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Steam review score

Also called: Steam user reviews, Review score, Mostly Positive, Mixed reviews

The Steam review score is the rating label on a store page, built from positive and negative reviews by players who bought the game on Steam.

40%: Below this share, Steam shows Mostly Negative

The Steam review score is the summary label above a game's user reviews, such as Very Positive or Mixed. Valve shows two scores at the top of the store page, one for the past 30 days and one for the product's lifetime, built from positive and negative reviews (Steamworks documentation, partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews, accessed 28 Oct 2026).

Only purchases made by the reviewing account count, so reviews from Steam key activations stay visible but do not move the score. Valve announced that change on 12 September 2016 (Steam news, store.steampowered.com/news/24155, accessed 28 Oct 2026). The Steamworks page names one threshold: below 40% positive a game falls to Mostly Negative, while Mixed or better is not penalized in algorithmic visibility.

Valve does not publish the full table of labels, and third-party guides disagree on the exact bands. For a launch, the 30-day score matters most, because it sits on the store page while new players decide. Bugs that players hit in that window show up in reviews, which is what the Steam Launch Bug Index on this site measures.

Updated · Written by , founder of Jumbo Jelly.

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