When was the last time a user review actually helped you decide what to play?
Scroll through the reviews on any Steam page and you’ll see the same patterns. Wall of green thumbs. Some meme about potatoes. A few hundred people copy-pasting a joke. Someone playing for 2,000 hours before giving it a thumbs down because the devs nerfed their favourite hat.
It’s noise. All of it. Very loud, very confident, very pointless noise.
The “most helpful” reviews are usually some bored bloke writing a 40-line breakdown like he’s applying for a job at IGN. Underneath, it’s ten people quoting Monty Python or saying “runs fine on my toaster.” If the game’s bad, they flood it with ASCII art. If it’s good, they still complain because the dev used the wrong shade of grey in the UI.
Everyone’s trying to perform. Nobody’s trying to inform.
You get glowing reviews from people who’ve barely played it, and seething rants from people who’ve played it non-stop for six months. Nobody trusts professional critics anymore, but somehow we’re supposed to believe “Not recommended – my cat didn’t like it” is honest consumer feedback?
Then there’s the review bombing. Some political statement, a pricing change, or just a bad mood on Reddit, and suddenly a thousand people who’ve never launched the game show up to tank its score. And it works. Publishers panic. Devs do damage control. Actual players can’t tell what’s real anymore.
The Steam review system doesn’t separate feedback from feeling. Everything gets flattened into “Recommended” or “Not Recommended,” even if the actual review says “it’s complicated.” Context gets lost. Nuance disappears. You’re left with what amounts to shouting.
The community isn’t helping either. Forums are full of kneejerk reactions and half-informed whining. Everyone wants to sound like they know what they’re talking about, but most of it boils down to whether their preferred playstyle got nerfed. No one’s reading patch notes. No one’s testing balance. But everyone’s got a strong opinion, and they’re happy to throw it into the void.
It wasn’t always like this. Early Steam reviews were rough, but they had some sincerity. You could learn something. These days, they’re a mess of memes, rage posts, and passive-aggressive essays pretending to be helpful.
So what are you meant to do? Ignore the reviews completely? Maybe. Watch a bit of gameplay. Ask someone you trust. Take a punt on something weird. The big platforms aren’t giving you insight. They’re giving you noise.
And let’s be honest, you’ve probably written one of those useless reviews too:
How do you decide what to play when the store page is a disaster?
