Valve distinguishes a review that can be read from one that counts toward a game’s score. Its documentation also explains why playtime and the timing of a review matter.
A Steam review score and the full set of written reviews are not identical measures. Valve’s Steamworks documentation says users with playtime can review a product even when they obtained access through a key, a free weekend or family sharing. It separately states that only reviews from accounts that bought the game on Steam and played it count toward the game’s review score.
The documentation says the most prominent reviews are selected from recently written, helpful contributions, and that reviews written during Early Access are labeled. A reader can therefore ask when the opinion was written and how much the reviewer played, rather than treating every comment as a description of the same version or stage of development.
The practical interpretation is to read the reasons behind a recommendation as well as the aggregate label. An account of performance, accessibility or a particular game mode may be more relevant to one buyer than to another. This report explains Valve’s documented system, without reviewing a specific title or claiming that a score guarantees quality. The historical controller photograph represents the Steam platform and does not depict the review interface or a newly tested device.
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