Guest_Jim_* Posted March 16, 2019 Posted March 16, 2019 Reporting metrics derived from public forums can be complicated, as some have undoubtedly discovered while reading customer reviews over the years as sometimes the reviews that are left do not pertain to the item itself, but something tangentially related. Sometimes such reviews are not just random but almost orchestrated to drag down review scores, a phenomenon called review bombing, and Valve has developed its solution for addressing this on Steam. As explained in the Steam Community post on it, Valve will now be identifying off-topic review bombs and then removing them from the review scoring, but not from a game's reviews. The way this will work is to watch for when a large number of reviews come in over a short period of time, with the aim of dragging the review score down. While it is an automated tool that will identify these bursts in reviews, it is a team of people within Valve that will review them to determine if in fact it is an off-topic review bomb, such as complaints over DRM or EULA, or has another explanation. When tested on the history of Steam reviews, many periods of anomalous review activity was discovered, but only a small number were off-topic review bombs. When a period of time is identified as an off-topic review bomb, it is marked and removed from the review score calculation, including both positive and negative reviews, and the developer is notified. The reviews from this period are not removed, but they will not factor into the review score. Valve has added an opt-out option though, in your Steam account preferences, if you do want them included. Also the review timelines will indicate when a period has been marked as a review bomb. Source: Valve Back to original news post Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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