Genuine question because I am not familiar with Steam but are reviews important outside of the launch window?
I understand aroud launch to see if there are issues but after the launch window and the game already being a known identity I would think most already know what the game is about and if its a good game.
I'd say the opposite. While there are some that may not use it, Steam reviews is a huge driver on Steam for most folks, and it's often what is surfacing the big hits even quite some time after launch. So it is important for launch, but also through the life of the game.
The big difference to other review systems is that Steam's review system accounts for day to day changes of the game and how those reviews change over time. All reviews are either "recommend" or "don't recommend". Then after enough players have reviewed at launch (or Early Access), an aggregate score is determined as a percentage of "people who recommend". But there is also a "Recent Reviews" aggregate after a couple of months. This is just the aggregate of reviews in the past 30 days. It's a way to identify positive or negative changes over time.
Since it is pretty open to simple, complex, joke/meme whether serious or not, they give a lot of tools for players to quickly dig into it and see if these reviews matter to them.
There is a histogram of the life of the game and review changes over time that you can zone in on. You can view by hours the reviewers played, when they published, where they purchased from, if they refunded/received for free, what languages / locales they are in, their profile and history, previous reviews etc.
You basically have everything you need to work out what reviews you want to listen to or not. The system also compensates for "review bombing" appropriately. If it is in context of the game, it stays visible to all. If it is not related to the game or has some out of context influence, Steam flags it as "off topic" and blocks it from the aggregate, and the player can choose to investigate it, keep it in or exclude it.
So the trick here is, some games getting mixed or even negative reviews, still stay popular, either because players deem the the reviews or sentiments not relevant or passed. Steam's algo will actually hide negative review games though, so trash is pretty much invisible unless you search. Valve have a video on that for devs to understand.
I'd say overall as an open system, I really like it and use it all the time. It's also good to see reversals, like No Man Sky completely turning things around. Doom Eternal returning to positive after it's kernal anti-cheat mess similar to Helldivers - and on that occasion Bethesda even reached out to reviewers individual to inform them of the reversal and request they reconsider. Importantly, I'd say on aggregate regardless of quality of reviews, when the cohort is above a few 1000s, the data seems pretty representative of what to expect from the game, so I use it frequently.
www.eurogamer.net
