Steam review scores overhaul to put indie dev out of business

Valve has introduced a new system to calculate user review scores on Steam, and as a result could put indie developers using crowd-funding at a distinct disadvantage.

A blog post on Steam goes into the changes and reasons for doing so.

“We know this review score has become a valuable shortcut for customers to gauge how well the game is matching customer expectations. But the review score has also become a point of fixation for many developers, to the point where some developers are willing to employ deceptive tactics to generate a more positive review score,” explains Valve.

“The majority of review score manipulation we’re seeing by developers is through the process of giving out Steam keys to their game, which are then used to generate positive reviews. Some developers organize their own system using Steam keys on alternate accounts. Some organizations even offer paid services to write positive reviews.”

The blog continues: “An analysis of games across Steam shows that at least 160 titles have a substantially greater percentage of positive reviews by users that activated the product with a cd key, compared to customers that purchased the game directly on Steam. There are, of course, legitimate reasons why this could be true for a game: Some games have strong audiences off Steam, and some games have passionate early adopters or Kickstarter backers that are much more invested in the game.

“But in many cases, the abuse is clear and obvious, such as duplicated and/or generated reviews in large batches, or reviews from accounts linked to the developer. In those cases, we’ve now taken action by banning the false reviews and will be ending business relationships with developers that continue violating our rules.”

And here’s info on the major changes.

“As a result of this, we are making some changes to how review scores are calculated. As of today, the recent and overall review scores we show at the top of a product page will no longer include reviews written by customers that activated the game through a Steam product key.

“Customers that received the game from a source outside of Steam (e.g. via a giveaway site, purchased from another digital or retail store, or received for testing purposes from the developer) will still be able to write a review of the game on Steam to share their experience. These reviews will still be visible on the store page, but they will no longer contribute to the score.”

As a result of the change the review score category for around 14 per cent of games on Steam has changed, with one of the titles being Maia from indie dev Simon Roth.

Roth has been posting on Twitter about the change, and things don’t look good.

Another affected game is The Ship: Remasted, which changed from being positively reviewed to mixed.

Source: Steam