I know I’m late to the party but I just found out and didn’t find a post regarding this
TL;DR: Steam now calculates review scores based on reviews made on your languages only (if enough). This is on by default, but can be reverted to go back to review scores based on all reviews (from people that purchased the game directly on Steam only)
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.
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.
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
I’ve never understood those reviews