Steam adds user reviews

Valve has launched in beta a “User Reviews” section for the Steam Store. This is essentially a revamp of the “recommendations” system.

Users can rate any game they have played, provide a write-up about the game, and rate other’s reviews for helpfulness, also following trusted authors.

While an aggregated overall score for a game isn’t available yet, Valve has said they are considering it during the beta phase, explaining that because a game changes over time through updates and new content, so does the accuracy of reviews change as well.

To this end, the latest reviews of a game will be shown to users first, to reflect an opinion on the most current sate of the game.

Developers will be able to reply to reviews, and given a special “developer” flag on their comment. Abusive and offensive reviews can be flagged, and will then be collapsed until a Valve moderator gets around to deleting the review or removing the spam flag.

Finally, if you’ve ever written a recommendation for a game, these will now be upgraded to reviews. Users can set whether their review are visible to friends only, or to the general public.

Check out your reviews here: http://steamcommunity.com/my/reviews/