Steam The PC is basically the center of town for gaming: whether you play on a Windows, Mac, or Linux operating system, you'll use Steam at least a little. The long-running storefront and launcher has challenged its throne, with free games offered by the Epic Games Store and other major competitors, but for now, it's safe to say that Steam is more or less unmatched in terms of user experience and overall popularity.
One of the reasons most PC gamers prefer Steam is its rating system, which underlines its consumer-friendly, democratic philosophy. While other stores, including the Microsoft and PlayStation digital storefronts, have user ratings and reviews, they are often obscure, nested behind various tabs, or bogged down by other quirks. For example, you won't be shown the average review score in the Xbox app on PC until you click on a certain tab, while user ratings are front and center on Steam, shown in a mouse-hover preview before you navigate to a certain game page. There's also the community and culture that Steam has fostered over the years: look up a popular game on Steam, and you'll immediately find plenty of humorous reviews, but also plenty of comprehensive, nuanced analysis. In short, Steam's rating system prioritizes the voices of gaming audiences rather than publishers or developers, but it's also a bit unusual.
Steam only allows accounts that have played a given game to leave reviews. User reviews also include the reviewer's playing time and whether they received a free game.
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How does Steam's rating system work?
The first thing to know about Steam's rating system is that it is divided into nine different levels:
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Highly positive
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Very positive
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positive
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Mostly positive
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Mixed
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Mostly negative
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Negative
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Very negative
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Extremely negative
Which tier a game falls into depends on its percentage of positive reviews. The review metric is binary: players can only give a game a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down”. For example, if 90% of a game's reviews are positive, then it will usually be labeled as “very positive”, while a game with 90% negative reviews will usually be labeled “very negative”.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
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Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Easy (5) Medium (7) Hard (10)
Looking at games at either extreme end of the spectrum can be confusing, as Steam takes total reviews into account when labeling a game this way. If 100% of the reviews on a Steam game are positive, but there are only five reviews, then that doesn't tell us much – it could be five friends or family members of the game's developers, for all we know. Here's the full breakdown:
|
% of positive reviews |
Number of reviews |
Steam rating label |
|---|---|---|
|
95–100 |
500+ |
Highly positive |
|
85–100 |
50-499 |
Very positive |
|
80-100 |
1-49 |
positive |
|
70-79 |
1-49 |
Mostly positive |
|
40-69 |
1-49 |
Mixed |
|
20-39 |
1-49 |
Mostly negative |
|
0–19 |
1-49 |
Negative |
|
0–19 |
50-499 |
Very negative |
|
0–19 |
500+ |
Extremely negative |
As you can see, the only way to get a highly positive label for a game is to simultaneously have at least a 95% positive rating and at least 500 different reviews, and the same logic applies to a highly negative label. Just as considering the number of reviews/ratings prevents consumers from being misled by an overly negative label, it helps prevent smaller developers from being branded with an overly negative label as a result of briganding, bullying, or other non-game related factors.
Steam's current reviews and English reviews section
Many Steam games actually have two “total reviews” sections: there are all-time reviews, which are separated by language, and “recent reviews,” which aggregate reviews from the last 30 days. For example, War of the Three KingdomsOne of the worst-reviewed games on Steam, rated as very negative in total English reviews (488 reviews, only 17% of them positive), but highly negative in recent reviews (529 reviews, only 9% of them positive).
This distinction is useful for several reasons, as it can help customers understand whether a game is being reviewed poorly for legitimate reasons: if a five-year-old game's overall rating is overwhelmingly positive, but the most recent one has the most negative rating, this is a good indication that brigading or review-bombing is occurring. Including a separate section for recent reviews can also be helpful when evaluating a live-service title, which can be considered good or bad based on widely released updates or expansions.
