14 DAY TRIAL // To no one's surprise, Rocket League was immediately review-bombed on Steam immediately after the news that Psyonix, the studio making the game, was bought by Epic.
The news that the beloved Psyonix studio was bought by Epic didn't sit well with the community. The reason has to do with the Epic Games Store and the practice of gathering exclusive titles that are sold only through that platform. And now that Epic bought the studio, the fans are worried that Epic is going to pull the game from Steam.
It's no secret that Epic's campaign seems to be directly aimed at Steam, but Steam has been around for a long time and has a lot of users. A newcomer that grabs various famous games and prevents them from being sold on Steam is not going to be welcomed.
Review-bombing doesn’t really work anymore
The practice of review-bombing is a long-lived one. Each time the community gets upset for whatever reason, they head onto Steam and leave a slew of bad reviews for a particular title, which usually changes the overall grading for a game. Poor reviews can translate in poor sales, and no developer wants that.
Now, the community tried to do the same with Rocket League, and almost 3000 negative reviews were posted. But if you look at the recent reviews, you will notice that it still says “Very Positive,” which means that the negative reviews didn’t have an impact.
It’s all due to the new system implemented by Valve that prevents exactly this kind of behavior. When lots of negative reviews are detected, over a short period, they are not counted towards the Review Score. They’re not deleted and can be read, but users are prompted with a message.
“This time range has been marked as containing an abnormal set of reviews that we believe are largely unrelated to the likelihood that you would enjoy the product. The reviews within this period are excluded from the Review Score by default.”
It’s worth pointing out that Epic said that it’s doesn’t intend to pull the game from Steam, at least not for now.