Steam Adds Community Reviews To Homepage

Steam has long featured reviews penned by players as a core part of its user experience. Now, reviews that are rated as particularly "helpful" will display on your Steam front page, as a way of recommending new or popular games. This feature has been dubbed "Community Recommendations."

You can check your Store tab on Steam to see the new changes, or head on over to the dedicated Community Recommendations page to see what people are saying. Currently, the page is a good mix of high-profile games that you've likely heard of, such as Grim Dawn or Watch Dogs, and indie fare that might otherwise go unheralded, like the JRPG Aria Chronicle. As RPS noted, however, the blurb offered as preview text isn't always useful, as some reviewers have a tendency to start their reviews with tangents or long introductory text.

According to the blog post that announced the launch of Community Recommendations, some other new features will be coming to Steam from Steam Labs in the next few months. Perhaps the most interesting is the concept of "micro trailers," which would offer video previews of games in just a few small seconds.

As the most popular storefront for PC games, Steam has introduced a number of new features over the years, some more successful than others. For example, some still use the Steam Curator system to find new games to play, and Steam rebalanced its recommendation algorithm last year to de-prioritize games that are already popular.