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Take Two admits review bombing can significantly harm success

Eiknarf

Banned
Metacritic matters

Game creators, generalist animators and/or 3D modelers’ next job can be determined by the Metacritic score of the last game they worked on. But only the pro reviews. Not the User Reviews (because obviously they can and are subject to bombing
 

Zannegan

Member
Couldn't it also be that the issue that motivated the review bomb could be what's costing them? When I see mixed/negative reviews, especially when past reviews are more positive, I immediately scroll down to find out what the drama is. If the reasons behind the negativity seem petty or don't impact me, I ignore them.

Paying customers can and should be able to express their dissatisfaction with the product, and if they're dissatisfied en mass, well... If they're complaining about negative reviews from people who have never played the game, they have the games media. And I say this as someone who's never been motivated to review bomb anything.

One thing that might help the situation would be a review history, like tracking past scores so people can see the original positive impression right under the new negative one. It would highlight the issue for the player while also maintaining what they liked about the game for the publisher.
 
Gamergate was killed dead by the media twisting the original agenda about the media being in the pocket of the publishers into an agenda about misogyny, now we are left with a gaming media that rarely critiques anything mainstream and is completely detached from the opinions of the audience, leaving the community to take it upon ourselves to voice our dissatisfaction with developers, review bombing being basically the only tool that is effective.
I wasn't really active when GamerGate occurred, but it really seems like its flying back in their faces with splash damage since they've lost control over the narrative. They figured they could control/silence the gaming community's discontent through fearmongering and slandering.
The gamergate crowd would have won if they had somehow found a way to reign in the bad actors of that movement. Once people started doxxing and doing worse, that fight was lost.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
Game companies just call any negative review ‘review bombing’ now.
“is my game really that bad, that it deserves all those negative reviews?
No, it is being review-bombed.”

season 5 episode 20 GIF
 
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