Steam has made some further tweaks to its Steam Customer Review system, with these adjustments being made to build on the changes Steam made in September last year.
In a blog post on their site, Steam has said that these changes are being made to "fine-tune the relevance and accuracy of the overall review score for each product."
The headline changes are that the review score shown at the top of each product will no longer take into accounts reviews posted by those who received the game for free, whether that’s as a gift or because it was played and reviewed during a free weekend. Judgement can still be delivered, and those looking for information can still read the information, it just won’t be reflected in the score at the top of the feedback section.
This change won’t affect games that are free or free-to-play, with everyone’s reviews being given equal waiting in this case.
The change has already started to roll out, but it’ll be a few days until it’s everywhere. The first changes to the Steam Customer Review system were met with some disdain from developers using Steam back in September. Whether this will redress the balance or not for developers that claim they were hit hard by the initial changes remains to be seen.