A "Mixed" rating is the most expensive label on Steam. It is not bad enough to look like a warning, but it is just bad enough to make cautious buyers hesitate at the exact moment they decide whether to wishlist or close the tab. The good news is that the line you need to cross is precise, and the path across it is a product problem you can actually work on.
Here is the direct answer before the explanation: to move from Mixed to Mostly Positive, your share of positive reviews has to reach 70 percent. Everything below is about how that number works and how to lift it honestly.
The exact thresholds that define each tier
Steam's review label is a simple ratio: positive reviews divided by total reviews, expressed as a percentage. There is no hidden weighting in the headline tier. The percentage bands, documented publicly by SteamDB's rating reference, set the boundaries between labels.
- Mixed: 40 to 69 percent positive.
- Mostly Positive: 70 to 79 percent positive.
- Very Positive: 80 percent or higher, with at least 50 reviews.
- Overwhelmingly Positive: 95 percent or higher, with at least 500 reviews.
The single boundary that matters for escaping Mixed is 70 percent. At 69 percent you are Mixed; at 70 percent you flip to the blue Mostly Positive label. That is the whole game for now.
All reviews versus recent reviews
Steam shows two summaries: the all-time rating and the recent rating from roughly the last 30 days. The recent score is the one that responds quickly to your work, and it is the one new buyers tend to read first. If your lifetime score is anchored by an ugly launch, your fastest win is to push the recent score up and let the all-time number recover as volume accumulates.
Do the math on your own page
Before you plan any fixes, calculate exactly how far you are from the line. Suppose you have 600 reviews and 384 are positive. That is 64 percent, so you sit in Mixed. To reach 70 percent on the same 600 reviews you would need 420 positives, a gap of 36. But you rarely convert existing negatives; you earn new positives. If you keep all 600 and add new reviews that are, say, 85 percent positive, you can model how many you need.
In that example, adding 400 new reviews at an 85 percent positive rate gives you 384 plus 340 positives over 1,000 total, which is about 72 percent. You cross the line. The lesson is blunt: when your back catalog of reviews is dragging you down, the way out is a healthier game that earns a higher positive rate on fresh reviews, plus enough new volume to outweigh the old.
Find the two or three themes dragging you under 70 percent
Most Mixed ratings are not caused by a hundred small things. They are caused by two or three recurring complaints that show up in a large share of the negative reviews. Your job is to identify those clusters precisely, because fixing the top one or two is what changes your fresh positive rate.
Read your negative reviews and tag each by theme: performance, bugs, difficulty or balance, missing features, pricing and value, or unclear onboarding. Count the tags. The two themes with the highest counts are your rating's center of gravity. Everything else is noise until those are handled.
Separate fixable defects from expectation mismatches
Not every negative review describes a bug. Some describe a mismatch between what the store page promised and what the player got. A reviewer who expected a 40-hour RPG and found a 6-hour experience is not reporting a defect; they are reporting disappointed expectations. Those are fixed on the store page, not in the code. Learning to read pricing and value-perception signals helps you tell the two apart so you do not rebuild a system when you actually needed to reset expectations.
Fix the first hour to lift the fresh positive rate
The single highest-leverage area for most Mixed games is the opening session, because it shapes both the review decision and the refund decision. A player who is confused, bored, or stuck in the first thirty minutes is the player most likely to leave a negative review and request a refund. Turning negative reviews into onboarding fixes often moves the fresh positive rate more than any single combat or content change.
Earn more reviews from satisfied players
Quiet, happy players are the people who tip a Mixed rating over the line, and they are the least likely to post unprompted. A timed, non-intrusive nudge after a satisfying milestone, an update that thanks players for feedback, and consistent post-patch communication all raise the share of positive reviews you capture. The tactics in our guide on getting more Steam reviews matter most right after you ship a fix, when goodwill is highest. Never offer anything in exchange for a review, since incentivized reviews violate Steam's rules and can be removed.
Turn the analysis into a 30-day plan
Pulling it together, a realistic climb out of Mixed looks like a focused month rather than a vague hope.
- Calculate your current positive percentage and the exact gap to 70 percent.
- Tag your negative reviews and rank the top two complaint themes by volume.
- Ship a fix for the top theme and a store-page correction for any expectation mismatch.
- Announce the change, then invite players who were affected to revisit their review.
- Watch the recent score weekly and repeat on the next-biggest theme.
See which themes are costing you the most
Tagging hundreds of negative reviews by hand is exactly the step most teams skip, which is why they guess at the wrong fix. Drop your store URL into PlayerIntel Labs to cluster complaints by theme and rank them by frequency, so you spend your month on the two issues actually holding you under 70 percent. You can preview the breakdown in a sample report before you analyze your own game.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage is Mostly Positive on Steam?
Mostly Positive is 70 to 79 percent positive reviews. Below 70 percent the game is rated Mixed, and at 80 percent or higher with at least 50 reviews it becomes Very Positive.
Can I delete or hide my old negative reviews?
No. Developers cannot remove user reviews. You raise the rating by earning new positive reviews and by encouraging players who had a problem to update their own review after you fix it.
Do recent and all-time ratings count differently?
Steam displays both. The recent rating covers roughly the last 30 days and responds quickly to changes, while the all-time rating moves slowly because it includes every review. New buyers usually read the recent score first.
Is it worth getting out of Mixed?
Yes. The Mixed label visibly signals risk to buyers and can dampen wishlist conversion and visibility. Crossing into Mostly Positive removes that yellow warning and tends to improve store-page conversion for the same traffic.
Conclusion
Escaping Mixed is not a marketing trick; it is a measurable product goal. Find your exact distance from 70 percent, identify the two themes dragging fresh reviews down, fix them, and then invite affected players back while earning new positives from happy ones. Do that for a focused month and the yellow label turns blue, not because you gamed the score, but because the game got better at the moments that decide a review.