Gaming has become a big industry, a serious industry with numbers, charts, and meetings. As all serious industries do, it does regular reviews on the work delivered. Are there more frames per second on my screen than there is money in my bank account? Is it more fun than going out to buy some particularly good bread? Are these character poses offensive to anyone at all? You know, the hard hitting questions. But what happens when one of the biggest players in the industry lets everyone review every single game? Even that odd kid that always had a slice of cheese in his backpack, or that guy on your bus you try to avoid for a myriad of reasons? Yes, even them. That’s exactly what Steam did back in November of 2013 by creating Steam Reviews and we’ve been reaping the rewards and shame ever since.
The Steam Reviews adventure started when the oppressed gamer masses clamoured for reviews for everyone rather than just for the corrupt and bribed few professionals of gaming website giants such as IGN. Unsurprisingly, this adventure started by a whimper, a screech, and more ‘joke reviews’ than there are SJWs on Tumblr. While a lot of these reviews were genuinely funny, they sparked a whole army of copycats who simply copy pasted reviews in the hopes of getting some internet fame, others tried their luck by quoting all the best memes from 2011 such as ‘arrow to the knee’ or ‘like Skyrim without guns 10/10 IGN’. This sparked the creation of several sites such as Quality Steam Reviews that spotlighted some of the ‘better’ user reviews. That’s when users outraged by this outcry of humour started making reviews that were longer than the combined works of Tolkien and more serious than my tax forms.
By now it’s no secret that I run Quality Steam Reviews, a site that brings you some of the more ‘unusual’ reviews that Steam has to offer. It all started out as a small after hours project that turned into the Sodom and Gomorrah of video games. While I do admit that my site might have put some of the wrong people in the spotlight, my main focus is to find genuinely funny reviews. As someone who has probably seen more Steam reviews than I’ve had meals in my life, I just can’t afford to keep posting the same worn and old reviews, I might go as insane as other people claim I already am. That’s why I look for reviews that bring something new, I look past the ‘funny’ tab and read all the reviews that games have to offer. Did you make me laugh and you didn’t come up with the fifteenth iteration of the ‘good potato’ post? Congratulations, you’re now going to be featured on a site with an audience that is clamoring for the latest and greatest in funny review technology.
As someone who has spent more time sifting through Steam than your average Joe, I can safely say that the user reviews are in good hands. The ratio of in-depth quality content to the reviews you’d expect from the Jeff Dunhams of Steam reviews is actually more than okay. The fact that I have to sift through tons of horrible, disgusting, filthy reviews that are well made and explain the pros and cons of the game is disheartening to someone like me who is just looking for the next headline grabbing quip that could bring in all the views. However, there are two exceptions to this; the joke games such as Goat Simulator where posting a joke online almost feels as your moral duty. And there are always games that have gotten too big for their own good, take a look at the Call of Duty series. It’s a brand that has become the butt of many jokes and boy, you can sure notice by the reviews.
Overall, I’d like people to stay calm about the fact that people make jokes on Steam, it was always bound to happen the longer we wait, the more the novelty is going to wear off. And to the people actually posting these reviews, don’t post them because you want to be funny, post them because you have something to say. Are you being funny in the process? Good on you, we might even meet on the best website in the world called Quality Steam Reviews.