With today's update, the Review Score shown to you for some games will be calculated from the reviews written in your language. This is part of our ongoing effort to ensure that Steam User Reviews are helping customers make informed decisions when considering the purchase of a new game. Read on for the details behind this change.
A Better Indication of User Sentiment
We launched Steam User Reviews almost twelve years ago to give customers a way to tell each other what they thought about a game, and whether they recommended it or not. A short time later we introduced the concept of a Review Score, which is a simple categorization based on the percentage of positive reviews. It is basically a signal of how happy the overall community around a game was with their purchase, and a useful tool for potential customers to predict their happiness with that game as well.
Steam's growth since then into an even larger global presence means customers in different regions of the world may have vastly different experiences from each other for the same game. There are a variety of reasons this may happen for a particular game, including translation issues, cultural references, poor network connections, and many others; things that the Overall Review Scores haven't been able to capture until now. Calculating a language-specific review score means that we can better distill the sentiment of these different groups of customers, and in doing so, better serve potential customers that belong to those groups.
Language-specific Review Score
When there are enough reviews written in a particular language, Steam will calculate a review score for that language. The Review Score displayed to users will be based on their primary language. What this means is that some languages may show more positive review scores, while others may show more negative ones, for the same game.
This change impacts games that have more than 2,000 publicly visible reviews, and with at least 200 written reviews in at least one language. We purposely made these thresholds higher than the 10 reviews required to calculate the Overall Review Score; this is because we wanted to be pretty confident in the language-specific score before showing it to users.
For games where Steam has generated language-specific review scores, you'll see this on the game's store page:
If you want to dig deeper into what's going on, you can click the "See language breakdown" link to see a more detailed view by language and what Review Score those customers will see.
Maintaining Trust
We realize that whenever we make changes to User Reviews, we're inviting some scrutiny into our motivations for making those changes. Maintaining trust in the system is crucial to us, so we've erred on the side of being as transparent as possible. To that end, we've built many features in User Reviews that can be enabled or disabled, letting you access the raw reviews in many different ways.
At the same time, we want User Reviews to be useful to customers from the very start, without them having to twiddle with the many knobs the system has--this is the primary reason why the new language-specific review score system is turned on by default. If you want to go back to seeing the Overall Review Score based on all user reviews, ignoring your language, you can change that setting here in your Store preferences.
Have Feedback?
As always, we learn from your feedback, so please feel free to leave a comment below.
The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:
Note: This update was re-released to fix a macOS issue causing some games to launch with the wrong process architecture. It was later re-released to rollback a GPU utilization monitoring change that needs more testing.
General
Fixed scaling of desktop on-screen keyboard when accessibility display scaling is enabled.
Fixed notifications and find-in-page popups intermittently failing to close or focus.
Remote Play
Fixed the guide button bringing Steam to the foreground while streaming from another computer
macOS
Fixed some games not launching properly on Apple Silicon machines.
Linux
Fixed Steam client failing to reload or showing dialogs unexpectedly after a render process crash.
The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:
In-Game Overlay
Performance Monitor now supports CPU temperature on Windows and Linux, on Windows this requires a kernel mode driver, and there is an optional to disable if you don't want that. The driver is only installed and running when Performance Monitor is visible at full CPU detail levels and only if you don't disable the drive in the In-Game settings.
Fixed mouse input being offset on macOS when running certain games on high dpi displays.
Fixed game overview window failing to load if there is an issue loading data for popular or favorite guides.
This release includes a variety of bug fixes and quality of life improvements for SteamVR.
We continue to focus on OpenXR as our preferred API for new games and applications. SteamVR’s official OpenXR subforum is here and we’d love to hear your feedback, as well as suggestions for new features.
SteamVR:
Bindings can now have "Controller Offsets" (found in Options) that will apply to controller orientation across all input types (Legacy, SteamVR Input, OpenXR). This is in addition to individual "Pose Offsets" which will apply only to the specific pose you've selected. To add offsets to poses in the Controller Binding UI, click the gear icon next to a pose.
Slight reduction in dashboard startup time.
Fixed an issue with the Binding UI not being able to save bindings.
Minor SteamVR Input speed optimizations.
Made the Controller Binding UI smaller to improve usability in headset.
Added Pico Controller to the list of controller types you can simulate.
Fixed a bug with bindings that caused returnBindingsWith* options to be ignored.
Fix controller SVGs not rendering in the controller test UI.
Fixed some scenarios where the keyboard didn't work in the Binding UI.
Fixed an issue with modified bindings not working while Steam was offline.
Fixed always showing the "multitasking mode" button for all overlays, not just Desktop overlays.
Fixed sometimes showing the "show keyboard" button for overlays that don't support keyboard input.
Fixed initially showing double overlay control bars the moment you float a window in the world.
Fixed the overlay control bar not being visible at all in the Legacy dashboard.
Steam Link:
Slight reduction in startup time for Steam Link VR.
Reduced CPU utilization when streaming with Steam Link.
Fixed some minor performances hitches.
Resolved multiple crashes.
OpenXR:
XR_EXT_dpad_binding now correctly works on all appropriate controller types.
Fixed a bug where certain poses would not show up in the Binding UI when simulating controllers.
Developers:
When a user is using Steam Link, app developers can now retrieve the correct HMD type via Prop_ModelNumber_String, rather than it being misreported as a Quest 2.
OpenXR Developers:
Add support for XR_EXT_render_model and XR_EXT_interaction_render_model.
Return more realistic joint radii in xrLocateHandJointsEXT.
Fix render model UUIDs not generating correctly on Linux.
Fixed a bug where the valid and tracked flags were set on hand joints when the joint data were actually invalid.
Fixed a bug where hand tracking could return a XR_RUNTIME_FAILURE when it should have only been invalid poses.
Removed palm_ext/pose from vive_trackers to match specification.
Runtime now returns XR_ERROR_GRAPHICS_REQUIREMENT_CALL_MISSING instead of XR_VALIDATION_FAILURE if an app tries to create a session without first calling xr*GetGraphicsRequirement.
Added support for XR_SWAPCHAIN_USAGE_UNORDERED_ACCESS_BIT to the D3D11 path, which was previously ignored.
Minor input speed optimizations.
Fix SteamVR not returning XR_ERROR_EXTENSION_NOT_PRESENT when an OpenXR layer requests an unavailable extension.
Fix xrCreateActionSpace returning XR_ERROR_PATH_UNSUPPORTED when using Vive trackers
As always, if you are interested, we encourage enrolling into SteamVR Beta by right-clicking on SteamVR in your Steam library, clicking on "Properties" and selecting "Betas" from the list on the left hand side and then clicking "Beta" under Beta Participation. Additionally, if you use Steam Link for Meta Quest, you can opt into the beta here or in-headset by going to your library, clicking the "..." on Steam Link, selecting Settings and clicking the button to the right of "Installed Version Information."
Help & Information:
The Steam Link for Meta Quest FAQ page is available here.
If you encounter issues with this update, please post in the SteamVR Bug Report forum. If possible, please include a SteamVR System Report to aid in tracking down your issue. Replies to this post are not tracked for bug reporting purposes. Please use the forum linked above to report issues.
The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:
General
Added the ability to filter by Private games in dynamic collections or filtered app views.
Fixed sort titles not being restored to the correct title on clear for games that already have a sort title set in their app info.
Store menu - Search drop down now marks search results as: in library, on wishlist, in cart, ignored, and excluded by preferences
In-Game Overlay
Performance monitor and general overlay rendering performance significantly improved in some D3D12 titles that are at times CPU bound and use high async rendering
Performance monitor GPU utilization fixed to not exceed 100% in rare circumstances on Windows
Performance monitor FPS numbers improved to not overcount by 1 frame in certain vsync or frame rate capped scenarios
macOS
Added "End of Life" alert for macOS 11 ("Big Sur"). Steam Client support for this version will end on October 15th, 2025 at 10am. See here for additional details.
Linux
Fixed regression causing display scale to not apply properly in some cases.
We have just shipped an updated Steam Deck Client to the Preview/Beta channel.
General
Added a Customization tab to game properties. The Customization tab allows users to set a custom sort title that will be used instead of the actual title when sorting games in the library.
Fixed a case where steam would freeze and fail to recover after a process crash.
Desktop
The Customization tab in desktop mode also allows users to view and set custom artwork for the game
The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:
Note: This beta was re-released to fix a crash on Linux if 32-bit GTK-3 libraries are installed.
General
Added a Customization tab to game properties. The Customization tab allows users to view and set custom artwork for the game and set a custom sort title that will be used instead of the actual title when sorting games in the library.
Store menu - fixed blur issue for users with GPU acceleration turned off
Store menu - Top Genres should now be more relevant and dynamic
Store menu - added Store Home link
Fixed a bug that sometimes caused chat tabs to not contain the name and avatar of the chat participant
Fixed context menus showing empty space at some UI scales
Big Picture Mode
Fixed UI scale adjustments sometimes resetting scaling back to auto
Fixed Big Picture Mode window changing size when UI scaling is adjusted
Game Recording
Fixed keyboard shortcuts not working in Recordings & Screenshots dialog
Fixed export failing for lower resolution recordings
Linux
Fixed Steam UI scale not updating with system DPI changes in XWayland
Fixed a case where steam would freeze and fail to recover after a process crash
We've made a number of updates to the Steam Trailer Player to improve usability, quality, and bandwidth usage. Read on for the highlights from this update.
Fresh new user interface
A refreshed trailer player interface that is easier to use and more responsive to your input.
Adaptable UI
The user interface of the trailer player now adapts intelligently no matter how you are using it: on a desktop computer, a mobile device (it even works well on iPhones now); and on Steam Deck or in Steam Big Picture Mode.
Preview images while seeking
As you mouse over or scrub your finger over the player timeline, you'll now see preview images of where you are about to jump to in the video.
Faster seeking, scrubbing, and transition to full-screen
Thanks to a change in the underlying video technology, you should see fewer pauses and hitches when jumping forward or backward in a video. You will also see seamless transitions when pressing that full-screen button.
Smarter use of your internet bandwidth
When we reprocessed each video to work with our new trailer player, we also generated up to four sizes (360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p), which our trailer player dynamically switches between depending on your network conditions and the size of the trailer player.
Improved handling of aspect ratio
The new trailer player now handles any aspect ratio of video, properly scaling, centering, and letterboxing as necessary.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How many trailers are there in the Steam store?
A. As it turns out.... a LOT. In order to update the streaming technology, we had to re-encode every trailer that appears or could appear on the Steam store. That ended up being around 400,000 video files.
Q. Why are some older videos so low resolution?
A. Some trailers were uploaded a long time ago and we no longer have the original files within the Steam system. Yes, we're still trying to find our stash of tape backups so we can get the originals of the Portal trailer...
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