Listen. Valve could stop Steam updates right now, and Steam would still be widely considered the best platform to buy and play games. But Valve is making Steam much more intuitive with each update, and the latest update could completely change the way gamers interact with reviews.
As first spotted by MP1st, a new update released in Steam beta on February 12th allows users to now attach hardware specs to their reviews before uploading them.
This means that head-to-head review can show information about the hardware the player is playing on. This will in turn be more helpful to other players who may be put off playing the game due to incorrect reviews saying it is poorly optimized, comparing the hardware specs attached to the review to what they have.
This could either lead to more people buying the game after receiving a vote of confidence from someone with similar gear, or it could lead to one less purchase if that person is wary of how the game will run on their PC.
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Best of all, it will prevent a barrage of negative reviews from users who claim they have better hardware than what they're offering. Of course, like anything else, it relies on people checking the box when it eventually leaves the beta program.
Steam has covered reviews before, so this is the logical next step.
If there's one thing Steam reviews have become known for, it's the influx of bad reviews that quickly move a game's overall rating from one area of ”positive” to the completely different end of the spectrum: “mostly negative.”
That's not to say there aren't helpful user reviews. Because there is. Finding them is sometimes like finding a needle in a haystack.
Partially to stem the influx of negative reviews, Steam recently removed the “clown” icon from its community rewards system. This is a move to stop people posting outrage-bait reviews that would soar the charts. Valve called it a “narrow set of content of interest.”
Steam is also experimenting with at least voluntarily attaching hardware specs to reviews, which should prevent people from getting “poor optimization” in recently released titles, especially if honest people have attached specs similar to what users claim.
All of this will go a long way in making the review system a real system free from fraud.
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campo santo
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