News Valve launches Steam user reviews

Valve has added a user generated review section to its Steam service.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2013/11/26/steam-launches-user-reviews/1

 

Metacritic data only exists on store pages when the metacritic score is above 50% lol...which means when it's absent the first thing you do is go to metacritic to find out why!

 

considering the general level of hate on the steam forums, I don't think this review system will end up meaning anything further than 'how many haters does this game have'.

/2cents

 

Well if you've got to have at least an hour's game time to post a review then it makes it more hassle to post a hating review than other sites.

 

Oh good. I'm sure that the Steam community, being of such a collectively sound mind, will in no way abuse this feature.

I have similar thoughts.

 

That would be a step in the right direction, but as it stands now, you only need to launch the game to write a review. Hopefully Valve will fix that.

I was actually think that each developer should know roughly how long their game will take to complete. So why not have each developer give that number to steam, who then in turn say you need to play half/third of that time before you can write a review. I know that won't work with sandbox games, but still it's an idea to try at least.

/2cents

 

Sure, good idea. But don't forget, to launch it you've got to pay for it (unless you can run pirated games through Steam without endangering your account). If you've paid for a game then should you not be entitled to write a review, regardless how much time you spend with it running?

 

Personally, I don't think there's a problem with letting people submit a review even if they haven't played the game, as long as the review automatically includes their total play time so that their comments can be put in perspective.

That way, you can filter out all the reviews where total play time is 0, or less than an hour, or whatever.

 

+1

 

where is HL3...

 

Hmm, just had a thought. Nothing to stop someone just alt-tabbing out of a game for a while and watching a film or two.

 

That's true, but there's no perfect system for recording "active" play time... and to be honest, Steam doesn't record play time accurately for all games anyway. I've got a few games where the main .exe runs through a launcher .exe, and only record the time the launcher is open. Then again, there are some which have launchers but still manage to record time accurately, so it's pot luck