A couple of days ago Valve made changes to their user review scoring and the numbers have now been analysed.

Steam users who posted reviews with a key not acquired through Steam have had reviews removed from the system. Valve recognised there was a real problem with some gamers being encouraged, and sometimes paid, to post positive reviews as part of marketing efforts.

The stats have now been crunched at SteamSpy which shows some huge changes in scores for many games. Some titles have also lost as much as 88% of their reviews which indicates that some of the smaller releases may have resorted to encouraging Steam users to leave positive reviews.

On the other hand, some games have seen a boost to their review score which indicates there may have been some skullduggery at play, but there’s a lot less of these compared to the number with a reduced score. However, the number of removed reviews also need to be taken into account when looking at the increase or decrease in score difference.

The top ten games with the greatest reduction in scores based on the analysis of 428 titles are…

Game Name Old Userscore New Userscore Score difference # of reviews before # of reviews after Reviews difference Share of reviews lost Simple Ball: Extended Edition 88 14 74 51 7 44 86.27% Lands Of Devastation 86 16 70 166 12 154 92.77% Bathory – The Bloody Countess 93 25 68 44 4 40 90.91% Zombies on a Plane 73 11 62 109 18 91 83.49% SizeBlock 88 31 57 95 16 79 83.16% The Last Hope 80 23 57 70 17 53 75.71% War Truck Simulator 75 18 57 41 11 30 73.17% Epsilon corp. 76 26 50 129 26 103 79.84% Worst Case Z 90 40 50 41 5 36 87.80%

The top ten Games that saw an increase in their score are…

Game Name Old Userscore New Userscore Score difference # of reviews before # of reviews after Reviews difference Share of reviews lost Elves Adventure 28 80 -52 74 5 69 93.24% The Troma Project 48 88 -40 91 25 66 72.53% 30 IMPOSSIBLE LEVELS 51 85 -34 140 7 133 95.00% Uriel’s Chasm 2: Ã—ÂÃ—Âª 22 55 -33 100 9 91 91.00% Broadsword : Age of Chivalry 33 66 -33 51 3 48 94.12% KRUM – Edge Of Darkness 33 66 -33 56 9 47 83.93% Aveyond: Gates of Night 60 90 -30 69 11 58 84.06% A grande bagunÃƒÂ§a espacial – The big space mess 57 85 -28 591 74 517 87.48% TheOrbChambers 74 100 -26 123 3 120 97.56%

The changes for some games are quite alarming and if you want to look at them all, there’s a Google spreadsheet with all the details