“Review Bombing” is a terrible term that attempts to discredit when consumers are not happy with the product.
It’s just unfortunate that this is the only avenue for players to make their disagreement felt. Game reviews should focus on the game as a whole and not one single aspect, the more these happen the less steam reviews become reliable to gauge the game’s quality.
“One single aspect”, especially cash grubbing, completely and absolutely removes any capacity to enjoy the game from most users.
They’re not recommending that game because of that “one aspect” because that “one aspect” makes the game unplayable as far as they’re concerned.
Ignoring massive deal breaking flaws to try to do some average of individual features is a far less honest or accurate review. A single issue, if it’s big enough, can change a game from the best thing anyone’s ever made into a complete and utter pile of shit. Games are not a sum of parts.
This isn’t massive flaws that suddenly appeared overnight, or the straw that broke the camel’s back, it’s purely because they want to get back at the developer. So yes, I think “review bombing” is accurate.
Don’t get me wrong, i dislike enshittification as much as the next guy; but I don’t think a game’s review should be about what the devs posted on twitter yesterday.
THIS IS WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU
After over 1,000 hours in that game, I left my negative review a couple years ago and quit forever. The predatory monetization eats away at the fun. Slowly at first, but building up over time. It’s just been bad decision after bad decision since the game came out. You slowly start to realize the game you’ve been playing isn’t even fun anymore and you only play for the new cosmetics for fear of missing out. Daily challenges, weekly challenges, seasons, events, limited time game modes, premium skins, loot boxes, special legendary cosmetics for those that spend the most, vaulting content for a false sense of scarcity and slow progression. And now after all this, the one thing people could get from a one time purchase (if they grind hard enough) is gone. Honestly, I’d leave another negative review if I could.
I left when I realized people weren’t aimbotting… they’re just using a controller and my keyboard/mouse ass is being auto-aimed at from medium and short distances.
See that’s insane to me, your spent 1000!! Hours. It was obviously a good game
That’s not inherently true, though. What if 99 people out of 100 who play 1000 hours are fine, but the 100th has his brain broken and is addicted to giving the owner their rent and food money? The people who escape can still see the things that the game did to their brain and not suggest anyone else go down that path.
And yes, they’re literally designed with that intention in mind, to create addicts. Escaping doesn’t mean the experience was worth it.
The term “Review bomb” has lost it’s original meaning at this point.
Well from looking at steamdb, they have an additional 1500ish negative reviews today.
But it isn’t a meaningful amount to actually catch the attention of the corpo meat suits yet.
