review bombing

[Lahey]

Over the past few years this method has become increasingly more common. Motivations differ with each case: some are political, seen recently with Firewatch; others are economic, such as Paradox's "summer sale"; mod-related backlash, like OpenIV or F4; delayed localizations, as in D:OS2 this very weekend; personal vendettas, etc.

There are many more reasons and examples, but all roads lead to the user review sections of various sites.

What are your thoughts on review bombing? Have you ever engaged in it? Are you opposed to it? Is there a line? If so, where do you draw it? How can one differentiate between carpet bombs and general poor reception? Do you separate the art from the artist, the artist from the company, or the company from the parent?

Discuss!

Let this thread also serve as a dumping ground for review bomb news of games which don't have their own and aren't related to GG.

 

[Roguey]

Smart, well-informed persons will always read the text instead of relying entirely on a score. Let people do what they may.

 

[dragonul09]

Maybe people are getting sick of moronic devs that keep promising shit that somehow will get delayed months or never happen in the first place.

Fallout 4 gets shit on because it was bad and paid mods are the icing on the cake.

Also with Rockstar,I think people have the right to modifiy the game however the hell they like and share it with others.If I pay 60 fucking dollars for something you better believe that shit is mine and only mine.


They fully deserve it.

 

[racofer]

Devs provide a service/product. If they fuck it up due to moronic decisions or plain stupidity, they deserve to get the shaft. Off the top of my head, I remember:

• Fallout 4 and its paid mods
  
• GTA V banning modders
  
• Batman Arkham Knight horrendous launch and subsequent patches
• No Man's Sky (lol)
• Bioware general
• Dishonored 2 piss poor engine

There are, of course, several more cases.

Games belong to an industry, like all other consumer products. They are not above criticism, it only so happens that their products are sold online, so it is only normal that they get a much harsher treatment due to the medium they operate than say, the automotive industry.

However, let's not forget that most industries are often bound by regulations that keep them in check most of the time, and they are held accountable when they fuck it up. Generally speaking, the gaming and software industry get off easy with their shit, and the paying customers get the worst end of the deal all the time.

 

[Metro]

'Reviews' are worthless to me except inasmuch as they recount objective facts about a game and then I can make my own decision. As far as bombing/pushback/whatever divining the reasons is impossible. We live in a time where the industry has successfully pushed the costs of marketing their games on to the consumers who essentially pay the salaries of outsourced PR manboons: Twitch Streamers and people like TotalImmunityToCancerBiscuit.

 

[Tehdagah]

I prefer objective reviews.

 

[Kutulu]

Cant review bomb if you dont buy shitty games.

 

[Mark Richard]

Never engaged in it myself. I have no strong feelings one way or the other, but when it comes to getting results, it's hard to deny the tactic's effectiveness. Paradox Interactive and Take-Two Interactive are just two of the recent examples of major companies reversing unpopular policies after review bombing.

 

[Shackleton]

I remember last year about this time, Football Manager 2017 getting review bombed to hell and back by Chinese gamers because SI weren't going to translate the game into Chinese. Miles Jacobsen apparently even got a death threat over it, (probably on Twitter lol.) It stemmed from him saying about 5 years previously that Chinese localisation wasn't economically viable unless 20K pirates [from China] bought the game instead. Like the true autists that Football Manager fans can be, the Chinese gamers bought loads of copies of the next 5 years FM and based on nothing more than that, were sure that Chinese was going to be the next language they translated. When SI said it wasn't, but modders could fix it if they wanted to translate the approximately 4 million words themselves, it was pitchforks time.

It worked though, Sega stepped in to fund a chinese localisation after shitting themselves it was getting out of hand. Guess those chinese gamers really like their football management.

 

[AN4RCHID]

I support review bombing of SJWs or as a response to anti-consumer actions. It's one of the few tools consumers have to put pressure on developers/publishers.

 

[555]

Reviews don't matter much so I find it pointless

This was when NMS had overwhelmingly negative reviews IIRC

 

[AN4RCHID]

I'd guess there's a reason they put it on such a steep sale. Seems like NMS sales did drop pretty sharply after the backlash https://www.vg247.com/2016/08/22/uk-charts-no-mans-sky-second-week-sales-down-by-81/

The reaction to that game went a bit beyond review bombing though.

 

[LESS T_T]

Chinese players are very effective at this:

- Football Manager 2017 - a big bombing from Chinese players due to the lack of "promised" Chinese localizations (SEGA complied and added the localizations, but damage was done)
- Conan Exiles - another bombing from Chinese players due to (IIRC) that they locked out of global servers and their local servers being shitty
- NBA 2K18 - latest bombing from Chinese players due to the lack of local servers

Bombings from Chinese players usually cause very noticeable score drops, but non-Chinese players barely get to grasp reasons behind abysmal scores.

 

[MLMarkland]

Legacy media review bombs everything all the time. Does anyone really think the 4th season of Halt and Catch Fire is a 92?

http://www.metacritic.com/tv/halt-and-catch-fire/season-4

It's not a 92. It's a straight F. It is absolutely terrible. The critics were paid, in cash or in kind, to rate it an A.

I don't see any issue with the actual individual people fighting back.

 

[Severian Silk]

I bomb every Grimoire review I find.

 

[Bocian]

I support review bombing of SJWs or as a response to anti-consumer actions. It's one of the few tools consumers have to put pressure on developers/publishers.

 

[fantadomat]

Games that get bombed deserve it.Ether some corporate greedy assholes or a bunch of sjw retards.I wont loose any sleep even if their studious get bombed with mustard for real.

 

[JarlFrank]

I have positively review-bombed Grimoire to support the incline and drown out the SJW anti-Clevers.

 

[Krzysiek]

What do game developers think about it:

Spoiler

Question:
Does so called "review bombing" ie. Steam user review etc. actually work / does it matter at all?

Answer:
Not in the way the review bombers hope. We already know that there’s a vocal and passionate fanbase for our game out there - that’s a major reason why we employ community managers. And we know when they’re upset. But it’s like throwing a tantrum - it might feel good while you’re doing it and you leave a huge mess, but it won’t ultimately change anything that wasn’t going to happen already anyway.
All review bombing really does is (continue to) convince both publishers and developers that user reviews aren’t worth anything. We already hold a pretty low opinion of user reviews because they are almost never representative of the actual opinions of the user base, but they are sometimes useful for specific feedback on things. User reviews are, after all, self-selecting by nature. Only players that feel really strongly about a game will leave a review, which makes their reviews sometimes more detailed than others in specific systems. Brigading reviews just makes everything unreadable and makes user reviews useless for actually gathering feedback.
Review bombs aren’t real reviews, and they don’t provide any real feedback. They are an angry reaction to some thing that’s enacted by a [small, passionate, and vocal part of the fanbase], a message borne out of frustration. However, the frustration part isn’t because the developers or publishers haven’t heard the complaints before; it’s because the devs haven’t acknowledged the issue to the satisfaction of the angry mob, so the mob feels they must act out negatively. Review bombs usually happen for a specific reason - Dota 2 was review bombed because the bombers wanted HL3 and had practically nothing to do with Dota 2. It’s not like Valve isn’t aware of the community’s hunger for HL3 (or HL2 episode 3), but it really doesn’t help much when an entirely separate team gets a bunch of noise to cloud up their signal.
Thus, review bombs don’t help anybody. New Dota2 players might get weirded out by the bad reviews and might not get to find a game they actually might enjoy. Hardcore HL fans won’t get any more traction with Valve than before (which was already basically zero). Valve already knows what the HL fans want and has their own schedule and development going on. We don’t look at players more sympathetically because they tried to trash a game; it just makes us think of that small group of players as throwing a tantrum. Nobody on the development or publishing side has ever changed their minds because of a review bomb.

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/165227143618/does-so-called-review-bombing-ie-steam-user

 

[Bocian]

Cześć Krzysiek.

 

[Krzysiek]

Cześć Krzysiek.

Cześć Bocian

 

[Roguey]

Nobody on the development or publishing side has ever changed their minds because of a review bomb.

And yet, Beamdog.

 

[fantadomat]

What do game developers think about it:

Spoiler

Question:
Does so called "review bombing" ie. Steam user review etc. actually work / does it matter at all?

Answer:
Not in the way the review bombers hope. We already know that there’s a vocal and passionate fanbase for our game out there - that’s a major reason why we employ community managers. And we know when they’re upset. But it’s like throwing a tantrum - it might feel good while you’re doing it and you leave a huge mess, but it won’t ultimately change anything that wasn’t going to happen already anyway.
All review bombing really does is (continue to) convince both publishers and developers that user reviews aren’t worth anything. We already hold a pretty low opinion of user reviews because they are almost never representative of the actual opinions of the user base, but they are sometimes useful for specific feedback on things. User reviews are, after all, self-selecting by nature. Only players that feel really strongly about a game will leave a review, which makes their reviews sometimes more detailed than others in specific systems. Brigading reviews just makes everything unreadable and makes user reviews useless for actually gathering feedback.
Review bombs aren’t real reviews, and they don’t provide any real feedback. They are an angry reaction to some thing that’s enacted by a [small, passionate, and vocal part of the fanbase], a message borne out of frustration. However, the frustration part isn’t because the developers or publishers haven’t heard the complaints before; it’s because the devs haven’t acknowledged the issue to the satisfaction of the angry mob, so the mob feels they must act out negatively. Review bombs usually happen for a specific reason - Dota 2 was review bombed because the bombers wanted HL3 and had practically nothing to do with Dota 2. It’s not like Valve isn’t aware of the community’s hunger for HL3 (or HL2 episode 3), but it really doesn’t help much when an entirely separate team gets a bunch of noise to cloud up their signal.
Thus, review bombs don’t help anybody. New Dota2 players might get weirded out by the bad reviews and might not get to find a game they actually might enjoy. Hardcore HL fans won’t get any more traction with Valve than before (which was already basically zero). Valve already knows what the HL fans want and has their own schedule and development going on. We don’t look at players more sympathetically because they tried to trash a game; it just makes us think of that small group of players as throwing a tantrum. Nobody on the development or publishing side has ever changed their minds because of a review bomb.

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/165227143618/does-so-called-review-bombing-ie-steam-user

Showing your head in the sand doesn't change the world.No matter what echo chamber devs are saying,user reviews matter.Most experienced games do prefer to read user reviews,with a few years of gaming people know how to read between the lines.Also a lot of people are sceptical of the corrupt journalists.Reading all that drivel from almost intelligent devs makes me want another industry crash.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

damn, i read the title and came here hoping to read reviews like "it came from the roof and exploded into the dining room, killing the entire family on the spot. 10/10 would die again".

 

[MLMarkland]

What do game developers think about it:
Question:
Does so called "review bombing" ie. Steam user review etc. actually work / does it matter at all?

That developer is a conformist and/or a moron.