Steam reviews can be a mixed bag. For every review that gives some genuine insight to a game’s pros and cons, there’s another that’s either a meme, silly reference, or some random ASCII art.
Don’t get me wrong, these are all great in their own way - that’s exactly why Steam gives users the option to flag reviews as helpful or funny. The system works pretty well for the most part, but as PC Gamer reports, utilising this function recently backfired for thousands of users who were punished for flagging a review as helpful.
The review at the centre of all this was written about the free-to-play multiplayer title Warlander by Steam user FREEDOMS117. Although the review has been banned from Steam, it reportedly called the anti-cheat software that the game utilises, Sentry Anti-Cheat, “suspicious”. FREEDOMS117 alleged that “it maintains running even when the game is closed, including tray icons”, and went even further to claim that it “seems to be sending some packets of data to Japan IPs while the game has already been closed”.
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Allegedly, the user detailed how uninstall the anti-cheat program in their review, and clearly a lot of people appreciated this, as 2,438 had marked it as helpful. However, as well as removing the post, Steam hit FREEDOMS117’s account with a 30-day restriction. It didn’t stop there, either, as the same 30-day restriction was rolled out to everyone who had marked the review as helpful.
Thankfully, Steam has now lifted the restrictions from everyone involved. In a post by FREEDOMS117 in Warlander’s Steam Discussions, the reviewer shared the response that they received from Steam Support.
“Our moderators watch for content that describes how to cheat or describes how to tamper with anti-cheat systems,” the response reads. “Those are against our rules and it looks like that is what our moderation team incorrectly identified with this case, leading to the banned review. I agree with your evaluation that this review does not fit that criteria.
“Furthermore, the mod identified this review as potentially dangerous to other players, due to some of the steps requiring registry edits,” Steam Support continued. “This led to the additional lock that was placed on your account and voter accounts. I can see that your review does not contain phishing links, attempts to scam or deceive players, or anything else that warrants a lock.”
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Although all the accounts have been restored again, the review itself is still unavailable. It's also worth noting that Warlander publisher Plaion made a post on its own website, in which it claimed that "there is occasionally a bug where Sentry fails to unregister the icon displayed in the task tray when Sentry Anti-Cheat Task Tray closes, which leaves the icon displayed and makes it appear that Sentry is still running".