How to Delete Reviews on Steam: What You Can and Can't Control

Steam reviews are one of gaming's most visible feedback systems — and once you've posted one, you might wonder whether you can take it back, edit it, or remove it entirely. The answer depends on a few factors that aren't always obvious from inside the platform.

Can You Actually Delete Your Own Steam Review?

Yes — Steam allows users to delete reviews they've written, and the process is straightforward. However, there's an important distinction between deleting and editing, and between your own reviews and reviews left on your developer page if you run a game.

Here's what each type of user can do:

How to Delete a Review You Wrote

If you've written a review and want to remove it, the process runs through your Steam profile — not the store page where the review appears.

Steps to delete your own Steam review:

1. Open the Steam client or go to store.steampowered.com
2. Click your profile name in the top-right corner
3. Select "Profile" from the dropdown
4. On your profile page, click "Reviews" in the left-hand sidebar or activity tabs
5. Find the review you want to remove
6. Click the pencil/edit icon or open the review options
7. Select "Delete" — Steam will ask you to confirm

Once deleted, the review is permanently removed from the store page and your profile. There is no undo, so confirm you want it gone before proceeding.

How to Edit a Review Instead of Deleting It

If your goal is to update your opinion rather than erase it entirely, editing is a cleaner option. Steam preserves the original post date, so other users can see the review has been updated. The edit path follows almost the same steps — instead of hitting "Delete," you select "Edit Review" and rewrite the content.

Edited reviews keep your playtime data and thumbs up/thumbs down vote intact unless you manually change them.

What Developers Can Do About Reviews 🎮

This is where the system gets more nuanced. If you're a game developer or publisher receiving negative reviews on your title, Steam does not give you the ability to delete individual user reviews. Valve maintains that user review integrity is a core part of the platform.

What developers can do:

• Report a review that violates Steam's Review Guidelines (spam, off-topic content, threats, or review bombing coordinated off-platform)
• Respond publicly to reviews — this appears directly beneath the review and is visible to all users
• Request a review bomb investigation through Valve, which may result in reviews being excluded from the game's overall score

Valve may remove reviews that violate their policies, but this is moderated by Steam's team — not the developer directly. A negative-but-genuine review, no matter how harsh, generally stays up.

What Counts as a Removable Review Violation

Steam's review guidelines prohibit content that falls into specific categories. Reviews can be flagged and removed by Valve moderators if they:

• Contain hate speech, harassment, or threats
• Are clearly spam or gibberish
• Promote unrelated commercial content
• Were part of an organized off-platform review bombing campaign
• Include links to malware or phishing sites

Reviews that are simply very critical, sarcastic, or even factually questionable from a developer's perspective generally don't qualify for removal under these rules.

The Review Bombing Edge Case

Steam introduced a review bombing detection system that can identify unusual spikes in review activity — particularly when the volume of reviews doesn't correlate with in-game events. When Valve determines a spike is review bombing (often tied to off-game controversies), they can mark those reviews as "off-topic" and exclude them from the game's overall review score, though the reviews themselves typically remain visible.

This is different from outright deletion — it's a scoring adjustment, not a content removal.

Why Your Situation Matters Here

Whether deleting a review is straightforward or complicated depends significantly on which side of the equation you're on. A regular player wanting to remove their own old review has an easy, self-service path. A developer trying to address a wave of critical feedback is working within a much more restricted system — one designed explicitly to prevent review manipulation.

Even within each group, the variables stack up: how old the review is, whether it was part of a flagged review bombing event, whether it violates specific content policies, and what platform you're accessing Steam from (browser vs. desktop client vs. mobile) can all affect the exact steps or available options. ✅

The gap between "I want this review gone" and "this review can actually be removed" is where most of the friction lives — and that gap looks very different depending on whether you wrote the review or received it.