Valve launched Steam recommendations back in 2010, allowing users to recommend titles to their friends and write what they liked about the game. Now Valve is evolving this feature into something a little more wide-reaching- Steam Reviews. These reviews will be available for the whole community to read, not just your friends or people who check out your profile page.

Current recommendations can be turned in to a review if you wish and Steam will prioritize what reviews you see based on the language you speak. The community will be able to up vote the reviews they like and think are worth reading, down vote the not so helpful ones and then flag reviews that go against the community guide lines- obviously negative reviews are welcome.

To be eligible to write a review, you have to launch the game through Steam at least once. That doesn't mean it has to have been a purchase though, you can review any game you've played on a free weekend or launched through the game sharing program, free to play titles are also open for review but the amount of time you've spent with a game will be included in the review so keep that in mind. You can't just play something for 10 minutes and decide it's terrible.

Game developers will be allowed to interact with the community through these reviews as well, they will be easy to spot too as they will be flagged as an official game developer. Developers can't remove negative reviews or stuff they don't agree with but just like everyone else, they can flag reviews. Game developers being able to interact directly could help make improvements on future titles and get a better feel for what gamers want.

Kitguru Says: Hopefully we will see some constructive and well written reviews on there, it's always nice to share your thoughts with others and game developer interaction is a nice touch too. Are any of you guys going to start reviewing your games?

Source: Steam

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