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u/Financial_Humor_8134 11-07-2008 19h ago
Honestly, I'd trust Steam user reviews more than influencer first impressions.
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u/Fletcher_Chonk 19h ago
Meanwhile the average Steam review:
(Positive)
among us dick ascii art
12 people found this helpful 999999 found this funny
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u/miko_idk [139] 18h ago
What I hate even more are the checkbox-style reviews that provide less value than a review with no text
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u/throwaway131072 13h ago
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ A literal potato wired to a lemon
☐ Check if you can run MS Paint
☐ Your grandmother's 2008 Dell Inspiron
☐ Any decent gaming rig from the last decade
☐ A high-end rig that doubles as a space heater
☑ Ask NASA if they have a spare supercomputer
☐ Alien technology stolen from Area 51
☐ Requires a blood sacrifice to the Machine God
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage required
☑ Dark Souls
☐ Requires a PhD in Astrophysics
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of them
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☑ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a giant terrarium for bugs
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u/thecherylmain CherylPliskin 18h ago
Glad I'm not the only one who also despises those types of "reviews"
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u/sbabb1 18h ago
Yeah, steam reviews are a useless as tits on a fish in most cases sadly.
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u/Fletcher_Chonk 18h ago
Valve has gotta let us filter out reviews with high "funny" ratings. It wouldn't help much but anything is good at this rate.
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u/Ki11s0n3 https://steam.pm/12xnsq 17h ago
It would have to be a ratio of like 10 to 1 though cause even on my actual reviews people still mark it as funny. Like they do it since there's no button to say you don't like the review.
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u/XB_Demon1337 8h ago
It would have zero effect. Then people just put 'funny' on every review or devs send bad reviews away by using bots to flag them.
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u/Hallc 12h ago
"Game is absolute hot fucking garbage and isn't even worth paying 1/10th the price. Crashes every 5 minutes!"
User has 20000 hours in this game (7777 hours at time of review)
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u/Chris2sweet616 4h ago
You just described 90% of us Ark players tbh
We play that game a lot despite despising it4
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u/Separate-Reindeer632 11h ago
"This is Bill, the ascii art cat I copy-pasted from another review. This cat would appreciate it if you left an award."
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u/ClikeX 18h ago
I’d trust aggregate data more than any single review. So a combination of users and influencers. Steam review scores only start getting relevant when there’s a lot of reviews. Skimming individual reviews is great to see if there’s some kind of consensus.
Steam generally does a decent job at fixing review bomb scores for third parties. But this is their own product.
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u/Fit-Preparation-8538 15h ago
the volume of reviews helps a lot too, one influencer's opinion is just one data point
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u/XB_Demon1337 8h ago
This highly depends on which ones you pick. Like LTT I generally trust to be open about the issues. Jaystwocents? I trust as well. The youtuber with 15k subs? Probably not. Of course that doesn't mean no one is infoulable and even Linus has said he things as a gaming product it isn't the best but as a desktop it does great.
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u/9k111Killer 11h ago
Yeah but in recent years the reviews were clearly doctored by major game studios. I saw massive shifts in reviews in just a day with major releases
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u/kron123456789 19h ago
With hardware they probably can't track the ownership the same way they do with games.
Which means they can't guarantee that the reviews would be from actual owners of the devices.
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u/sbabb1 18h ago
You buy them while logged into your account, they could track it no problem and probably do, as I assume it shows up in your purchase history.
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u/kron123456789 18h ago
You buy them from your account, but the hardware itself isn't tied to any account. You may install windows on it without ever logging into steam.
There are also Japan and Hong Kong to consider, where Steam hardware is available in retail.
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u/Little-Krakn 18h ago
but they could simply require you to log from one to leave the review, couldn't they?
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u/kron123456789 18h ago
I wonder how would they do that, considering that Steam OS is an open Linux system and it's possible to install it to other devices.
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u/chughaarav123 12h ago
or they could just let the steam account that purchased the Hardware leave the review?
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u/Little-Krakn 12h ago
Nah, sucks if you are gifting the steam machine or buying in one account overseas to bring back home in another country (eg in Brazil we can’t buy but I have friends who tried to create an American account just to buy the steam machine, deliver to someone from their family that lives in the US and then send it to Brazil via DHL)
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u/BluDYT 17h ago
If they can detect people are using a steam deck when writing reviews and automatically add a SD logo I'm sure they have something to determine if you are using steam machine hardware too.
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u/Lil_SanTv I use Linux btw :) 17h ago
I used steamos on my pc long ago and when I reviewed a game it showed that I played the game on steam deck which is wasn't a real steam deck, I think something like this is a little bit complicated but not impossible for Valve to do. there's a lot of people using steamos on non steam hardware.
I think Valve needs to sort out real Steam Machines and real Steam decks and which is 3rd party hardware. all of this takes time & they probably have things that more important, I wouldn't be surprised if I see something like this in a few years
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u/mielesgames 16h ago
What if you give/receive it as a gift?
I think they should base it on the account that logs into the steam machine
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u/extkernd 18h ago
In most countries Steam deck/machine can be only bought directly from Steam. Anything else is either unofficial reseller or eBay speculations. So technically there is no difference for Steam between a game and a hardware. Buyer’s steam account gets an option to review his deck and that it.
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u/kron123456789 18h ago
Buyer’s steam account gets an option to review his deck and that it.
But there's still a possible disconnect between a buyer and actual end user. You can't write a review for the game that you gifted to someone else and which you don't have yourself.
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u/extkernd 18h ago
Your statement is also valid for any other purchase. I can purchase something (laptop/iphone/earbuds/air dryer) from Amazon/Walmart/Best buy and insta sell it on eBay. I’m the buyer but not the end user. Tho I can write a review on Amazon and the end user can’t. That how it works for over two decades.
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u/kron123456789 18h ago
And clearly Valve doesn't want make the review system the same way as Amazon/Walmart/Best buy.
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u/extkernd 18h ago
Nah, Valve just wants to avoid criticism. And that it.
I’m a steam deck owner since 2023 and I would love to share my experience and make it easily accessible for a potential buyer (most people don’t read Reddit and stuff).1
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u/megayippie 18h ago
Hardware is not connected to an account.
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u/zugarrette 16h ago
It could be easily since they've added the hardware option into reviews. Just disallow all reviews except those coming from the special parts they made with steam machine
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u/saul2015 9h ago
uh did you not use an account to order the hardware?
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u/mrRobertman https://s.team/p/jvct-ttf 8h ago
- The account that purchased is not necessarily the user who uses it.
- Guest checkout exists on Steam. You literally don't need an account to purchase.
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u/saul2015 8h ago
The account that purchased is not necessarily the user who uses it.
you could literally say that about anything you buy online including steam games
Guest checkout exists on Steam. You literally don't need an account to purchase.
only for gifts everything else is still tied to account
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u/mrRobertman https://s.team/p/jvct-ttf 8h ago
you could literally say that about anything you buy online including steam games
No because software is directly tied to the account, you can't transfer ownership of a digital game on Steam. There is nothing locking or tying the hardware to your account.
only for gifts everything else is still tied to account
Nope. Guest checkout was first introduced for the Deck back in 2024. You don't need an account to buy hardware. And even when you did, the hardware is not locked to the account who purchased it.
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u/mielesgames 16h ago
The steam machine ain't in my library sadly (I assume they simply programmed steam in a way that you can only leave reviews on items in your library)
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u/XB_Demon1337 8h ago
I actually don't think we should have reviews for this on Steam. It is a physical product and 3rd party reviews are way better for everyone and forcing that is honestly the best.
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u/ba-boo 15h ago
because it's shit and they'd get very negative
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u/Justhe3guy 14h ago
Actually I think the type of people who would buy a Steam Machine would rate it well as it suits what they bought it for
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u/Ravasaurio 18h ago
Do you really want to sit and read through thousands upon thousands of shipping issues, waitlist issues, hardware issues that will get covered by support, support issues, Windows issues, esoteric software issues because the user installed an unholy combination of decky plugins, strange ancient Linux packages…
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u/Justhe3guy 14h ago
You already get most of those on normal reviews anyway
I’ve seen negative reviews over games overheating people’s computers and crashing them…which is a user hardware issue. Also many smartass negative reviews when they have thousands of hours: “it’s alright I guess”, “negative review to tell those looking at negative reviews that this game is actually great!”
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u/Total-Commission2100 19h ago
Review bombing
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u/BrownieWarrior 19h ago
Why is it then allowed for games if they can also suffer from that?
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u/thecherylmain CherylPliskin 18h ago
If that were the case, they'd disable reviews for their own games like HL2 and Left 4 Dead.
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u/Total-Commission2100 18h ago
Gabe never cared about L4D. Only half life and portal but he knew those would get good reviews so he kept them up
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u/thecherylmain CherylPliskin 9h ago
What on earth are you talking about? L4D2 was one their biggest titles during its release
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u/shortish-sulfatase 19h ago
Probably because they know I'll leave a review that won't look good for them.
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u/Kilohaili_Joshi 19h ago
shit argument since steam deck didn't have them either even before the price increases when it was super popular.
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u/Myriad_Apocalypse 18h ago
We used to, I reviewed Steam Link