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SteamDB's Top rated titles of 2021

CitizenZ

Banned
Another list that makes no sense since it is highly favoring lesser played titles which would receive lesser negative reviews. I mean games like Valheim, Inscryption, GoTG, etc all have OP reviews and some def have 10's of thousands+ of reviews. But whatever.
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Simplicity, price/sales, ultra-wide demographics and rooting for the underdog usually gets the job done for these games on Steam. Are they getting a different kind of scrutiny than the bigger games? I think that's for sure. But it's not a bad thing per se, it would be depressing if no matter which filter to sort by it was only about the top of the pops frontloaded stuff 24/7.
 
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hlm666

Member
Another list that makes no sense since it is highly favoring lesser played titles which would receive lesser negative reviews. I mean games like Valheim, Inscryption, GoTG, etc all have OP reviews and some def have 10's of thousands+ of reviews. But whatever.
It definitely is not sales and player count list, it seems to punish titles with larger review/audience numbers more than it should (they have a link to the algorithm they used on the page if you want to see what they did). Like number 11 has 3415 positive reviews and 28 negative with a peak concurrent of 412, While 2 below it is valheim with 299,548 positive reviews, 13,251 negative and concurrent player counts of 502,387. Would number 11 still be rated what it is if it had ~300k reviews?
 
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TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Haven't played any of those lmao. Dyson Sphere Program looks cool tho, reminds me of Factorio.

10234. Battlefield™ 2042

Animated GIF
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Another list that makes no sense since it is highly favoring lesser played titles which would receive lesser negative reviews. I mean games like Valheim, Inscryption, GoTG, etc all have OP reviews and some def have 10's of thousands+ of reviews. But whatever.
It definitely is not sales and player count list, it seems to punish titles with larger review/audience numbers more than it should (they have a link to the algorithm they used on the page if you want to see what they did). Like number 11 has 3415 positive reviews and 28 negative with a peak concurrent of 412, While 2 below it is valheim with 299,548 positive reviews, 13,251 negative and concurrent player counts of 502,387. Would number 11 still be rated what it is if it had ~300k reviews?

From what i read, their algorithm will "punish" titles with less reviews.

They use a certain estimate of uncertainty that decreases at a logarithmic proportion, its 100% uncertain at 1 review, 50% at 10 reviews, 25% at 100 reviews, 12,5% at 1000 reviews and so on. The calculation goes as such.

If game X with 90 score has between 10 and 99 reviews (that would be 50% uncertain), the rating will be defined by:
90*0,5 + 50*0,5 (where 50 is considered as the absolute average score)
So the rating of this game will be 70

If game Y with 80 score has between 1000 - 9999 reviews, that would be 12,5% uncertainty. So:
80*0,875 + 50*0,125
So the rating of this game will be 76.25

In other words, a popular game with a 80 score would still place above an obscure game with 90 score.
The difference starts becoming somewhat negligent after 1000 reviews, but at that point i think its safe to say the pool of reviews is big enough to bring about a fair scoring.
 
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Holammer

Member
Simplicity, price/sales, ultra-wide demographics and rooting for the underdog usually gets the job done for these games on Steam. Are they getting a different kind of scrutiny than the bigger games? I think that's for sure. But it's not a bad thing per se, it would be depressing if no matter which filter to sort by it was only about the top of the pops frontloaded stuff 24/7.
The underdog stuff etc is definitely there, but I think a big factor is selection bias as Steam algorithms recommend with some precision and users themselves seek out the games they want. For games with advertising budgets or insane hype, there will be users that inevitably find themselves disappointed with the purchase.
 
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