We also launched on Steam last week, and, although being review-bombed isn’t a fun experience, it’s been great to see lots of new players jump into Overwatch 2 for the first time. Our goal with Overwatch 2 has been to make the game more accessible than ever for more people than ever before.
Many of the reviews on Steam mention the cancellation of the much larger component of PvE that was announced in 2019 as one of their primary reasons for dissatisfaction with the game. I get that. That announcement was about an ambitious project that we ultimately couldn’t deliver.
If we can’t turn back the clock, then what can we do? We can keep adding to and improving Overwatch 2. That is how we move forward. This means more maps, heroes, game modes, missions, stories, events, cool cosmetics, and features - an ever-expanding, evolving, and improving game. This is the future of Overwatch. One where we will continually create and innovate on what is making the game great now for the players who are playing now.
Overwatch is such a unique game and world. When our heroes are all working together to complete an objective, there is really nothing else like it. Jump in–there’s more to come!
I hate the term review bombing. Because guess what. Any review not left under false premises is an entirely legitimate opinion on the media. If someone thinks a movie or game is bottom of the barrel trash because of some small aspect, they’re entirely within their right to have that opinion, and it’s no less legitimate than someone who likes it more.
Then I’d argue that reviews don’t give a complete picture, if that’s the case. Because it’s hard to argue that Overwatch is really the worst game on Steam.
I would argue that reviews have never been a good metric for comparing games to each other, especially when it comes to aggregate user reviews, primarily because reviews are heavily influenced by what the player base expects from a game.
While that’s true, what’s illegitimate is when the idiots set up bots to spam negative reviews, like what happened with Captain Marvel and Last Jedi. A person with a negative opinion is fine. A bot spamming the same negative reviews again and again in order to artificially bring down the score? Not fine.
I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but reviewing bombing generally consists of more than a group of angry people writing honest reviews.
A review bomb is a collective effort to lower the score of something, abusing systems meant to reflect an average opinion by gathering people who would not normally leave a review, often people who haven’t even played the game. It is intentionally creating sampling bias. “Review bomb” is a meaningful term being applied correctly here. I don’t like modern blizz, but Overwatch 2 is not the worst game on steam as its review average would indicate.