Steam rolls out user reviews for games, with scoring system to follow

Valve has rolled out a new feature into its digital distribution platform Steam. The feature essentially lets gamers write reviews for various titles on their Steam store page. While Steam has had the ability to write Recommendations for games for quite some time, the new review feature will do much more to solidify Steam’s ecosystem, which Valve is undoubtedly banking on in preparation for the launch of SteamOS and Steam Machine.

Steam has a new review system

The review system doesn't have support for scores just yet, but it does let gamers add a "Recommended" or an "Enjoyed this game" tag. Other gamers can check out reviews and upvote or downvote them based on whether or not they found it helpful. According to the Steam Reviews FAQ page, the ability to give scores to games will be added at a future date. Those who had used Steam’s Recommendations system have had the recommendations automatically turned into reviews.

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In an attempt to give legitimacy to reviews written through this system, the number of hours a gamer has spent on the game is shown above the review. This is mostly to prevent people from spamming unjustified negative reviews for games. Users also don’t have to actually own the game they are writing the review for. As Valve puts it, "Whether you registered a Steam key obtained elsewhere, participated in a Steam Free Weekend, played a Free game, or played a game via Family Sharing, you will be able to write a review for that product."

The feature is currently in open beta, so expect new features to get added as time goes on.