Yeah, it should be off by default with the option to turn it on.
Comment on Steam: Updates to User Review Scores Based on Language
Tetsuo@jlai.lu 14 hours ago
I personally don’t look forward to this new feature. I dont want my local language to be used. And that will be one more program that will constantly nag me about if I want to translate some review or only shows the one in my language by default.
I just want to use my currency and being able to just speak English.
I dont want steam to become like Firefox and decide for you that you do need some translations for stuff…
Since I dont think the language you speak should have any relevancy to the quality of the game I have no interest for reviews that are not in English.
So I just hope this “let’s localize for you everything” trend will stop.
I dont want french reviews of French games made in france. I just want English reviews of games and the score for all reviews.
Currently the localization of the reviews is the thing that I dislike the most with steam which goes to show how good I think the product is.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Red_October@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It really sounds like you’ve misunderstood what this change is actually doing. This isn’t steam forcing you to use a particular language, those settings aren’t going anywhere. It’s also not going to force you to see reviews in the game’s native language either, so your worry about “french reviews of French games made in france” is just… wrong. What it’s doing is sorting reviews by language, under the idea that reviews written in the language you use are probably more relevant to you. And if even that is unacceptable, you can disable the whole system to keep it just the way it is.
This actually means you’re MORE likely to get reviews that are more accurate. First, because it limits the impact of regional review bombing. Now if a game upsets one particular population, their review bombing doesn’t render the whole score meaningless. It’s worth pointing out, games have been heavily review bombed for the sin of competing with, or beating, other regionally popular games for awards. It also means that if the content of a game hits better, or worse, for a demographic based on language, that will be reflected here. If the game is getting rave reviews where it was made, but the translations and voice work for YOUR localization are terrible, you will see reviews that reflect that. You probably don’t care how great the voice acting was in the native Chinese version if you only speak English, and what may seem culturally brilliant to a Japanese audience may lose a lot of the impact for you.
This change was made with you in mind.
Electricd@lemmybefree.net 11 hours ago
It already did that, but only when viewing reviews. The update just makes it so that the score ex: “overwhelmingly positive” is now only based on reviews of your language