Steam Introduces New “Utility System” for Reviews, Here’s How It Works

After the sightings of the last few days, Valve has finally officially presented some changes for the review utility system of users on Steamwhich aims to highlight the most informative ones and hide the less useful ones. The new system is now active as a default setting for all users

As explained in a post published on Steam, reviews were previously ordered by the number of “helpful” votes given by other users. The problem is that it was soon noticed that some users exploited the ratings to make ASCII drawings, write jokes, memes and other content that may not be very useful to those looking for information on a game during the purchase phase, leading Steam curators to make substantial changes to how the system evaluates whether a review is actually useful or useless, while not completely obscuring funny posts, but relegating them to a second-rate position.

How Steam’s New Review Utility System Works

As it says on Steam, “User reviews that are identified as useless for potential customers, such as those consisting of a single word or ASCII drawings or which are mainly memes and jokes, will be ordered after other reviews on the game’s Store page”. For those who like this kind of post, there is the possibility of activating the dedicated option to make them appear while browsing.

But how is it determined whether a review is helpful or not? Valve explains that it is “a mix of techniques, including user reports, the Steam moderation team poring over many reviews, and some machine learning algorithms that help human judgment evaluate reviews. Our team found that many unhelpful reviews were easy to spot, so we targeted those first,” adding that this is a “work in progress” and that it will take some time for all new and existing reviews to be evaluated.