Valve’s review-bomb fix won’t fix review bombing

The customer review is a relatively young form of criticism, but consumers have already unlocked some of its creative power with memorable and hilarious Amazon reviews. Of course, the internet has turned these into weapons against creators they don’t like or are upset with. The practice is so common among gaming fans that it has a name: “review bombing.” Steam, the popular PC game distribution service, is often the home for the angry mobs that want to punish a game or its studio with negative reviews, and now platform owner Valve is addressing the issue by showing more data about the user reviews — although developers are publicly doubting that this will lead to better understanding among potential customers.

To get more data as a customer on Steam, you can now click through to the user-reviews section on a game like Campo Santo’s Firewatch to see a chart that visualizes the number of positive and negative user reviews since it debuted. Valve claims this data will help customers spot review bombs that they can investigate themselves. Those customers can then decide if they agree or disagree with the mob based on that information. As an example of this, Firewatch’s Steam store page also has a warning notification that reads, “High volume of negative reviews detected: September 11-September 16.”