Basically the worst ♥♥♥♥ is happening to steam slowly. To be honest its not surprising.

He didn't completely leave but theres a board behind valve that has more say in how things run on steam now. It used to all be run by him but hes stepped down on responsibilities a few years back.

Nahh its all good, wait Gaben stepped down ? rip

With SS I was actually checking the store page throughout the past few days to see if there was going to be any manipulation whether it was for or against the game. What that person said about 7,000 wasn't right. There was 700 negative reviews that did disappear but I believe that was because those were just review bomb reviews. There are negative reviews out there that are on the page. (sorry had to post twice cuz i hit character limit lmao)

It does esp since with the change in management when Gaben stepped down. I'm actually ex gaming media and still have contacts with devs. They always hated dealing with valve. They didn't actually get full control of the steam store page until around 2020. Before that valve would actually have their own moderators deal with reviews on store pages while letting the studios handle the forums/hubs.

They implanted a system that gave the devs for games more control over their store pages unless it didn't check mark certain things. If it didn't pass that check their system would take over. I believe they added a system that checks for fake reviews (positive and negative) and it varies. I've heard it deal with titles that got review bombed to the ground but also some games that got praised to the sun (by accounts that were private or singular game with low hours).

As far as I remember steam has review bomb system so it doesn't show MASSIVE negative reviews from the start, also steam punishes for fake reviews HARD, but I wonder if this applies to giant corporations.