Steam Addresses Review Bombing Issue, Adds Histogram

There’s no doubt that Valve’s digital distribution platform Steam has a review bombing problem. This is basically where gamers who have a problem with a video game publisher or studio that has nothing to do with the game’s quality start leaving negative reviews en masse. Valve finally decided to step in and try to provide a more balanced narrative by adding a histogram.

A histogram is basically a graph that shows a more detailed picture of customer reviews when it comes to a particular product. In the case of video games on Steam, a histogram can show exactly why a game suddenly has a less than stellar review profile or why it suddenly fell from something like “Overwhelmingly Positive” to “Mixed”. This is why Steam decided to implement the graph, according to its blog post.

“Starting today, each game page now contains a histogram of the positive to negative ratio of reviews over the entire lifetime of the game, and by clicking on any part of the histogram you're able to read a sample of the reviews from that time period,” the post read.

“As a potential purchaser, it's easy to spot temporary distortions in the reviews, to investigate why that distortion occurred, and decide for yourself whether it's something you care about. This approach has the advantage of never preventing anyone from submitting a review, but does require slightly more effort on the part of potential purchasers.”

This move comes on the heels of the recent review bombing incident involving the game Firewatch by Campo Santo, Polygon reports. After the studio chose to take issue with the huge YouTube personality PewDiePie after the internet star uttered an offensive slur during a public streaming, the developers came under fire from irate fans of the YouTuber.

While Steam never specifically mentioned Firewatch, the timing is noteworthy. Either way, this is a good way for the platform to deal with what amounts to a gun pointed at the heads of publishers or developers by users.