Good for stuff like Chinese review bombing.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
129 points (100.0% liked)
Games
48754 readers
1465 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Authorized Regular Threads
Related communities
PM a mod to add your own
Video games
Generic
- !gaming@Lemmy.world: Our sister community, focused on PC and console gaming. Meme are allowed.
- !photomode@feddit.uk: For all your screenshots needs, to share your love for games graphics.
- !vgmusic@lemmy.world: A community to share your love for video games music
- !freegames@feddit.uk: A community sharing free games giveaways.
Help and suggestions
By platform
By type
- !AutomationGames@lemmy.zip
- !Incremental_Games@incremental.social
- !LifeSimulation@lemmy.world
- !CityBuilders@sh.itjust.works
- !CozyGames@Lemmy.world
- !CRPG@lemmy.world
- !horror_games@piefed.world
- !OtomeGames@ani.social
- !Shmups@lemmus.org
- !space_games@piefed.world
- !strategy_games@piefed.world
- !turnbasedstrategy@piefed.world
- !tycoon@lemmy.world
- !VisualNovels@ani.social
By games
- !Baldurs_Gate_3@lemmy.world
- !Cities_Skylines@lemmy.world
- !CassetteBeasts@Lemmy.world
- !Fallout@lemmy.world
- !FinalFantasyXIV@lemmy.world
- !Minecraft@Lemmy.world
- !NoMansSky@lemmy.world
- !Palia@Lemmy.world
- !Pokemon@lemm.ee
- !Silksong@indie-ver.se
- !Skyrim@lemmy.world
- !StardewValley@lemm.ee
- !Subnautica2@Lemmy.world
- !WorkersAndResources@lemmy.world
Language specific
- !JeuxVideo@jlai.lu: French
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I feel like it's also a way to limit review bombing, like what happened for recent games regarding privacy policy changes
I'm not a fan of it
EDIT: Did you change your comment? I think it wasn't like this, because my answer doesn't make sense
https://www.thegamer.com/wuchang-fallen-feathers-review-bomb-censorship-update-changes-patch/
Could be from stuff akin to this. This is the second bombing of Wuchang, first was post-launch due to UE5 spec demands
...were those reviews from some specific languages?
I believe they often start in english only. This might limit the impact for non-english speakers
What if I actually want to see the review bombing and it's effect before buying the product ?
Really, the more I think about this change, the less convincing it is. It will hide review bombing of games that might have warn you of something.. I think it will just muddy and make the Steam score way harder to assess and use.
I personally like seeing review bombing as well, it was always relevant to me, despite what Steam says
Steam already marked review bombing as off-topic before, which don't factor into the score by default, and you have to specifically select to see them.
You can disable this language filter, along with the off-topic filter (you should be able to disable them separately though, which you can't currently).
It's worth adding that you can disable this filter permanently. It's not a thing you temporarily disable while you're on a specific game's store page; if you disable it, it disables it for every game until you turn it back on. So that's nice.
It's definitely because of that.
I like it, but currently I see two possible improvements, that I hope get added down the line.
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.
Second, I'd like the toggle to disable the language filter and off-topic review filter to be separate.
Both are pretty minor for me, since I think the default settings are fine, but giving people more options is better.
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
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?).
Second, I’d like the toggle to disable the language filter and off-topic review filter to be separate.
Isn't this already the case?
Unless there's a setting I missed, right now you can only change both settings at the same time.
Oops, my bad then, I didn’t test the feature yet, only read the blog post and thought "off topic" reviews didn’t change
Perfect for reviews like “Game is great, visuals are great, no bugs, it’s very fun, but the developer was not polite enough to the glorious Chinese Communist Party, and was a week late on providing a Chinese translation. Never support these xenophobes.”
God I wish I was exaggerating. Chinese gamers seem to have a huge victim complex.
Yeah.
That’s the vibe I get from Lemmygrad too, like they assume the rest of the world is constantly pondering how much they hate China, as a dominating thought.
It’s bizarre, and I am by no means generalizing Chinese people either. Some researchers I’ve interacted with (which is pretty much my only other exposure to China) are not like that at all.
lemmy.ml, blahaj.zone, lemmygrad, hexbear..
And the entire rest of lemmy is full of people crying about AI or cryptocurrency
I don't seem to have this problem as much. That said, I didn't on Reddit either. Maybe it is because my feeds are mostly science, weird maps, and things discovered on lemmy.nsfw.
Tbh I very rarely see anyone mention cryptocurrency. I guess if it's brought up I'll see someone complain about it, but it's almost never brought up in the first place. Especially compared to AI which is talked about as often as politics.
Doesn’t make it less annoying
Full disclosure, I will sometimes cry about cryptocurrency stuff or slop. But I mined a bitcoin many moons ago, too! And I’m quantizing an LLM as I type!
there sure are many crypto scams, but I hate people generalizing it to all cryptos
you're late to the party
I kinda hope they also weight reviews based in hours in the game. If ten people with 1000 hours I'm a fame recommend and 1000 people with <10 hours don't recommend, I really hope the score is better than 50%.
Steam reviews are a great source of info and entertainment. The score is absolutely useless.
When actually picking my next game I've trusted the same gaming magazine for over 30 years.
Steam review scores are more robust than what 20 games critics thought about a game and is more resistant to review bombing than metacritic. The score is not meaningless IMO.
Why do you think the scores are useless? They are good starting point and/or a way to evaluate smaller indie titles that often don't get professional reviews.
I just haven't seen any correlation with game quality. A short subjective rant from a random gamer is much more useful, especially with those hidden indie gems.
The score is useful. It could be better if Steam had a proper review system instead of just "good" or "bad"
I dunno how useful that would be. Way back in the day eg. youtube had a star rating system for videos, and users gave 0-5 stars... except they found out that overwhelmingly vast majority of users only used 0 and 5, nothing in between.
While a more granular review system would be nice, it's just the users that don't and won't use it properly. Even if some users would use scores other than [min] and [max], they would be such a droplet in an ocean.
Even with the current thumbs up/down people get it wrong. Give it a thumbs up but write a scathing review.
Letterboxd and Goodreads both use a star rating system in addition to long-form reviews and it seems to work out great. I have my disagreements with how the sites are run, but the rating system isn't one of them.
YouTube star ratings never included the opportunity to review (in text) a specific video, so I think your comparison isn't very applicable or helpful in this specific situation. The Steam review system isn't very analogous to how YouTube used to work.
Also, you watch multiple youtube videos in a day. You play a few games or watch a few movies or series a month, and probably fewer
fair enough, youtube probably wasn't a good comparison, but GOG should be. They have written text alongside the 1-5 star review. Now, there are grades 2-4, but in general 1 and 5 seem to be the most used ones.
I would argue against this. I have seen more diverse rating, but 1 to 5 still isn't really accurate
GOG also has a massive problem: you can't edit your review once you published it
Even with the current thumbs up/down people get it wrong. Give it a thumbs up but write a scathing review.
I've done that and it's a result of not having more options than good/bad. Always the same cause: I really wanted to write a 3* review for a game that has a lot to praise but its core is fundamentally flawed, but Steam doesn't let me give a 3*, so I try to correct for the review score bracket I think the game should be in.
Even with the current thumbs up/down people get it wrong. Give it a thumbs up but write a scathing review.
I've never understood those reviews
Which magazine? I’m legitimately surprised that (m)any have survived, to be honest!
Pelit. I don't know how old it is but the above one was the first issue I bought. One of the original dudes still there making up terrible wordplays.
That’s awesome to see!
Print media is basically dead here in Australia, though I did just discover Edge is apparently still a thing - I adored that publication back in the pre-WoW days.
I personally don't look forward to this new feature. I dont want my local language to be used. And that will be one more program that will constantly nag me about if I want to translate some review or only shows the one in my language by default.
I just want to use my currency and being able to just speak English.
I dont want steam to become like Firefox and decide for you that you do need some translations for stuff..
Since I dont think the language you speak should have any relevancy to the quality of the game I have no interest for reviews that are not in English.
So I just hope this "let's localize for you everything" trend will stop.
I dont want french reviews of French games made in france. I just want English reviews of games and the score for all reviews.
Currently the localization of the reviews is the thing that I dislike the most with steam which goes to show how good I think the product is.
It really sounds like you've misunderstood what this change is actually doing. This isn't steam forcing you to use a particular language, those settings aren't going anywhere. It's also not going to force you to see reviews in the game's native language either, so your worry about "french reviews of French games made in france" is just... wrong. What it's doing is sorting reviews by language, under the idea that reviews written in the language you use are probably more relevant to you. And if even that is unacceptable, you can disable the whole system to keep it just the way it is.
This actually means you're MORE likely to get reviews that are more accurate. First, because it limits the impact of regional review bombing. Now if a game upsets one particular population, their review bombing doesn't render the whole score meaningless. It's worth pointing out, games have been heavily review bombed for the sin of competing with, or beating, other regionally popular games for awards. It also means that if the content of a game hits better, or worse, for a demographic based on language, that will be reflected here. If the game is getting rave reviews where it was made, but the translations and voice work for YOUR localization are terrible, you will see reviews that reflect that. You probably don't care how great the voice acting was in the native Chinese version if you only speak English, and what may seem culturally brilliant to a Japanese audience may lose a lot of the impact for you.
I just want to use my currency and being able to just speak English.
This change was made with you in mind.
What it’s doing is sorting reviews by language, under the idea that reviews written in the language you use are probably more relevant to you.
It already did that, but only when viewing reviews. The update just makes it so that the score ex: "overwhelmingly positive" is now only based on reviews of your language
Yeah, it should be off by default with the option to turn it on.