Do user reviews really matter all that much?! The main reason you hear about user reviews on Steam anymore is when some developer does something stupid and they get arbitrarily review-bombed for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual quality of the game.
Now, it is a little questionable they're allowing "blockchain" games after Steam decided to forbid them – but who cares, really; if you don't want to play blockchain games, then don't bother playing them. They're probably not going to last long anyway, especially in light of that recent report about NFTs being worthless.
And I really can't see why anyone thinks the lack of a freakin' shopping cart is somehow important.
User reviews are important - as I said, they're a way of warning other potential buyers of malformed, dysfunctional games, or of predatory games. If a game has a horribly abusive marketshop in it, that's almost certainly going to be brought up in user reviews, just like game-breaking bugs or incredibly poor optimisation.
Sure, people can "review bomb" games for reasons unrelated to the specific game being bombed, but there's usually an understandable reason for it - one that comes to mind is when a Metro game (Exodus, I think?) was originally planned to release on Steam, only to suddenly jump ship to EGS, and so people bombed other Metro games to voice their displeasure.
People do this because there's no other real way for us to voice that displeasure; ranting about it on a thread somewhere won't do shit, it'll barely be seen. Boycotts infamously don't work. What else is there but to use user reviews?
This not only makes the game's publishers and devs aware of the backlash, but also other customers too - informs them of such anti-customer practices.
So yes, I do consider user reviews VITAL - just like how YouTube removed public dislike counts, removing reviews just allows companies and scammers to get away with horrendous shit. We
need user reviews, whether you personally like it or not.
As for the shopping cart - are you serious? What kind of storefront
doesn't have a cart these days? Woolworths has one. Amazon has one. Fangamer has one. Steam and GOG have 'em.
You telling me EGS
still lacks a cart? Ugh. That makes buying multiple games in one go (like, say, during a sale - does EGS even do sales? The first one they did went disastrously) far more tedious than it needs to be.
A fucking
shopping cart should be basic, fundamental pro-customer design - should be Storefront 101.
Y tho? Why not trust actual professional game reviewers with some experience in legitimate criticism?
Of course, not all "professional" "journalists" are necessarily trustworthy either, but I'd trust one of them far more readily than the average Steam user review!
...Because not all "actual professional game reviewers" can be trusted? Reviewers owned by 'traditional media' (the IGNs and GameSpots of the world) aren't known for being trustworthy, and inherently have a pro-positive bias in order to maintain good relations with game publishers, so they can get pre-release copies of new games to try to get customer attention first.
Even disregarding this bias, game reviewers tend to have a different view on what makes a game 'good' than a bunch of Joe Schmoes - actual reviewers don't have all that much time to play a single game before they have to wrap it up, create the review, and move onto the next game. This means they're not likely to "waste time" hunting down optional side quests or get too deep into postgame content, even if most of the fun comes from said optional content, and will base their opinion on the parts they did experience.
They might do a few side quests, or see a little of the postgame (if there is one), but rarely a lot of either.
Meanwhile, the Joe Schmoes writing user reviews are likely to do these optional tasks, and if there's issues with them that's likely to be brought up, making user reviews perhaps
more informative than "professional" ones.
And even for trusted YouTube reviewers, those need to be deliberately sought out and watched, when user reviews listed on the game store page itself can be scrolled down to and quickly perused. Sure, videos can be more informative than text, but text can still be useful for gaining a general understanding of flaws or issues without much time investment.
Plus, as N10A said, it's great to have an average opinion too, where the thoughts and feelings of hundreds, if not thousands, of people can be roughly seen, instead of just a couple of reviewers. This can be more fair overall, especially considering all of the above.