Recently, the Business Development Director at World's Edge studio shared the results of a study. Will McCahill evaluated the positivity level of Steam reviews for the period from 2014 to 2024.
As it turned out, dissatisfaction levels have been increasing in recent years: while in 2014 around 89% of reviews were “positive,” in 2018 this figure dropped to 83%.
However, in 2019 there was a sharp increase to 89% — a representative from GameDiscoverCo suggests this may be linked to the introduction of a feature prompting users to leave a review after spending some time in a game.
Since 2021, the level of “positivity” in reviews has been declining annually, reaching 84.2% as of 2024.
Ranking of the most dissatisfied Steam users by language:
- Japanese — 73% positive reviews;
- Traditional Chinese — 76% positive reviews;
- Simplified Chinese — 80% positive reviews;
- Korean — 81% positive reviews;
- German — 83% positive reviews;
- English — 84% positive reviews;
- Russian — 85% positive reviews;
- Turkish, French — 86% positive reviews;
- Hungarian — 87% positive reviews;
- Polish, Czech — 88% positive reviews.
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Cover art author: Valve. Image source: steamcommunity.com
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Screenshot author: Will McCahill. Image source: linkedin.com