Highlights
- Some Steam users want Valve to allow reviews on early access games like Starfield and Remnant 2.
- The proposal gained traction on Reddit.
- It is unclear if Valve will change its policies, but as the full release of Starfield approaches, the player count on Steam is expected to increase.
Some Steam users took to social media to call on Valve to reconsider its policy on allowing users to submit reviews on games during early access or prerelease and cited Starfield and Remnant 2 as examples. Should Valve pick up on the suggestion, it would allow Steam users who gained early access to specific titles to potentially influence the sales of the games in question.
The proposal made the rounds as Starfield entered its early access window for users that already purchased the game at certain tiers on PC and Xbox Series X/S. For the most part, early reviews for Starfield have been generally positive, with the consensus that fans of games such as Skyrim and Fallout 4 will have a good time playing Bethesda's newest IP. In the meantime, user-generated Steam reviews for Starfield will go live on September 6 upon the game's full release. That has not stopped some Steam users from taking to social media to voice their concerns over the process.
On Reddit, two threads brought up a proposal to allow Steam reviews to be active on games that are in early access or a pre-launch window. These threads are on the r/Steam subreddit at the time of writing, and both pointed out that Starfield is already a hit on Steam despite the game not reaching full release. With over 222k concurrent players and rising according to SteamDB, it is clear that Bethesda's new IP is popular on the platform. However, the Steam review page remains barren, as curator reviews have been the only ones allowed to post their takes until September 6.
On r/Steam, some Redditors theorized that one primary reason that Valve currently does not allow user reviews on early-access games is due to the potential that they would negatively affect sales and Steam rankings of specific titles ahead of release. However, a few users countered with a case for Steam to allow reviews only from players that have pre-purchased a game in early access, and to make sure those reviews have appropriate tags that could indicate when a review was made. In addition, some users made the case for clarifying the use of early access as a term, with games such as Baldur's Gate 3 being in Steam's early access program for three years before its recent full release.
Whether Valve will change its policies or keep things as they currently are remains to be seen. Nevertheless, with the full release of Starfield now imminent, the player count for the Steam version is expected to grow in the coming days.