Valve’s changes to its Steam review system did not go over well with many developers this week. Though its intent was to cut back on review fraud and prevent a small group of developers from abusing the Steam key system to get good reviews, many felt it had the potential to negatively impact their sales.
This led us at Gamasutra to start wondering, what services could Valve provide that would be welcomed by developers? Given that its changes are sometimes dropped from on high instead of communicated months in advance, we wanted to hear what developers thought Valve could do to change Steam for the better.
The results covered everything from Steam review suggestions to unrelated issues like their customer service options. We’ve gathered them below for your review.
Remember, if you're interested in participating in these conversations in the future, make sure to follow @Gamasutra on Twitter. The questions usually go out on Fridays in the late morning, Pacific time, alongside tweets of our regular news, blogs, and original writing.
First, the developers at Octagon Studios expressed frustration that players are currently able to purchase a game, play for less than 2 hours, give it a negative review, then refund the game. The problem here isn’t that the developers here think they shouldn’t be able to get a refund—it’s that the review stays up despite the fact they no longer own the game.
@gamasutra Stop trolls buying the game, leaving a bad review and refunding it after 0.1 playtime - Review stays. Game-Breaker! #DevsAnswer
— Octagon Interactive (@octagonstudios) September 16, 2016
One YouTuber makes a request for a broader, more functional customer support system from Valve. While Valve does have a support ticketing system and customer service team in place, it’s been criticized for not responding fast enough to certain debacles.
@gamasutra anykind of working customer support #DevsAnswer
— Mourad (@Mourossonero) September 16, 2016
The developers at Milkstone Studios suggest that Valve hide its review counts for games with low sales, as that can discourage players from purchasing. It’s a somewhat anti-free market sentiment, but maybe having players click to see total review numbers could be a simple fix for this?
@gamasutra Hide total review count Games with low sales already struggle enough, the review count encourages users not to purchase
— Milkstone Studios (@milkstone) September 16, 2016
Meanwhile Guerric Haché requests that Valve tune its review display algorithm a bit to favor certain reviewers in a fashion akin to Amazon—one that validates certain players over others based on their playtime, games owned, etc.
@gamasutra Maybe they should weight reviews by a user's playtime, average review score, number of games reviewed, and/or other metrics?
— Guerric Haché (@GarrickWinter) September 16, 2016
And lastly developer and occasional Gamasutra blogger Christian Allen contributes not a suggestion, but an observation that Valve’s changes to the review system this week slightly discourage developers from donating games to charities, since reviews from players who win keys in livestreams or through other charitable means wouldn’t have their scores rated.
@gamasutra On impact I realized is that this change removes an incentive to donate games to charities. That's not good.
— Christian Allen (@Serellan) September 16, 2016