Steam News - Updates to User Review Scores Based on Language - Steam News
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The review score for some games is now language-specific

I know I’m late to the party but I just found out and didn’t find a post regarding this

TL;DR: Steam now calculates review scores based on reviews made on your languages only (if enough). This is on by default, but can be reverted to go back to review scores based on all reviews (from people that purchased the game directly on Steam only)

  • ElectricdOPEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    First, being able to give a list of languages you want to factor into the score, so it’s not just your current Steam language.

    I think it currently chooses the languages you’ve allowed to see for reviews if I remember correctly, or the game languages you allowed to see

    • Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      As far as I can tell, it just uses whatever language you use Steam in. If that language doesn’t have enough reviews, it defaults to all languages.

      I also just tried and set German as a secondary language, but it still just shows the score for English reviews. It doesn’t even mention German at the bottom of the page, where you get the summary, only all languages and English (and recent). If I change the language for the store, it also changes the source for the review score.

      The actual reviews at the bottom of the page (Most Helpful and Recent) are pulled from the languages you’ve allowed, so I now see English and German reviews (and a Korean one, but maybe that user just uses Steam in English, but posted the review in Korean?).

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        8 hours ago

        So they’re not actually checking the review for the language used. So they must be storing a tag with the review as to what language that reviewers steam is set to. I can see problems with this right there, a lot of people will have steam in whatever their desired language is, say German, but will post reviews in English. It seems like these reviews won’t be taken into account because they’ll be incorrectly tagged as German.

        • Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          5 hours ago

          The thing you’re describing definitely happens. Just did a quick check with Steam in German and every game had a few reviews in English (just checking the preview of Most Helpful and Most Recent at the bottom of the store page). Other languages are more affected, like Swedish, where most of the reviews are in English.

          I don’t really see a good solution to this. If Steam is able to correctly detect the language and only show your native one, most of the time you’ll probably end up with a handful of reviews, and then Steam has to show you something else (probably English) anyway. I think currently it’s good enough, since you still get the perspective of someone from (probably) your regional or cultural background, even if the language might not fit.