It's no secret that user-submitted Steam Reviews have often been quite controversial, especially during so-called "review bombings". In these instances, specific games have been targeted with a deluge of negative reviews, thus crashing the overall user review score on Valve's platform.
One of the earliest scenarios was the review bombing of Firewatch, Campo Santo's acclaimed adventure game released in 2016. The following year, YouTuber PewDiePie racially insulted a player during a livestream in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), and Campo Santo's founder Sean Vanaman asked YouTube to remove all of PewDiePie's videos from the platform. However, in retaliation, PewDiePie's legion of followers went en masse on Steam to leave negative reviews on Firewatch.
Just a week after the controversy, Valve added histograms to user-submitted Steam Reviews to help them make sense of these situations. However, review bombings continued:
- In 2018, SEGA's Total War: Rome II got review bombed due to the presence in the game of too many female generals
- In 2020, CAPCOM's Monster Hunter World received a temporary blast of negative reviews from Chinese players following what they perceived to be a racist joke in the Monster Hunter movie
- In 2023, Blizzard's Diablo IV was immediately review bombed when it launched on Steam, with many user reviews blatantly criticizing the studio without even touching the game's actual content
- In 2024, Sony Santa Monica's God of War: Ragnarök was briefly the target of a review bombing when Sony still required users to register for a PlayStation account to play single player games
That said, in some instances, negative Steam reviews can be helpful to the developer if they point out actual problems with the game. One such scenario is whenever there are performance issues. With the latest Steam Client Beta, Valve has introduced the "option to attach hardware specs when writing or updating a Steam User Review on a game's store page", which could be really useful for developers as they diagnose performance problems mentioned in their game's Steam reviews.
The new Steam Client Beta also introduced another option: to send "anonymized frame rate data" to Valve. This data will be stored "without connection to your Steam account, but identified with the kind of hardware you are playing on." Valve claims it will help improve Steam and overall game compatibility, with a focus on devices running SteamOS, such as the Steam Deck.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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