If you’ve ever dipped your toes into the user reviews section of the largest PC gaming store, Steam, you’ve likely encountered a barrage of memes, ASCII art, and hilarious copypastas. That won’t be the case anymore, as Valve is introducing a “Helpfulness” system to prioritize showing actually informative reviews.
Crazy Tick Removal? Or Fake?
This new Helpfulness system shipped as an update to the Steam client on Wednesday, August 14th, and is enabled by default for every Steam user — unless, of course, you want to explore the meme side of Steam and keep the tradition alive.
"We've seen that many players use reviews to share jokes, memes, ASCII art, and other content that may not be helpful to a potential buyer," Valve's blog post about the update said. "That content is usually fine, and often a lot of fun for existing customers of a game, but it doesn't always help new players make informed purchasing decisions."
While the previous system was based solely on the number of "helpful" votes given to each review, the new system will take into account the informative quality of a user review using two additional weights: input from the Steam mod team and "machine learning algorithms." The latter is intended to "help scale human judgment."
