Steam's Week in Review: Nioh 3 Dominates While Forums Go Unmoderated
25.7K reviews found across 1045 games released this week
Data from January 31 - February 06, 2026
Analysis
Here's something most developers don't realize about Steam: frustrated players will try your forums first, and if they don't get a response, they'll take it to reviews instead.
This week's data shows exactly how this plays out at scale, and there's a lesson here for anyone managing a community on Steam.
This week saw 1045 games collect 24,397 reviews (with 668 games getting absolutely zero). We'll dig into the top 5 performers and explore an interesting pattern emerging in how players interact with forums versus reviews (especially when you've got 18,000 posts in a month!)
Oh, and demos are taking over: they jumped from 31% of all Steam releases just two weeks ago to 40% this week (414/1045) as developers gear up for this months' Next Fest.
Let's see if this trend holds for the next two weeks.
The standout title, Nioh 3, collected 5,625 reviews with an 83.15% positive score. Solid, but short of the coveted 90% mark. Chinese players contributed nearly half of all feedback but rated it lower (80.5%) than English speakers (84.6%).
Meanwhile, SIFU Kidnapped! Adventure in the Women's Kingdom absolutely crushed it with 98.27% positive from 982 reviews- almost entirely from Chinese players (96.1%). English speakers? Just 6 reviews. Talk about knowing your audience.
On the opposite end, PUBG: BLINDSPOT limped in at 65.73% positive, with Russian (48.3%) and Korean (50.9%) players being particularly harsh in their assessments.
Summary Statistics
Top Performing Games
Nioh 3 garnered 5,625 reviews with an 83.15% positive score. The majority of reviews came from Chinese simplified, which made up almost half the total, yet the positive score from this demographic was lower at 80.5% compared to 84.6% from English speakers.
Players praised the game mechanics and combat depth—and for every 2 players praising it as an improvement over Nioh 2 (to quote one "Nioh good.. Nioh 2 better.. Nioh 3 THE BEST") there was at least one player complaining about it not living up to the predecessors.
Of all the games released last week, Nioh 3 had the most active Steam Forums with over 18 thousand posts in the last month alone (nearly 20 thousand since the forums opened last year).
The devs post the occasional event update and have closed a few threads recently, but with this volume of activity, nearly 10% of negative reviews appear to originate from players who posted in the forums first.
Here's a typical example: on 5th February at 4am, a user posted about a crash on the forums.
Then five hours later, the same user posted a negative review complaining about performance:
At this volume, responding to everyone individually isn't realistic - but this pattern suggests there might be an opportunity here. Even a simple "we've seen reports of this issue and we're investigating" could change the outcome.
Check reviews ›
MENACE achieved 3,008 reviews with a solid 86.14% positive score. The game found particular favor among English players, who comprised 66.7% of the reviews, receiving a commendable 88.0% positive score.
A bunch of love for the tactical gameplay (14% mentioned XCOM 😅) however at least 5% of reviews called for balancing and improvements in enemy AI.
Meanwhile on the Menace Steam Forums, there's been plenty of action and even a sizeable turnout from the dev team at 5.1% thread response. Unfortunately there was still a lot of unresolved tension, which following the Gameplainer analysis led to a 12.9% of all negative reviews stemming from a post in the Steam Forums.
Take for example this user who replied to a thread in the MENACE forums, and then to a patch note post before changing their review from positive to negative..
The magical friend-slop of YAPYAP has arrived with 2,103 reviews and a positive score of 82.22%.
It saw a diverse array of feedback, with English speakers providing 47.3% of the reviews at 83.4% positivity, while Russian players represented 22.2% with a similar score.
Chinese audiences, with just under 9% of reviews, gave some pretty negative feedback on the voice recognition feature not working particularly well. Hard to YAPYAP when people can't understand you!
Maison Bap, the team behind YAPYAP were definitely active on their forums - though at 5% thread coverage.
16 out of 375 of their negative reviews came from users who had posted on the forums before leaving their review - giving YAPYAP just 4.3% negative rating.. that's a great score!
This one stood out as almost funny - a user posts some general feedback in the forums
and then 5 hours later, posts the exact same comment as a review!
In fourth place this week is the latest offshoot from PUBG - PUBG: BLINDSPOT receiving 1,341 reviews, and resulting in a disappointing 65.73% score.
The game faced criticism, particularly from Russian and Korean players, with positive scores sinking to 48.3% and 50.9% respectively.
Meanwhile the dev teams put in a bunch of effort on the forums - contributing to over 67 threads, bringing the "forum post -> negative review" ratio down to just 2.8%.
Really outstanding effort by the developers, ARC Team, PUBG, and the publishers at Krafton!
Some forum posts still managed to slip by though..
And the equally insightful negative review some time later:
As a cautionary preamble - SIFU Kidnapped is not a spin off from Sloclap's delightful 2023 game, Sifu and is instead the "ultimate choice between Buddhist compassion and mortal desire" - with nearly 1000 reviews and a stunning 98.27% positive score.
I can't shake the Night Trap 90s feel from this game though 😅
The overwhelming majority of praise came from Chinese reviewers, who made up 96.1% of the feedback, showcasing its strong appeal in that demographic.
The game looks decidedly 90s with its FMV approach to gameplay, but it's connected with their audience, so - good for them!
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