Steam is basically the center of town for PC gaming: whether you play on Windows, Mac or Linux, you'll most likely use Steam at least a little bit. The long-running store and launcher has been challenged by, among other things, 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 seem to prefer Steam is its rating system, which underpins its consumer-friendly, democratic philosophy. While other stores, including the Microsoft and PlayStation digital stores, feature user ratings and reviews, they are often confused, nested under different tabs, or bogged down by other oddities. For example, in the Xbox app on PC, you won't see the average review score unless you click on a specific tab, while user ratings are front and center on Steam, showing up on hover before you even go to the actual game page. There's also the community and culture that Steam has cultivated over so many years: look at a popular game on Steam and you'll quickly find plenty of comedic reviews, but also a number of very comprehensive, nuanced analyses. In short, Steam's rating system favors the votes of the game audience rather than publishers or developers, but it's also a bit unusual.
Steam only allows accounts that have played the game to leave a review. User reviews also include the reviewer's playing time and whether they received the game for free.
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How does the rating system work on Steam?
The first thing you should know about Steam's rating system is that it is divided into nine different levels:
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Mostly 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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Mostly 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 “thumbs down”. For example, if 90% of a game's reviews are positive, it will usually be labeled “Very Positive”, while a game with 90% negative reviews will usually be labeled “Very Negative”.
Arrange the covers in the correct US release order.
Start
Arrange the covers in the correct US release order.
Easy (5) Medium (7) Hard (10)
Looking at games on either end of the spectrum can get confusing, as Steam takes overall reviews into account when labeling a game this way. If 100% of a game's Steam reviews are positive, but there are only five reviews, that doesn't tell us much – for all we know, it could be five friends or family members of the game's developers. Here's the full breakdown:
|
% of positive reviews |
Number of reviews |
Steam Rating Tag |
|---|---|---|
|
95–100 |
500+ |
Mostly 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+ |
Mostly negative |
As you can see, the only way a game can earn the Overwhelmingly Positive label is to have at least 95% positive ratings and at least 500 different reviews at the same time, and the same logic applies to the Overwhelmingly Negative label. Just as the number of reviews/ratings protects consumers from being misled by the Mostly Negative label, it also helps protect smaller developers from being labeled Mostly Negative due to jobs, bullying, or other factors unrelated to the game.
The latest reviews and English reviews section on Steam
Many games on Steam actually have two “overall reviews” sections: there are overall reviews, which are separated by language, and “recent reviews,” which collect reviews from the last 30 days. For example, War of the Three Kingdomsone of the lowest rated games on Steam, it is rated Very Negative (488 reviews, of which only 17% are positive) in overall English reviews, but Overwhelmingly Negative (529 reviews, only 9% of which are positive) in recent reviews.
This distinction is useful for several reasons, as it can help customers get an idea of whether or not a game is poorly reviewed for legitimate reasons: if a five-year-old game has an overall rating of Very Positive, but a recent rating of Mostly Negative, that's a good sign that there's a brigadier or review bombing going on. Including a separate section for recent reviews can also be helpful when evaluating a live service title that may be generally considered better or worse based on ongoing updates or expansions.
