Why the sudden review bomb?

[Kengo19]

I know the game is bad but in the last few days there have been a ton of negative reviews.

[Zagreus]

Maybe people bought it with the generous discount (Steam Wintersale) and / or had time to play it during the holidays thus can give it a review. Note that some probably have cash on hand for one or two games at this time around and don’t feel too kindly for getting a dud. I am thankful for the reviews, as I put my money elsewhere! Though if you like it, why care about reviews in the slightest? Reviews hopefully don’t impact your enjoyment too much.

[p0k314NET]

This is NOT some childish "bombing", these are legitimate customer reviews, written by people often with long experience on Steam.

[Mixer]

Lot of people disappointed in the game, the game is worse then a lot of Bethesda's past releases, so not that surprising. Specially the writing is very dumb.

[kgmi]

There is no review bombing, its the cold, hard truth. People got this game for christmas and realised it was a wasted wish when games like Balders Gate exist. Nothing else to it.

[bunny de fluff]

The 'why' is already in the reviews themselves, go read them if you really cared instead of asking stoopid question like this here.

[Azrael]

You assume there is some sort of artificial rating manipulation going on while those are genuine reviews by people who played the game. If there were 0.1 hour reviews and immediately refunds i'd say you're right, but it's not the case.

Deal with it, the game is just bad.

[Marcel]

Originally posted by Chrille:

Well... First of all it is boring, secondly it is political correct and the npc:s all seem to come from Africa.

clearly and concisely written, I have nothing to add

[Cormoran]

I'm guessing people received a Starfield shaped lump of coal under the tree for Christmas and are realising it.

[xybolt]

Originally posted by p0k314NET:

This is NOT some childish "bombing", these are legitimate customer reviews, written by people often with long experience on Steam.

yes and no. The game is not good in the current state, I agree. But you do not have to take some of the reviews serious. A fair share of them is a product of "join the flock" mentality because it is "in" to hate the game Starfield and be vocal about that.

Want some examples? Within the twenty most recent negative reviews, at least half of them have a recorded play count of 50 hours. Even some have gotten 100+ hours. How can you take such a negative review if you have been able to sink all that hours in that game? If you don't like the game at all, should you not have quit and uninstall it after ... let's say (okay, this is arbitrary...) 10 hours? There is enough to discover and decide in that window.

Maybe it is worth to define it as a "review bombing"? Or not? After all, this game is one of the games whose reviews I would read with a grain of salt. If someone is asking to get this game or not, I would comment that the review score is not correct as it can not be trusted because of the "drama" in the past. Instead of following the reviews, I advise the user to lookup on gameplay videos and see it for themselves.

[ko]

It's not review bombing. It is people not recommending a mediocre (at best) game.

[Aged Swine]

Originally posted by xybolt:

Want some examples? Within the twenty most recent negative reviews, at least half of them have a recorded play count of 50 hours. Even some have gotten 100+ hours. How can you take such a negative review if you have been able to sink all that hours in that game?

Easily. That's the whole answer.

Counter question: how can you people still make that argument seriously? Have you never heard about the difference between "spent" and "wasted" time? Do you thoroughly enjoy everything in your life that you put hundreds and thousands of hours into? Are you always so reasonable that you immediately stop any boring or harmful activity as soon as you realize it is such? Do you not grasp the concept of completionism? Have you never heard of continuing to play through a boring game in hopes that it would get better (because some games actually do)? Or, sometimes, in case of people who actually write proper reviews, simply to know enough to write them?

Originally posted by xybolt:

Maybe it is worth to define it as a "review bombing"?

If you look carefully at the graph, the "spike" of last few days is no different from the month that precedes it. There is no big change in percentage of negative reviews, which is different day-to-day. There are simply more new reviews in total, including the positive ones (which wouldn't happen if it was "bombing"). And their number is still very low for a AAA game that came out 4 months ago. It's not "bombing" whichever way you look at it, it's the holiday season taking its due. Nothing more.

And in case you are wondering about the "sudden" recent score drop, it wasn't sudden either. It simply crawled over a month-old positive spike that happened on the first sale. If anyone's so eager to find "bombing" - look back at Black Friday and call it "positive bombing". Today, we're officially past its effect.

[Wrinkly]

Nothing sudden about it. People including myself have been posting negative reviews since the first few days of release while others thought they would give it more time before noticing how bad the title is.

[robovader]

Trying to sabotage end of the year -votes. They failed though :)

[Cormoran]

Originally posted by xybolt:

Originally posted by p0k314NET:

This is NOT some childish "bombing", these are legitimate customer reviews, written by people often with long experience on Steam.

yes and no. The game is not good in the current state, I agree. But you do not have to take some of the reviews serious. A fair share of them is a product of "join the flock" mentality because it is "in" to hate the game Starfield and be vocal about that.

Want some examples? Within the twenty most recent negative reviews, at least half of them have a recorded play count of 50 hours. Even some have gotten 100+ hours. How can you take such a negative review if you have been able to sink all that hours in that game? If you don't like the game at all, should you not have quit and uninstall it after ... let's say (okay, this is arbitrary...) 10 hours? There is enough to discover and decide in that window.

Maybe it is worth to define it as a "review bombing"? Or not? After all, this game is one of the games whose reviews I would read with a grain of salt. If someone is asking to get this game or not, I would comment that the review score is not correct as it can not be trusted because of the "drama" in the past. Instead of following the reviews, I advise the user to lookup on gameplay videos and see it for themselves.

If they played it for too long they're not allowed to hate it.
But also if they didn't play it long enough they're not allowed to hate it.

[Silverlight]

It's a fashion trend like hating on NMS and cp2077 was.

Nobody wants to be caught NOT in the latest fashion.