Palworld suddenly has Overwhelmingly Positive reviews on Steam after Valve introduces language-based scoring: "As always, we're so incredibly grateful"

Palworld is already enjoying the benefits of Steam's new, default, language-based scoring, shimmying up to an Overwhelmingly Positive rating in English.

"Due to the Steam review change (it now shows the overall score in your language), Palworld is Overwhelmingly Positive!" says developer Pocketpair's publishing manager John "Bucky" Buckley in an August 20 Twitter post. "Thank you so much to our overseas fans who continue to support us and enjoy the game! As always, we're so incredibly grateful for your continued support!"

Valve issued the major change to Steam earlier this week for games with more than 2,000 public user reviews, with the goal of using language-based scores to "better serve potential customers that belong to" cultural demographics pleased or unhappy with game elements relevant specifically to them – like localization issues, or network instability.

"We realize that whenever we make changes to User Reviews, we're inviting some scrutiny into our motivations for making those changes," Steam said in its news post announcing the change. "Maintaining trust in the system is crucial to us, so we've erred on the side of being as transparent as possible"

I've suspected that recent events like Chinese players, in particular, airing their frustrations with Wuchang: Fallen Feathers and lowering its overall Steam rating might have contributed to Valve's decision to alter user reviews for qualifying games – but Steam doesn't discuss review bombs at all in its news post.

Similarly, with Palworld, a player assumes that the game's more flattering English rating must mean there were angry reviews in a different language.

But Buckley says this wasn't the case: "Palworld is low 90s in most languages! Just happens to be higher in English."

Palworld might be making another play for Pokemon's crown, snapping up shares in a Japanese card game publisher while Nintendo's lawsuit rumbles on in the background.