Steam review score labels: thresholds and the buffer before a drop
Steam labels a game from 10 reviews by its share of positive reviews. Community-documented thresholds: Overwhelmingly Positive needs 95.00% and 500 reviews, Very Positive 80.00% and 50, Mostly Positive 70.00%, Mixed 40.00%. The buffer is the negative reviews a label survives: positives ÷ k, rounded down, minus negatives, where k = threshold ÷ (1 − threshold).
Last reviewed · SteamStats team
Definitions
- Review score: the share of positive reviews, shown on the store page as a label such as Very Positive. Steam shows an overall score and a summary of the last 30 days.
- Label threshold: the positive share and the number of reviews a label needs. The thresholds below are observed by the community; Valve has not published them.
- Buffer: how many negative reviews in a row the game can receive before its label drops to the one below.
- Reviews to the next label: how many positive reviews in a row the game needs to reach the label above, counting both the share and the minimum number of reviews.
| Label | Positive share | Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Overwhelmingly Positive | 95.00% or more | 500 or more |
| Very Positive | 80.00% or more | 50 to 499, or 500 or more below 95.00% |
| Positive | 80.00% or more | 10 to 49 |
| Mostly Positive | 70.00% to under 80.00% | 10 or more |
| Mixed | 40.00% to under 70.00% | 10 or more |
| Mostly Negative | 20.00% to under 40.00% | 10 or more |
| Negative | under 20.00% | 10 to 49 |
| Very Negative | under 20.00% | 50 to 499 |
| Overwhelmingly Negative | under 20.00% | 500 or more |
The buffer formula
A label with threshold r holds while positive reviews are at least k times negative reviews, where k = r ÷ (1 − r). That gives k = 19.00 at 95.00%, 4.00 at 80.00%, 2.33 at 70.00% and 0.67 at 40.00%. Working with whole reviews avoids rounding a percentage at the edge.
- Buffer = positives ÷ k, rounded down, minus negatives (k of the current label).
- Positive reviews to the next label = k × negatives − positives, rounded up (k of the label above), or the reviews still missing to its minimum count, whichever is larger.
- Under 10 reviews there is no label yet; the number to watch is how many reviews are left until 10.
Worked example: Pebblewick's reviews
Illustrative inputs for Pebblewick, the fictional demo game by Hollow Fern Games: 412 positive and 58 negative reviews, 470 in all, which is 87.66% positive. The results come from the same calculation the SteamStats Reviews view uses.
| Question | Calculation | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| Current label | 87.66% with 470 reviews | Very Positive |
| Buffer | 412 ÷ 4.00, rounded down, − 58 | 45 negative reviews before Mostly Positive |
| Next label | 19.00 × 58 − 412, rounded up | 690 positive reviews in a row to Overwhelmingly Positive |
At 470 reviews the step to Overwhelmingly Positive is far away because the threshold rises from 80.00% to 95.00%, and every negative review costs 19.00 positives at that level. The buffer is the more useful number day to day: 45 negative reviews in a row, with no positives in between, would move the label to Mostly Positive.
Two smaller cases show the count rules. With 38 positive and 4 negative reviews (90.48%), the label is Positive; it becomes Very Positive after 8 more reviews if the share stays at 80.00% or more, because that label starts at 50 reviews, and the buffer is 5 negatives before Mostly Positive. With 6 positive and 1 negative review there is no label yet; 3 more reviews bring the game to 10.
What Valve says
a simple categorization based on the percentage of positive reviews
- Steam needs 10 reviews to calculate the overall review score.
- Only reviews from accounts that bought the game on Steam and played it count toward the score. Reviews from key activations, free weekends, free games and Family Sharing are listed but do not count.
- When Steam detects an off-topic review bomb, those reviews do not contribute to the overall score.
- The store page summarises reviews from the last 30 days and over the game's lifetime. After a game leaves Early Access, reviews written during Early Access are marked as such.
- As long as reviews are Mixed or better, 40.00% positive or more, the review score is not a factor in algorithmic visibility. Below 40.00%, Mostly Negative, the game is less likely to be featured.
- Since August 2025, games with more than 2,000 public reviews can also have a score per language; the language guide linked below covers it.
Why scores differ between Steam, SteamDB and other tools
- Which reviews count. The store score counts Steam purchases only and may be calculated from the shopper's own language. A score across all reviews, including keys and free copies, can be higher or lower.
- Small numbers. SteamDB's rating pulls games with few reviews toward 50.00%: rating = score − (score − 0.5) × 2^(−log10(reviews + 1)). It also counts all purchase-type reviews, where Steam counts only Steam purchases.
- For Pebblewick, that formula gives 81.75% against the plain share of 87.66%; the gap shrinks as reviews accumulate.
- Timing and filters. A tracker that last read the reviews an hour ago, or that includes off-topic reviews Steam has excluded, shows a different share from the store page.
Where to see this in your own data
The User reviews view shows the store score with its label, the score across all reviews, the buffer before the label drops or the reviews left until Steam shows one, new reviews and the SteamDB rating. Reviews refresh every 45 min on Indie and every 10 min on Studio and Publisher once the game is released.
The User reviews feature page linked below shows the view with the demo game, and Alerts can send a message when the label changes.
Sources
- Steam Page Analyzer: Steam review score calculator · checked November 1, 2026
- Steamworks: User reviews · checked November 1, 2026
- Steam News: Updates to user review scores based on language (18 August 2025) · checked November 1, 2026
- Steamworks: Visibility on Steam · checked November 1, 2026
- SteamDB: SteamDB rating · checked November 1, 2026