Steam counters Borderlands 1 and 2 review bombing using Valve's “off-topic” filter

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The countermeasure appears to be working

Borderlands 1 and 2 have been receiving a hefty amount of negative reviews on Steam over the last few days in response to the news that Borderlands 3 will be a timed Epic Store exclusive. In a bid to counteract any review-bombing, Steam recently added an “off-topic filter” which excludes off topic reviews from counting towards the overall review score, and it seems to be working for Borderlands. 

Steam Database first spotted the filter in action and claimed that over 4000 reviews have been deducted from the review score for Borderlands 2. A screenshot (which can been seen below) shows the filter detected there was a high percentage of negative off-topic reviews on Borderlands 2’s store page between April 3 - April 6. 

Now, when you go on Steam’s store page for either of the Borderlands games and hover over the review score, a message will pop up saying: “This product has experienced one or more periods of off-topic review activity. Based on your preferences, the reviews within these periods have been excluded from this product’s review score.”  

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There's also a graph showing the periods of off-topic review activity that have been detected, and what has been excluded from the overall review score by default. When you look at the April 3 onward, the amount of negative reviews is noticeably high.

 

The filter, which is optional, doesn’t appear to remove the negative reviews from being seen, but it does seem to be going some way to tackling the issue of plummeting overall review scores. 

Did you catch the latest trailer? Here are 14 details you missed in the new Borderlands 3 trailer. 

Heather Wald
Heather Wald
Evergreen Editor, Games

Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.