A couple of days ago Valve made changes to their user review scoring and the numbers have now been analysed.
Steam users who posted reviews with a key not acquired through Steam have had reviews removed from the system. Valve recognised there was a real problem with some gamers being encouraged, and sometimes paid, to post positive reviews as part of marketing efforts.
The stats have now been crunched at SteamSpy which shows some huge changes in scores for many games. Some titles have also lost as much as 88% of their reviews which indicates that some of the smaller releases may have resorted to encouraging Steam users to leave positive reviews.
On the other hand, some games have seen a boost to their review score which indicates there may have been some skullduggery at play, but there’s a lot less of these compared to the number with a reduced score. However, the number of removed reviews also need to be taken into account when looking at the increase or decrease in score difference.
The top ten games with the greatest reduction in scores based on the analysis of 428 titles are…
| Game Name | Old Userscore | New Userscore | Score difference | # of reviews before | # of reviews after | Reviews difference | Share of reviews lost |
| Simple Ball: Extended Edition | 88 | 14 | 74 | 51 | 7 | 44 | 86.27% |
| Lands Of Devastation | 86 | 16 | 70 | 166 | 12 | 154 | 92.77% |
| Bathory – The Bloody Countess | 93 | 25 | 68 | 44 | 4 | 40 | 90.91% |
| Zombies on a Plane | 73 | 11 | 62 | 109 | 18 | 91 | 83.49% |
| SizeBlock | 88 | 31 | 57 | 95 | 16 | 79 | 83.16% |
| The Last Hope | 80 | 23 | 57 | 70 | 17 | 53 | 75.71% |
| War Truck Simulator | 75 | 18 | 57 | 41 | 11 | 30 | 73.17% |
| Epsilon corp. | 76 | 26 | 50 | 129 | 26 | 103 | 79.84% |
| Worst Case Z | 90 | 40 | 50 | 41 | 5 | 36 | 87.80% |
The top ten Games that saw an increase in their score are…
| Game Name | Old Userscore | New Userscore | Score difference | # of reviews before | # of reviews after | Reviews difference | Share of reviews lost |
| Elves Adventure | 28 | 80 | -52 | 74 | 5 | 69 | 93.24% |
| The Troma Project | 48 | 88 | -40 | 91 | 25 | 66 | 72.53% |
| 30 IMPOSSIBLE LEVELS | 51 | 85 | -34 | 140 | 7 | 133 | 95.00% |
| Uriel’s Chasm 2: ×Âת | 22 | 55 | -33 | 100 | 9 | 91 | 91.00% |
| Broadsword : Age of Chivalry | 33 | 66 | -33 | 51 | 3 | 48 | 94.12% |
| KRUM – Edge Of Darkness | 33 | 66 | -33 | 56 | 9 | 47 | 83.93% |
| Aveyond: Gates of Night | 60 | 90 | -30 | 69 | 11 | 58 | 84.06% |
| A grande bagunça espacial – The big space mess | 57 | 85 | -28 | 591 | 74 | 517 | 87.48% |
| TheOrbChambers | 74 | 100 | -26 | 123 | 3 | 120 | 97.56% |
The changes for some games are quite alarming and if you want to look at them all, there’s a Google spreadsheet with all the details
Published: Sep 14, 2016 03:18 pm