Valve reworks Steam rules to crack down on Fake Steam Users Game Reviews

Valve is cracking down on Steam reviews in an effort to prevent developers from artificially inflating a game’s review score on the service. Valve this week announced new filtering options and updates to how reviews factor into a game’s overall Steam score.

“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,” a post on Steam says. “Some developers organize their system using Steam keys on alternate accounts. Some organizations even offer paid services to write positive reviews.”

“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,” on Valve’s website.

The immediate ramifications to this will result in at least 160 games having their review score impacted to fall in line with legitimate purchases.

Filtering options will default to “the most useful snapshot of a product’s reviews.” But users can also sort by options like language, purchase source, and whether the particular reviews are positive or negative.

Some developers, though, are not happy. They claim this would adversely affect their livelihood. “We’re hearing lots of positive response to this update, and some criticisms,” Valve’s Doug Lombardi tells Gamasutra. “Like all updates, we issue to our games and services, we will be monitoring the community reaction and incorporating that feedback into the next set of changes we make to improve the service for everyone.”