Valve launches Steam Reviews beta

Steam Reviews are now in beta, offering users of Valve's online distribution platform a better way to share their opinions with the rest of the community.

"Steam Reviews is an evolution of the Recommendation system that has been a part of Steam since 2010," said the company in a statement.

"Over the past few years, Steam users have written over 7 million Recommendations of games and software to their friends. Those Recommendations have been upgraded to Steam Reviews."

Reviews are rated for helpfulness by other users, and only those who have bought or launched a piece of software can pass judgement on it. In an FAQ Valve also revealed plans to add an overall score or rating for games at a later date.

"Many products on Steam change significantly over time as the game or software is updated and new content is added. In order to form a score that accurately reflects the current state of a product, we first need to gather and evaluate the data from reviews."

Developers won't be able to delete negative reviews, but they can respond to them and their contributions will be highlighted.