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AI-generated reviews on Steam are becoming a problem
(gamesbeat.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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Kinda sad because I usually rely on steam reviews to see how bad or good a game is.
i mean with the review in question its a red flag given the playtime is shown.
steam at least give you some tools to consider if a review is legit. one is the users play time (which is public), another is other reviews theyve made. another is if theyve gotten the key for free.
The main problem is that those reviews are still included in the overall review score. I think you can filter out low play time but that's an extra step most won't take (because they shouldn't need to)
People who review games poorly are unlikely to play them for long though. How would you filter them as not to drop most legit negative reviews?
would you prefer the platform police it and run into the problem that the google play store/ios app store has about vote manipulation? and purging several reviews (whether legitamate or not)
Steam already does stuff similar to this? Reviews flagged as "suspicious" aren't deleted but aren't included in the overall score instead, and a notice is put next to the overall score when this happens. The same is true for reviews made by people who got the game with a key.
Why not extend this? Like you said, most bots have low play time, valve could exclude (but not delete) reviews with low play time. I agree that doing something like this is a slippery slope towards mobile app store reviews but if it's done right then it is a net positive.
True
Same. I haven't been let down by it yet, so hearing an AI review surge makes me very sad.
If I'm interested in a game, I usually download a repack to try it out and if I like it, I'll buy it.
What if the game is hard to pirate or it has a demo.
If it has a demo like old school days, then I'd try that. If hard to pirate, but it really seems like something I'd enjoy and has mostly favourable reviews then I buy it.
Fair enough
I've recently discovered your review only counts if you bought it through steam on the steam store.
If you get a key off humble bundle or another site, your review means absolutely nothing. There is a little star next to reviews now that tell you this.
I found it a bit disappointing for steam.
Umm, so it's harder to manipulate the rating? I mean, seriously, without that requirement, the ratings would be just as worthless as Amazon or Play Store.
Because someone gifted me a game, my review now doesn't mean anything. That doesn't seem very well thought out.
I have a few games with an embarrassing amount of hours on that I'm not allowed to contribute to the score because they were gifted or redeemed through humble bundle.
Why even review at this point?
I don't see an issue with it. There's no good way for Steam to know where the key came from, you could have been gifted the key, got it in a bundle, or stolen it from somewhere. Since they can't tell, they don't know if your review is compromised.
When I'm reading reviews, I don't personally care about that, I just care what the review says, and I'll read 5-10 before making a decision if it's a more expensive or longer game. A lot of reviews are pointless (e.g. "nobody will read this, so I'm gay" or whatever), so I very much appreciate helpful reviews regardless of the source.