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.

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.

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.

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.

As always, we learn from your feedback, so please feel free to leave a comment below.

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.

A refreshed trailer player interface that is easier to use and more responsive to your input.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The new trailer player now handles any aspect ratio of video, properly scaling, centering, and letterboxing as necessary.

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...

Just as the Steam Store has changed with the addition of new features in past few years, the ways users browse the store have changed too. Today's Steam Client Beta features a new store menu that is designed to provide easier access to the places Steam users most frequently visit.

As part of our ongoing efforts to help users find new and exciting games to play on Steam, we're eager for you to try out the new menu and to read your feedback. To help test the menu and other in-progress Steam features, join the Steam Client Beta.

Combined Left Column & Blue Bar

We’ve combined the left column of links and blue menu bar into one cohesive menu, bringing all your essential links into a more unified and reorganized space. Many of these items were in both places, and it was hard to anticipate where to find what you needed.

Plus, search and the menu are now available on more pages across the Store. While the menu bar will stay out of your way, it will reappear if you scroll up slightly. 

Enhanced Search Panel

We’ve taken search to the next level. Not only can you search for what you need, but the search panel now offers even more options, including:

• Popular Searches: See what others are searching for right now

• Recently Viewed: An easy way to jump back to games you've previously looked at

• More than just games: Search for categories/tags, publishers, and more

• Advanced Search link: For those who want to refine their game search even further, we’ve made it easier than ever to access the advanced search page with a variety of filters.

Browse - Easier Access to Top Destinations

Not looking for anything specific? We all enjoy seeing what's new on the front of the Store, but sometimes we want a more narrow set of games to browse. The Browse tab offers a variety of ways to find games based on popularity, release date, price and discount. These are the tried and true ways to find the games the community is talking about. 

Recommendations - All in One Place

We’ve organized recommendations into one convenient section, so you can explore new games and content without having to sift through multiple areas. Whether you’re looking for games based on your playtime, what you've purchased, or recommendations from people you trust — you can find them now grouped together in one spot.

Categories & Tags - Personalized for You

The categories tab is now fully personalized for you, making it easier than ever to find games based on aspects of the games you play. Featured here are hubs (with access to thousands more games) for your top genres and tags across the games you play. You might even learn something new about yourself! 

And more!

With these changes, we’re aiming to make your experience smoother and more tailored to your needs. We've been hearing from players, and experiencing ourselves, that some of the most commonly visited areas of Steam were hard to get to. So whether you’re a frequent shopper or a looking to build your game library, this new layout is designed to get you where you want to go with less effort.

About the beta

We're constantly looking to make Steam better, and we make decisions based on data and the feedback we receive. Even here in the office, we browse the Steam Store in different ways. So it's important that you tell us what you think. The Steam Client Beta is a great way to test features that are in-progress and provide impactful feedback.

Not participating in the Steam Client Beta? Here's how to join. Try out the new menu and let us know what you think.