Do Steam guides to games need to be vetted better?
I'm asking because it seems to me that there are people that write guides to games that are high score addicts. For example, if you look up a guide to an RPG or even an Action RPG game on there, the author of the guide wants to help you. The same thing goes for people writing guides for platform-type games. However, if you're like me, and play all kinds of games, from rolling dice to adventure RPG to platforming games, and if you have read a few guides from there, you perhaps have noticed something I've noticed that irritates me. Score chasing types of game guides are sometimes incomplete and refer to tropes like, "if you're feeling tired, take a break and eat a salad" types of things. I love arcade style games and feel like these types of guides which say such things are absolutely dumb. There are also guides to score-chasing games that leave out important information or do not elaborate on things, or even seem a bit subjective when it comes down to difficulty level (score chasers often have some type of level of ease, starting from "easy" moving into "normal" and then to "hardcore.") Recently, I was bored and decided to peruse some guides to "score chasers" I frequently play to see what there was, and I was appalled. Guides that leave out important info. Guides that make comments on modes of play (such as hardcore) that are not helpful, etc. I think this also relates to Steam's list of "curators." They also need a rating system independent of awards and all that other stuff. I don't know what everyone else thinks about this, but sometimes, especially when it comes to games labelled "score chaser" and other games that have a lot of chance in tandem with skill, that the authors of the guides are sometimes not trustworthy because they leave out details that could get you a higher score (I know myself, because I get high scores lol). It's like they're paranoid about getting their high scores beaten or something (I have done that, without having read their guide). Sorry if you don't feel like reading this, but I think it's a problem. Guides like these discourage people who are trying to learn how to play a game and it seems like the guide is written in such a way as to discourage people from playing the game because they give the wrong idea about the game on purpose, because they don't want their high score beaten by someone that read the guide.
TLDR; some writers of guides for arcade and score chaser types of games do so out of paranoid interests in their own high scores and should be vetted on Steam because they either provide terse information about particular items on purpose or give lame, generic advice such as wear comfortable clothing and eat a salad.
Nobody is getting paid to write Steam guides so it's not like you can really expect somebody to write really good ones for obscure games. I think a stricter guide system would probably just lead to there being less guides rather than better ones. Like under a stricter system, the people who write incomplete/inaccurate guides will just stop posting them, but it's not gonna convince many people to start writing good ones. You could also look outside of Steam because from my experience, most people don't really use the Steam guides feature.
Since they are community posts I don't think vetting is really an issue. Even developer guides are probably fine. I come from the mindset of not looking at guides and trying to figure out the game/solution so I'd be interested in how many people use them/depend on them
TBH the entire community tab just needs to be nuked on steam and started from scratch with real moderation. 90% is porn or scams.
I’d really just find guides somewhere else from someone who has some motivation to write them