Steam Review Scores Will No Longer Include Unpaid Games

Megalith

Megalith

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If you got a game for free and want to contribute to the title’s score on Steam, you are out of luck, as only those who paid for it will get that privilege now. Review scores will not be affected by anyone who acquired a game using a promo code, as a gifted item, and so on. Everyone is, however, free to continue praising or bashing a game by posting a review. Is this the best Valve could do? What about limiting the score based on gameplay time?

…Valve tweaked the system further by eliminating any form of freely-received game from its total review score, rather than just game keys that were acquired from non-Steam sources. "The review score (shown at the top of store pages and in various places throughout the store such as search results) will no longer include reviews by users that received the game for free, such as via a gift, or during a free weekend," Valve wrote. "Reviews can still be written by customers that obtained the game in any of these ways, but the review will not count toward the overall review score."
 
Don't know why to exclude gifts. Someone paid for that, unless gifts can be handed out too easily without actual cash. I'd actually be more interested in a review from someone with no expectations. Otherwise for the initial period you're looking at a fan or someone that has their bar probably set too high.

I see the point about a dev/pub promo'ing these to friends or fake accounts and skewing the reviews.
 
I can see this as an interesting thing to try, you might hope the most invested gamers would also be the most fair and honest in this equation...
 
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I still think play time is the way to go. Make the minimum like 2 hours or something like that. If I got the game as a gift, I should still be able to review it.
 
Shmee said:
I still think play time is the way to go. Make the minimum like 2 hours or something like that. If I got the game as a gift, I should still be able to review it.
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You can, it's just not counted in the score. I think it's a fair compromise to prevent devs from getting ringers to boost their score.
 
MikeTrike said:
I can see this as an interesting thing to try, you might hope the most invested gamers would also be the most fair and honest in this equation...
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I kind of think it is the opposite, at least when looking at how people behave over hardware they've purchased. Many feel the need to justify the money they spent no matter the quality, or excessively rage because of the same. If something was free, I'd think that would eliminate such bias.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
I kind of think it is the opposite, at least when looking at how people behave over hardware they've purchased. Many feel the need to justify the money they spent no matter the quality, or excessively rage because of the same. If something was free, I'd think that would eliminate such bias.
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That might be true for hardware, but not really for software. At least not games.
 
Chaos Machine said:
You can, it's just not counted in the score. I think it's a fair compromise to prevent devs from getting ringers to boost their score.
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It's as simple as this. Look no further than the scourge of sellouts that give 5 star reviews on Amazon for any cheap chinese crap simply because they got it free.

Don't worry kids this doesn't revoke your snowflake status. But Valve is doing the right thing here.
 
It is to prevents gaming the system by devs and sources outside of Valve. I have no idea how effective that will be, but the intention is fairly clear, and fairly benevolent. Buying keys direct from Steam now simply offers the tiny, imho, additional benefit of being able to rate the game, on Steams platform.

If you want your vote to count, pay tour taxes.
 
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