I got told to "chill out" "let people enjoy things" a lot back then ("it's just part of the culture" "do you hate fun?"), but I was completely right that it's done long term damage to the usefulness of reviews in general, something devs depend on for visibility and their very livelihoods. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction.
I saw very clearly what the "Funny" rating was really for with this review from 2015 where someone told a racist joke and dozens of gleeful hitler youths in the comments ate it right up. To some valve moderator's credit, that review was eventually deleted, though the comments are still there as a sparkling monument to steam's user culture.
Plenty of "funny" reviews weren't like this, but this one was a nice vivid illustration of how fundamental a derailing of an important platform function they were (still are, seemingly - this pushes the ongoing infospill out of sight rather than staunches or stops it), and all for... what, exactly? Musk-esque "le epic meme" yuks? Unserious company, ironically. Plenty of great places online to post jokes, folks.
