Valve launches 'helpfulness system' for Steam user reviews

More changes have hit Steam, this time for its user reviews. After being spotted by players last week, Valve has implemented a helpfulness system that prioritizes informative reviews on a game's store page.

As Valve explains it, helpful reviews have typically been sorted by the number of user votes designated as such. But that system's been easily exploited and made it so jokes reviews (or memes) can take center stage and go viral, which is substantially less helpful.

With the new change, one-word reviews, or ones made of memes or ASCII art, will be placed behind actual reviews. Even so, the developer acknowledged those "humorous, but unhelpful posts" can be toggled back onto the store page proper through the "display" drop-down menu.

Valve also said the new system "doesn't impact how review scores are generated for each game; it is simply changing the order that reviews appear on each store page."

The system is a work-in-progress, and the studio said it will take "quite a while" to analyze new and current reviews to determine their helpfulness. It's unclear how this system will work when it comes to concertrated review-bombing efforts which inevitably involve harassment campaigns.

More information on the new helpfulness system and how Valve categorizes user reviews as such, can be read here.