If your software pulls player reviews from Steam, it needs a migration before October 22. Valve announced on October 2 that the old store endpoint will be disabled on that date. Tools still using it will need an update to keep collecting reviews. The notice concerns automated retrieval rather than reading or posting reviews in Steam itself.
An API lets a program request a game’s reviews as structured data instead of copying comments individually. Developers can use that data to spot recurring complaints, while researchers can compare groups of games. Our coverage of research into reviews of games using AI shows why collecting opinions at scale can be useful. Valve says moving these requests away from the store should reduce slowdowns during busy periods and let developers make more frequent requests.
Anonymous requests are still supported
The developer announcement tells studios to supply a Steamworks key associated with their game. Read alone, that could suggest access is becoming publisher-only. The replacement method’s documentation explicitly supports requests without a key, so public tools still have a documented route to the reviews.
Anonymous requests share a lower rate limit, and their responses can be cached for up to ten minutes. A tool may therefore receive the same saved data when it asks again, rather than the newest review immediately. Too many requests trigger HTTP 429, the standard response for rate limiting. The page does not state a numerical requests-per-minute allowance.
That is a different outcome from Reddit’s announced public API shutdown. Steam is replacing a route while keeping anonymous retrieval available. There is also a separate publisher-only server. The Web API overview says every request to that server requires a publisher key, including methods that are public on the regular host.
Existing tools need more than a new address
The retiring URL contains “store.steampowered.com/appreviews”. Its public replacement is the GetAppReviews method in IUserReviewsService on api.steampowered.com. Request options and returned data are changing too, so a tool can reach the new service successfully and still mishandle its results.
Options now travel in input_json, a structured text package containing the request’s settings. The language parameter becomes a languages list, and some filters switch from words to documented numerical values. The response drops success and the review author’s number of owned games. A new refunded field reports whether the author received a refund.
For maintainers, the practical check is to verify the expected reviews, filters and multi-page retrieval before October 22. Those are suggested tests based on Valve’s documented changes, not a migration we have performed. Valve gives no cutoff time in the announcement, leaving little reason to schedule the switch for the deadline itself.
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