin.run 17 points 3 months ago

How I feel about your comment: 1 - it's ugly 2 - meh 3 - the graphics are okay 4 - it's pretty 5 - OMG it's like real life!

5/5

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 23 points 3 months ago

[–] son_named_bort@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I wish they would also let us filter out unuseful guides.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

PROS

I can write a list
It will be a few lines
I can fluff it up a bit
Keep going
Almost there
It's an okay game

CONS

I'll write 200 of these
Most will be nitpicky
I still played over 1000 hours
I clearly have never written a line of code yet somehow know how they could have done it better
I should be paid as a game journalist

3/10

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[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 13 points 3 months ago

For every like I will eat a spoonful of salt

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Reviews being a message board for grievances and memes really sucks. It reflects badly on gamers. Makes everything look trashy.

[–] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 17 points 3 months ago

Memes? yes!

Grievances? That's exactly what a review is for! Telling other people what you do and don't like about a thing.

[–] BluesF@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

Please just give us a "maybe"

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I wonder how many real reviews are going to get filtered as "unhelpful" because the developer or other people don't like what the review says, even if what is said is factually true.

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[–] _sideffect@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

Who will review the reviewer?

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