There was a time when review bombing (that is, giving mass negative ratings to a game as a sign of discontent) in video games was used to justify racist or sexist attitudes. The protagonist is a woman and I am not a woman, therefore I have to boycott the release for reasons I have made up in my head. However, recently it tends to be synonymous with very poorly made technical decisions. At least since Helldivers 2 paved the way and achieved its objectives, complaining with negative ratings has become a very common practice in the industry.
Bomb goes off!
It is the case now of Earth Defense Force 6, which now has barely a 5 rating on Steam. The reason is not that the game is bad, but that to play it online, you need to create an Epic Games account, something that no player knew until the day of its release. The situation has been so catastrophic that the developers are already working on removing it. But of course, the damage has already been done.
It’s not (completely) a punishment towards Sandlot, the studio, of course, but towards Epic… but it has many nuances that bosses probably can’t see. in the end, review bombing has very immediate positive consequences for users but very negative long-term consequences for studios since many players, already satisfied, forget to change their review, and it remains negative (Helldivers 2 is still trying to recover from the blow, for example).
We still don’t know how this problem is going to be fixed, but it will be because no one likes to have their space shooter in the red. For once, review bombing makes sense, but in the long run, it can have very harmful consequences for the industry if every time a game has something we don’t like, we rush to suspend it. Moderation. It’s not that hard.
