Steam switches off its public reviews endpoint on 22 October, and Next Fest gets genre filters

Valve is moving bulk user reviews behind a Steamworks key, so any script or tool that reads them from the store needs changing this month. Next Fest demos also become browsable by genre, theme and...

AI-drafted from 4 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

Valve is turning off the web address that developers have used since 2017 to pull their game's user reviews in bulk. The store endpoint stops working on 22 October, and the replacement sits on the Steamworks side and needs a key. Valve set out the change in a Steamworks Development post on 2 October.

If you have a script, a spreadsheet import or a dashboard that reads reviews from the store address ending in appreviews with json=1, it will break on that date unless you move it.

What changes

Valve's wording is direct: “On October 22 this existing method will be disabled and no longer available for use.” The new route is a WebAPI method called GetAppReviews, documented under IUserReviewsService. Valve says it “should basically return the same data, though you will have to change how you set up your http request to pass in the WebAPI key associated with your game.”

The documentation carries a short migration section. The differences it lists:

• Parameters are passed in a single input_json value.
• Values that used to be plain strings are now enums, so the old all, recent and updated filters become Helpful, Recent and Updated.
• There is a new Funny sort.
• There are new filters for date, playtime, Steam Deck and hardware.

Why Valve is doing it

The reason given is load. Moving the endpoint off the store domain and on to the partner domain, the post says, “allows us to avoid slowdowns when the store is under heavy load, and allows us to raise the limit for how frequently developers can make this call.” Financial and wishlist data already work this way.

The post is written for developers reading their own game's reviews. It does not say what happens to outside tools that have read reviews for games they do not own, since the old address needed no key and the new one wants the key tied to your game. If you rely on a tracker or a review analysis service, ask its maker what it plans to do before the 22nd.

Next Fest gets filters

Separately, developers taking part in this October's Steam Next Fest have had an email from Valve about how players will find demos. Valve has not posted it publicly. A developer who received it shared the text on r/gamedev: “Beginning with this upcoming October edition, we’re introducing a powerful new filtering system where players can explore demos by their favorite genre, feature, or theme, using clear choices at the top of the page with new UI to help filter down the games.”

According to the same email, participants can try the tool now on the Developer Preview Page, under tabs marked by genre, by theme and by feature. Valve's stated reason is “the increasing number of games participating in Steam Next Fest”.

The developer who posted it has an incremental game with about 600 wishlists and is cautiously pleased, on the grounds that players looking for one kind of game will have less to sift through. Nobody knows yet what it does to wishlists. It does make your store tags matter more than they did, so check them before the event opens.

One more thing to check before your demo goes out

A warning from another studio on the same forum is worth five minutes this week. If a demo and the full game share an install folder, a player who buys the game and then uninstalls the demo can have Steam remove files the full game needs. The studio went six months without noticing, because nothing goes wrong until launch day, when playing the demo, buying the game and deleting the demo is the natural order of things.

Their fix was to change the demo's install location in Steamworks and ask affected players to use Verify Integrity of Game Files. Save data is not touched by an uninstall, so the two can still share that.

So three small jobs for anyone shipping on Steam this month: move any review script to the new endpoint by 22 October, look over your tags if you are in Next Fest, and give your demo its own folder.

Sources

• Changes to Steam User Reviews API (Steamworks Development)
• IUserReviewsService (Steamworks Documentation)
• Steam is changing how Next Fest works (r/gamedev)
• Steam PSA: Use unique install folders for demo, playtest, full game (r/gamedev)

Image: Valve