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Blizzard notes Overwatch 2's review bombs but insists players say it's "in the best state it's ever been"

Blizzard has opened up about the impact Overwatch 2 "review bombers" have had on the team, acknowledging that the "dissatisfaction" stems from "the cancellation of the much larger component of PvE that was announced in 2019 [...] that Blizzard ultimately couldn't deliver".

In a statement posted to the game's official website, Aaron Keller said that while being review bombed "isn't a fun experience", the plan was to "move forward" by "adding to and improving Overwatch 2".

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18 comments

  • Getting a lot of bad reviews is always going to elicit "muh review bomb" from now on, isn't it

    • I mean they're kinda the same thing.

      Somehow people started interpreting "review bombing" as illegitimate.

      • I don't think they're the same thing but get muddle to seem that way on purpose.

        Review bombing is when a game gets poorly rated for something, mostly completely unrelated to the game, but due to something surrounding it - be that a publisher decision like deciding to ban and not give Blitzchung his prize money for saying support Hong Kong, or some perceived language/political/regional slights like with Nier Automata. Tons of examples out here in this category, where legitimately good games are being affected by somewhat legitimate but not relevant reasons.

        Overwatch 2 being poorly rated on Steam isn't review bombing. It's gamers saying how shit the game is, like the false promises for Cyberpunk 2077, the addition of denuovo to games, or horrendously egregious microtransactions added to games, like with horse armor or the entirety of everything thst happened leading up to Star Wars Battlefront II (the second). These may be legitimately good games severely affected by terrible decisions from the developers, publishers, or marketing team.

        I understand why the latter is so easily mixed up with the former, but it's something that happens as users and media outlets erode the meaning of these words. It's disingenuous to say that something is review-bombed when it's poorly rated for legitimate reasons but as you said it's something that is now interpreted that way.

        There's also something to be said about Valve's internal metric for review bombing which is the increased number of reviews leaning in a particular direction due to some external force. For example, Assassins Creed Unity being given for free led to positive reviews but was excluded from being counted as a review bombing, compared to something negative like being completely unable to leave reviews at all on the Epic Games store, leading players to leave reviews on Steam

        • Review bombing is when a game suddenly gets a lot of negative reviews, affecting the initial rating of the game. The reasons for it may vary, but this distinction has between reasons has never been established, not even among the people using the term. The only reason why this might not count as review bombing is because this is the first time Overwatch is getting Steam reviews.

          The issue is that the media has gotten into the habit of treating all review bombing as a illegitimate temper tantrum rather than a valid protest, even when there are good reasons for it.

        • some perceived language/political/regional slights like with Nier Automata

          This is news to me? Nier Automata got bombed because Square Enix never released a patch on steam to fix the game's performance problems. It came up when the Game Pass version was released without those problems but Steam was never brought to parity.

          • Nier was review bombed in China for not having proper localization.

            Same thing happened to Football Manager '17 lol

            • Ah, that's what happens when I get all my news from US/EU games journalists lol. Thanks.

              • It's difficult not to when it's what's primarily pushed on us, so it's understandable. My friend from college moved to China right after we graduated so I'm just lucky to have someone who can tell me about regular peoples experiences. Granted he's in Shenzhen so it's still skewed tech, but honestly without him I'd not have the same understanding.

                U.S. media tends to throw a lot of shade at Chinese players. If you look up pretty much any game and "Chinese review bombing" you'd see quite a few that paint these players in a negative light. And for some the reviews are definitely not as legitimate, like a game having bones or the number 4, versus something actually reasonable to complain about, like a half-assed or absolutely no localization of a game that's being sold at full price in your region anyway.

                Like with most things I think there's fair/reasonable expectations to have, like buying a game and it being in your language when it's sold in your country. And in some cases, pretty unreasonable expectation for getting positive reviews like having entire skins/textures/gameplay changes made to the game.

18 comments