Valve gives players a louder voice with Steam Reviews

Valve Software wants to put a bigger spotlight on Steam users' opinions about games. The company, which has long been an advocate of community involvement, announced a beta for Steam Reviews, which allows players to write reviews of their own, and read, rate and discuss reviews from fellow players. The new system will replace the current Recommendations system, which has been around since 2010. Past recommendations will be transferred to the Steam Reviews system. Curation of reviews is handled by an upvoting and downvoting system. Valve intends to make it easy for Steam users to find and follow authors who are particularly helpful. Reviews will also be separated into multiple languages. Importantly, game developers will be able to respond to reviews, and their comments will be appropriately flagged. Developers won't be able to directly delete reviews, though they can flag offending content, which collapses the review on the game's store page until a moderator can sort out the situation. Valve added that Metacritic data will still appear on Steam to let players know what professional game journalists think. The company intends to assign an overall score to written Steam Reviews sometime during the beta. More info on Steam Reviews is here: Steam Reviews