The Business Development Director at the American studio World’s Edge, Will McCahill, analyzed the positivity level of user reviews on Steam from 2014 to 2024. According to his observations, reviews have become more negative over time, and this trend is consistent across all languages.
▫️As McCahill writes, in 2014, 89% of all player reviews left over the year on Steam were positive. Then the percentage began to decline, dropping to 83% by 2018.
▫️In 2019, the positivity level of the reviews spiked back to 89%. Expert Simon Carless from GameDiscoverCo suggests this increase may be linked to Steam’s initiative of asking users if they would like to change a negative review after spending more time in the game post-review.
▫️Starting from 2021, the positivity level of reviews began to decrease annually. Of all the reviews left on Steam in 2024, only 84.2% were positive.
▫️The most positive Steam users in 2024 were those speaking Romanian, with 92% of their reviews praising games. Following them were players writing in Brazilian Portuguese, with 91% positive reviews. By comparison, in 2014, the positivity levels for these languages were 97% and 94%, respectively.
▫️The top five languages with the lowest share of positive reviews in 2024 were Japanese (73%), Traditional Chinese (76%), Simplified Chinese (80%), Korean (81%), and German (83%).
▫️Notably, 30% of all positive reviews in Simplified Chinese for 2024 were attributed to Black Myth: Wukong. If these reviews are excluded, the annual positivity level for this language drops from 80% to 74%. For Traditional Chinese, it would decrease to 75%.
▫️Russian remains the third most popular language on Steam after English and Simplified Chinese. In 2024, 85% of all reviews written in Russian were positive.