Steam has a “review bomb” problem—but will today’s new feature fix it?

Enlarge / Have you struggled to understand Steam review bomb incidents? Do these incredibly unclear line charts help at all? (credit: Valve Software)

Steam, the largest digital PC game storefront in the West, continues to struggle with user-contributed game reviews. Valve launched the feature in 2013, and since then, it has seen various updates to deal with issues such as false and gamed reviews.

But none of those updates was much comfort to the game Firewatch last week. Its Steam review page was swarmed with negative reviews after its developer, Campo Santo, denounced the hateful speech of game streamer PewDiePie and issued DMCA challenges to that streamer's videos about Firewatch.

Maybe it's a coincidence that Valve not only announced a new Steam user review feature on Tuesday but also tied it in a huge way to the issue of "review bombing." Either way, Steam store pages now come with a lot more data in the form of "review histograms." What are they? How will they affect reviews going forward? And most importantly, is that enough action to deal with a noticeable rise in irrelevant and poisonous use of Steam's storefront?

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