The real question is, will anyone notice?

What Happened to Steam Reviews?

Some have gone viral thanks to ther/SteamReviewsdedicated subreddit and thousands of shares onplatforms like TikTok.

Inzoi character in front of an area where people are on a bench and people buying stuff.

When gamers appreciate or relate to a funny Steam review, they typically mark it as helpful.

Under the previous helpfulness system, the reviews ranked according to helpfulness.

So, these amusing reviews would be highly visible.

A screenshot of Steam’s August 14th Announcement regarding helpful user reviews.

Considering that many games have thousands of reviews, it’s still not clear how this will work.

However, the principle seems reasonable.

Does Marking a Review as “Helpful” Still Matter?

A screenshot from the August 14 2024 Steam announcement FAQ.

What an inclusive statement!

This change only takes place on the store page for a game.

If a user clicks “Browse all” reviews, the review page for a game is unchanged.

A screenshot of the reviews on the Steam PUBG store page, with the Display dropdown highlighed.

So, I went straight to thePlayerUnknown’s Battlegroundsstore page.PUBGis apopular free-to-play shooterreleased in 2017.

I did this on thePUBGpage and the review I’d seen was still there, but no longer first.

Now, the first review was from a player whosePUBGgame experience was ruined by hackers.

A screenshot of the reviews on the PUBG Steam store page, with the Display options shown. The new checkbox is highlighted.

In my opinion, both reviews are helpful.

They both raise the issue of cheating and beg for developer solutions.

That would be the one hidden by the new helpfulness system.

A screenshot of the reviews on the Steam PUBG store page without the new helpfulness system.

In fact, all the reviews were similar under both sorting methods except for one.

There was one review that was an ASCII-style image unrelated to the game.

It was only revealed when the helpfulness box was unchecked.

The end goal is to confirm players canfind good games on Steam.