Review bomb

A review bomb is an Internet phenomenon where a user leaves positive or negative reviews with multiple accounts. Many targets are around published work, a business, a product, or a service. Review bombs can be found in review aggregating websites and digital stores.

Examples

 * 1) mh:awesomegames:Spore was review bombed on Amazon around 2008 after EA incorporated a DRM system that limits buyers' ability to install the game more than three times as a method to prevent piracy. This lead to backlash as it felt like the users were renting a broken game.
 * 2) In 2012, the BioWare game mh:awesomegames:Mass Effect 3 got review bombed due to a controversy of the ending. Many players were upset by the way BioWare wrapped up Shepard's story. Review bombing wasn't the only one that caused this domino effect, but there was lots of backlash and online harassment to the developers.
 * 3) In 2015, the Acid Nerve indie game Titan Souls was review bombed by the supporters of YouTuber John "TotalBiscut" Bain after the indie game's artist Andrew Gleeson mocked a statement Bain made saying the game was not for him. In a podcast, Bain stated that the developer has it out for him which caused the review bombing. Despite this, Bain later said that he did not endorse the behavior.
 * 4) Ever since Take-Two Interactive issued a cease-and-desist against the game modification tool OpenIV, there was review bombing for mh:awesomegames:Grand Theft Auto V which led to the Steam review rating from positive to mixed.
 * 5) Dota 2 got bombed because the former Valve writer of the mh:awesomegames:Half-Life series, Marc Laidlaw, posted a fanfic on his blog that several journalist thought was the plot for the planned Half-Life 2: Episode 3, but appeared to become vaporware within Valve. Players were upset about the episode not being released and thought that Valve was dropping work on the Half-Life series.
 * 6) mh:awesomegames:Sonic Mania got bombed at Steam users in protest of its use of Denuvo DRM despite not being disclosed by Sega. Sega responded by claiming the 'offline play bug' had been patched, and a Denuvo warning was added to the game's Steam page.
 * 7) Firewatch was bombed on Steam around 2017 after the developer of the game, Campo Santo, filed a DMCA takedown against a video PewDiePie made of the game with the incident where Felix uttered a racial slur during an unrelated livestream. Campo Santo justified the takedown by stating they did not want someone with Felix's ideology supporting their games. Many users wrote negative reviews of the game claiming that Campo Santo were social justice warriors or supporting censorship.
 * 8) Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) was bombed on Metacritic upon its launch in response to the game's microtransactions and loot boxes as many saw the game as a pay-to-win during its pre-release beta trials as the unlocking of new content and characters significantly favored those who paid for them with real money. In response, EA disabled the microtransactions entirely as they would be re-introduced at a later date. Around March of 2018, DICE announced an overhaul for the system stating that call content would be cosmetic.
 * 9) Nintendo's mh:awesomegames:Fire Emblem: Three Houses and mh:awesomegames:Astral Chain were both review bombed on Metacritic shortly after their respective launches many because they were just exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. These reviews were removed by Metacritic in early September, restoring the games' user scores to their original "generally favorable" and "universal acclaim"
 * 10) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) got bombed on Metacritic around October of 2019 by users who were angered at the game's depiction of the Russian military.
 * 11) Death Stranding got review bombed on Metacritic upon launch due to players being disappointed in how the game came out. In early December 2019, Metacritic removed over 6000 user reviews categorized as negative, increasing the user score to a higher rating of 7.4/10.
 * 12) Pokémon Sword and Shield were review bombed on Metacritic upon release due to the removal of some Pokémon from previous games and the quality concerns that were brought to the light after evidence suggesting that Game Freak lied about the development of two games.
 * 13) mh:awesomegames:Animal Crossing: New Horizons got review bombed on Metacritic upon the release date for that game. Users were upset about the limitations of the game's local co-op and multiplayer progression.
 * 14) mh:awesomegames:Doom Eternal had shipped for personal computer versions without a DRM package albeit this appeared to be an oversight based on how it was packaged and reported in packaging materials. A secondary Denuvo Anti-Cheat solution was added in by a patch in May 2020. This led to a review bomb because of the requirement of Ring 0 access to the computer system and the potential for security vulnerabilities.
 * 15) The Last of Us Part II got review bombed on Metacritic to the point that Metacritic made a timer for games to be reviewed 36 hours after release, it was review bombed due to the story and characters. Online harassment and death threats were also present at certain members of the game's cast and developers.
 * 16) Since 2018 or so, the Madden NFL series has been review bombed on Metacritic because players criticized EA Sports for making minimal updates to the game.
 * 17) mh:awesomegames:Genshin Impact got review bombed on Google Play as a result of some players feeling dissatisfied with the extent of the game's free premium content for its first anniversary. Negative reviews dissing out Genshin Impact were also posted in review sections for unrelated mobile games.
 * 18) Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition got review bombed on Metacritic due to players being unpleased with the revamped visuals and technical issues. This caused the PC version to be pulled from sale a few days after launch and was unplayable thanks to the removal. Rockstar Games has yet to mention why it was pulled as some players demanded refunds due to the game being unplayable.
 * 19) Dying Light 2 Stay Human was review bombed by Italian players because the game didn't have an Italian dub.
 * 20) Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE and it Encore Switch version and western Wii U both got Review Bomb due to the censorship changes on Metacritic especially the later Encore version.
 * 21) Console exclusives in general get review bombed a lot mainly by fanboys from other consoles due to the game not being on their main consoles, example would be a PC fanboy review bombing a PS4 game.
 * 22) mh:awesomegames:Gran Turismo 7 was review bombed following patch 1.07 which reduced the credits payout of many races (such as Fisherman's Ranch Dirt Champion) resulting in the game's user score dropping to 2.0/10.
 * 23) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim got review bombed in 2015 on Steam after Valve and Bethesda announced paid mods.
 * 24) Diablo II Resurrected was review bombed at launch due to the game having various bugs and server issues.
 * 25) Diablo Immortal was review bombed for having heavy monetization. One Reddit user estimated that a player would need to spend $540,000 in order to fully upgrade their character.
 * 26) Cyberpunk 2077 was review bombed by Russian users on Steam because CD Projekt would no longer sell their games in Russia.
 * 27) On the same day, both Digimon Survive and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 got reviewed bombed for different reasons via Metacritic. The former is due to being a visual novel even though it still has some RPG elements. The latter is due to it's long tutorial and the Xenoblade hatebase who hates the entire series alongside trolls who participated. Another reason as to why Xenoblade Chronicles 3 got reviewed bombed is due to "The lack of Pyra" (a character from Xenoblade Chronicles 2), the character designs, and/or for attention.
 * 28) NBA 2K20 and NBA 2K21 received review bombs from players due to the "MyTeam" trailer in NBA 2K20, as well as that game suffering a broken launch, and 2K21 after players found out that it was a reskinned version of NBA 2K20, with some features in previous entries being removed

Reverse review bomb examples
Very commonly, reverse review bombing can be associated with internet memes or jokes. However, some of these can be used as a coordinated reverse review bomb to boost the ratings of a badly-received game.
 * 1) Cory in the House: Metacritic's review of the game contains mostly satirical reviews that relate to an Internet meme that mocks the show as an "anime". Because of this, the game was seen as one of the highest user-rated DS games on the site.
 * 2) Balan Wonderworld got review bombed on Metacritic by bots, featuring the similar writing style.
 * 3) My Friend Peppa Pig (it became an internet meme because it looked like the cartoon but in 60fps)
 * 4) Garfield Kart (along with its remake sub-titled Furious Racing)
 * 5) Calculator for the Nintendo Switch (internet meme)
 * 6) Life of Black Tiger on PS4 although they are all very sarcastic reviews.
 * 7) Kingsense, to curve it's low ratings which were around 3* at the time during it's four-month lifespan, launched a reward campaign where the higher the Google Play rating, the more rewards (gems, etc) the players will get. This however, resulted in backlash and caused users to bomb the game, seeing that it was an incentive by Superprism (the publisher of Kingsense) to reverse review-bomb the game. They backed down and cancelled the campaign, but the damage was done and the game sat at 3* before shutting down. Like Saving Christmas, this is an example of a reverse review bomb where the goal was to boost the ratings up while it was critically panned, not because of an internet meme.
 * 8) Bad Rats has thousands of positive reviews on the Steam Store that are almost all made as an ironic joke. Steam users also often jokingly gift it to their friends along with other hilariously bad games, which helps in making such games ascend to popularity via the status of being a funny meme.

Why This Practice Deserves a 1-Star

 * 1) First off, there is often a high amount of review bombing that can lead to having legit and honest reviewers overshadowed. This causes some games to be unfairly hated. If the game turned out bad, then the review bombing can make the game look good in an unfair way.
 * 2) The reasons why stuff like this occurs are because of attention, a controversy, changes to the franchise, or how a certain product turned out. For example, a game got review bombed due to the game being only exclusive to a certain platform.
 * 3) The practice shares the same and similar characteristics as vote brigading and cancel culture.
 * 4) Many of the review bombing, in general, does not qualify as a review. Review bombing instead turns out to be spam.
 * 5) A type of review bomb which is used to praise certain media wrongly, would be the reverse review bomb. Basically, those reviews suggest censoring criticism.
 * 6) Because of this, this can cause other actions to occur. Take The Last of Us Part II for example. Not only was this game review bombed, but there are users who send in harassment to the staff behind the game.
 * 7) Sometimes for multi console games, a game can have a big double digits user score differences even if the game is largely the same/identical to the other versions.
 * 8) Hypocrisy: One of the reasons gamers hate gaming journalism is when they give bad games good reviews or vice versa such as NBA 2K games, how is this any different?

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Though still wrong, the review bomb may do have a point about the flaws of a certain game like Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, Warcraft III: Reforged and Gran Turismo 7.
 * 2) Sometimes you get review sites that can have means to detect or prevent review bombing.
 * 3) Sometimes a review bomb may be used to praise a game due to the actions that players see as beneficial. For example, Assassin's Creed Unity due to the Notre-Dame de Paris fire. This lead Ubisoft to make the game free via Ubisoft Connect as the game included a recreation of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Videos
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