Reviews are important. Considering how much video games cost, you'd want to be as informed as possible before making a $70 purchase. Be it a critic review, fan review, or a playthrough, you'll want to make sure you want to know just how good or bad a game is. It only makes sense that reviews also have reviews.
Of course, I'm talking about things like the 'Was this helpful?' feature on Steam. Users can validate a particular review or comment by clicking the thumbs-up icon in that section, or give an Award if it was particularly helpful. This helps you know if the review is legit or just a troll. However, Steam recently made viewers question this system, as it restricted 2,439 user accounts for marking a negative review as helpful.
You may think that this sounds like Steam trying to hide negative reviews, but it seems it was all a big misunderstanding. On the Steam page of Warlander, a free-to-play MMO, a user named FREEDOMS117 posted a negative review, saying that the anti-cheat software used in the game was acting suspicious. They claimed it kept running after the game was shut, and appeared to send packets of data to Japan based IPs (thanks PC Gamer).
They then provided a detailed explanation of how to remove the software from your PC. If what FREEDOMS117 claimed was true, then this would perhaps be one of the most helpful user reviews you'd ever come across – at least the 2,439 users who marked it as helpful did. Unfortunately, one Steam mod felt like the review went against the terms and conditions, and restricted FREEDOMS117's account, as well as that of everyone who marked it helpful.
Those who marked the review helpful received a 30-day restriction to Steam's social features. The reason given was, "Your account has recently upvoted a user review that was banned for attempting to scam users or other violations of Steam's Rules & Guidelines."
This seems to have been a misunderstanding, however, as a moderator reached out to FREEDOMS117 with the following message. "Our moderators watch for content that describes how to cheat or describes how to tamper with anti-cheat systems. 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. 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."