I feel like it's also a way to limit review bombing, like what happened for recent games regarding privacy policy changes

I'm not a fan of it

EDIT: Did you change your comment? I think it wasn't like this, because my answer doesn't make sense

It's definitely because of that.

First, being able to give a list of languages you want to factor into the score, so it’s not just your current Steam language.

I think it currently chooses the languages you've allowed to see for reviews if I remember correctly, or the game languages you allowed to see

Second, I’d like the toggle to disable the language filter and off-topic review filter to be separate.

Isn't this already the case?

Yeah.

That’s the vibe I get from Lemmygrad too, like they assume the rest of the world is constantly pondering how much they hate China, as a dominating thought.

It’s bizarre, and I am by no means generalizing Chinese people either. Some researchers I’ve interacted with (which is pretty much my only other exposure to China) are not like that at all.

Well maybe they stopped playing the game because they didn't like it? I don't continue to play games I dislike

Its the language set for your client UI I wager.

Steam review scores are more robust than what 20 games critics thought about a game and is more resistant to review bombing than metacritic. The score is not meaningless IMO.

Why do you think the scores are useless? They are good starting point and/or a way to evaluate smaller indie titles that often don't get professional reviews.

Which magazine? I’m legitimately surprised that (m)any have survived, to be honest!

The score is useful. It could be better if Steam had a proper review system instead of just "good" or "bad"

It really sounds like you've misunderstood what this change is actually doing. This isn't steam forcing you to use a particular language, those settings aren't going anywhere. It's also not going to force you to see reviews in the game's native language either, so your worry about "french reviews of French games made in france" is just... wrong. What it's doing is sorting reviews by language, under the idea that reviews written in the language you use are probably more relevant to you. And if even that is unacceptable, you can disable the whole system to keep it just the way it is.

This actually means you're MORE likely to get reviews that are more accurate. First, because it limits the impact of regional review bombing. Now if a game upsets one particular population, their review bombing doesn't render the whole score meaningless. It's worth pointing out, games have been heavily review bombed for the sin of competing with, or beating, other regionally popular games for awards. It also means that if the content of a game hits better, or worse, for a demographic based on language, that will be reflected here. If the game is getting rave reviews where it was made, but the translations and voice work for YOUR localization are terrible, you will see reviews that reflect that. You probably don't care how great the voice acting was in the native Chinese version if you only speak English, and what may seem culturally brilliant to a Japanese audience may lose a lot of the impact for you.

I just want to use my currency and being able to just speak English.

This change was made with you in mind.

What.

This updated doing exactly what you want it to do, what do you complaining about?

Yeah, it should be off by default with the option to turn it on.