How Steam Reviews Impact Game Sales: GameDiscoverCo Survey Results

Analytics firm GameDiscoverCo, led by Simon Carless, has published the results of a survey conducted among nearly 3,800 active Steam users regarding their attitudes toward the player review system. The study reveals that player ratings remain a decisive factor when purchasing games, with a "Mixed" rating capable of deterring half of a title's potential audience.

The vast majority of users rely on ratings before buying titles: 40.5% of respondents always check reviews before purchasing, and 32% do so most of the time. Only 2.5% of those surveyed stated that they ignore community scores entirely.

Rating thresholds that cause players to hesitate:

• Mixed reviews or lower: Negatively impact purchasing decisions for 30.8% of users. Combined with the 20.3% of players who are wary of any score lower than "Very Positive," a "Mixed" rating deprives a game of attention from half of its prospective buyers.
• Mostly Negative: Serves as the primary factor for forgoing a purchase for 34.9% of respondents.
• Recent reviews: If recent scores are worse than the all-time rating, 32.9% of players closely investigate the reasons for user dissatisfaction, while 47.4% take into account potential short-term complaints or coordinated review bombing.

Users consider information regarding bugs and technical performance (14%), overall aggregate score (8%), and displayed reviewer playtime (6%) to be the most helpful elements of reviews. Meanwhile, the main nuisances cited were joke and low-effort reviews (20%), review bombing or off-topic drama (11%), and fake or AI-generated reviews (6%).

Beyond review analytics, the report highlighted major platform and industry updates. Valve has expanded Steam's wishlist functionality by introducing custom category sorting, individual notification settings, and a guest checkout option that allows friends and family to send gifts without creating a Steam account.

Other notable industry developments:

• Sales Analytics: According to Circana data for June 2026, total U.S. video game market spending fell 21% year-over-year to $4.5 billion, primarily due to tough comparisons against the Switch 2 launch in June 2025. However, Xbox hardware sales rose 86% compared to last June.
• Digital Trend: Capcom reported that digital copies accounted for an astounding 93% of its total game sales during the last fiscal year.
• Platform & Game Updates: Xbox is testing backward compatibility for original Xbox games (including Blinx and Conker) on PC, as well as ad-supported cloud streaming for Xbox Insiders. Meanwhile, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 announced its Beta schedule, and Palworld's 1.0 release is approaching 1 million peak concurrent players on Steam.

As a reminder: Ryan Gosling to Play Ghost Rider in the MCU: Marvel Studios Officially Announces New Film.