Overwatch 2 is the worst game on Steam, according to user reviews | “The people who make Overwatch porn work harder than the people who make Overwatch”::undefined
This quote from the article is exactly why I absolutely won’t bother with OW2–“free” or not:
“I somehow purchased Overwatch 1 for $40, which Blizzard then deleted and created this predatory microtransaction simulator instead”
For real! Give me back the original game I purchased!
Remember when they promised Overwatch players would be fine, and they wouldn’t be forced to play OW2? Remember when they touted OW2 as being different for having the basis of PvE missions and more story based content?
I actually really wanted a story/lore filled fps. Tragic
So did I. Even though I had sort of fallen out of love with Overwatch at that point, I was actually pretty excited for the story/PvE stuff. Then to be presented with the steaming pile of dung they gave us was just an insult to me.
I have a better solution that works for me really good. Any time a blizzard game releases I out right ignore it. So far it’s been going great for me.
I don’t even WANT Warcraft 4 anymore.
It’s gonna be dogshit anyway
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I truly detest the “review bombing” culture, but in the same breath - Blizzard has really screwed up on OW2.
OW was honestly one of my two most played games of all time - and I loved it. The loot boxes were annoying, but hey…if I wanted to, or chose to - I could buy more and got a decent chance of getting what I wanted. The issue was that I had nearly everything by the end, and rarely bought loot boxes. The content wasn’t there to keep people buying cosmetics.
The new shop/token/battle pass stuff is really really toxic to gaming. I will admit that I have bought a few battle passes. When the content is there, I will pay. I would totally buy skins if they were in the vein of $5-7usd, and were for a hero I liked… but there is no way in the world that they are getting me to pay 20-25 on a skin. Its honestly so disgusting.
I really was unaffected by the single player stuff, because I only enjoy multiplayer games - but the way it was done showed disregard for the loyal players so it makes me lose trust in the company. I am honestly just sad about what happened to the OW universe. The only way for people to voice that feeling/emotion is to vent and move on. I guess the reviews serve as a good warning to potential new players.
I love review bombing culture. Because companies always (always) push to have more money. Ten years ago we wouldn’t think that loot boxes would be so common. Now lootboxes are more common and games more shittier.
And sometimes people snap and just bury the game that crosses some lines. Imo those lines were crossed long ago. Now we notice it when the game is both bad and have loot boxes.
But it’s funny to look at overwatch because they also gambled to push as much shit into the game and lost (at least I hope so, the game still have 50000+ players)
But what does “review bombing” accomplish?
You mention loot boxes. SWBF2(2) was so notorious that governments got involved.
And… we still have loot boxes and people are actively defending gacha games.
And that ignores that most review bombs aren’t even about the game* and are mostly about “woke politics” and similar stupidity.
*: I would also very much argue that SWBF2 had very little to do with the loot boxes and was mostly chuds angry about TLJ.
Steams reviews have a much higher weight in regard to a games success than any other form of review. The new Battlefront games came to Steam way later, when EA Play got introduced and a big chunk of EAs exclusive library moved to Steam. By that point the Battlefront games got all patched up and were somewhat beloved. But a native Steam release like BF2042 was met with harsh criticism, which ultimately let to the game’s failure. There is a reason why AAA studios like Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft or Microsoft prefer not to release their games on Steam and each have their own launchers. The lack of transparency is also why the Epic Games Store is an attractive alternative for publishers. I’d like to think that Steam has the most solid review system one could ask for, something that other launchers are severely lacking. An “overwhelmingly positive” status for a game is an automatic success and everything below “mixed” is nearly a death sentence. Even games that are successfull, like the recent CoD titles start out “negative” or “mixed” on Steam release. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because the publisher already got his money from their own launcher and console releases.
I think that is a somewhat reductive take on the situation.
Yes, steam reviews have largely grown to be part of the PR cycle. The same way metacritic/opencritic did. And this is, in large part, what led to the rise of Influencers. Because Ubi have reached the point where “it is shit at launch but it will be good on a year” is considered a positive and… a lot of that is from all the streamers and youtubers who get paid to parrot those talking points.
Wanting to control their own store is more about maximizing revenue. Steam takes a relatively small cut (EGS takes an even smaller one). But it is still money that EA and Ubi and the like aren’t getting. That is why they prioritize their own stores.
But I think you have hit on something I’ve noticed over the course of the EGS mess. Steam Early Access doesn’t work anymore. People get angry that it exists, throw a hissy, and ignore games. Whereas, launching a game on a different store gives developers cash injection while limiting the consumers to the die hard fans. Because I don’t know ANYONE who browses the EGS store. But I know a lot of us bought Satisfactory or Salt and Sacrifice there because we could not wait. And that gets the actual Early Access community feedback without people complaining that this early access game is not as polished as Elden Ring.
And yeah, having the equivalent of some metacritic scores on the checkout page has a big impact. But, like I said, stuff like “review bombing” actively lessens that impact. Rather than “Oh, this is mostly negative, the devs must have screwed up” it becomes “Oh, this is mostly negative… Is that because there is a woman in the game or a single DLC was overpriced or is that because of actual gameplay reasons?”. At which point… those reviews are worthless again and I am back to listening to my favorite influencer.
So… steam reviews come with words… you don’t have to guess why something is rated poorly. You just scroll right down to the words and hundreds of people will tell you if they were “butthurt” or if the game just sucks.
Its funny you mention that.
Reading the top few reviews below the proverbial fold is incredibly useful. In large part because Valve already put the work in to filter out the review bombings.
I have never even heard of anyone reviewing BF2 for the movies. Everything I saw and heard were for loot boxes, the levelling system, the guns, skins, or pride and accomplishment.
Its speculation but it lines up with other debacles over the years. There is a genuine problem/concern. A group of chuds who actually are angry at something else it does pretend this is what they care about start the angry mob going. And then said mob tries to ignore the chuds ranting about other shit. Gamergate is probably the most well known example of this.
And it really does line up here. Funny enough, Overwatch had been batshit insane with loot boxes and shit drops for a year or so by that point and plenty of the same articles and arguments were made (although, I don’t think you could buy sexy nurse Mercy? you had to get her as a drop? Or an SFM clip…) but nobody cared and… many people were actively defending it all while being angry about a Vader skin.
And since? Nothing has changed lootbox wise, people genuinely like SWBF2-2 (or just hate BF2042 that much. It is hard to tell) and gacha games like Genshin Impact are defended by every outlet. And you still have the crowds who can’t hear about TLJ without writing an angry rant about how it ruined Star Wars.
Maybe I am just a cynic. But having been around for more than a few of these: Outrage on the level of SWBF2-2 doesn’t happen without ulterior motives. And those ulterior motives are almost always horrifically chuddy.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about
EA BFII released before TLJ (Nov 17, 2017 vs Dec 15, 2017). And the controversy for BFII happened before it’s release, more than a month before anybody had the chance to see TLJ. On top of that, because of the extreme amounts of negative press, all paid loot boxes were removed from BFII within like a week of its release, and all future content would be entirely free. So while sometimes review bombing may be people clamoring about ‘wokeness’ or just ineffective, BFII is not the example to use as it’s probably the singular hardest pivot in game direction in modern AAA due to player outcry.
Is it really review bombing though? Or is it just people reviewing a game poorly because it’s bad? Like seriously this is the whole point of reviews.
I do not agree that the game is bad. The gamplay, mechanics, and feel is near perfect. The design, art, and sound is amazing. I am not happy with the current state from a monetization standpoint, but to say it is a bad game - objectively, that is wrong. The reviews of the original game before the new monitization strategies were all great, and the core gameplay still exists. I still play, and still have a great time when I do. I just protest with my wallet. If it was a bad game, there would not be so many people playing it and shelling over money for skins.
I disagree on review bombing. It’s the public’s way of ensuring publishers ‘find out’ when they fuck around.
Payday 2’s devs added pay 2 win loot boxes. They got review bombed. They changed their course.
If the bombing isn’t valid you can read the reviews. If what they described doesn’t concern you as a consumer you can likely assume that it won’t color your experience with the game.
Not the best example. Payday 2 happens to be my most played game of all time. They did get review bombed when they added stat improvements on unlockables, and that was reversed, but they also got review bombed when they started microtransactions after very clearly saying they would never do so (drills/safes). That was never reversed, and only got worse with time. The fact that it is PvE co-op only, makes “pay 2 win” way less important, and I could still “win” very easily without any of those minor stat increases. The original vision was that players just pay for new heists, and anyone could play any heist - just not host unless they owned the content.
I pretty sure that at least 50% of the the blizzard staff who was laid off started to make overwatch porn. The single beauty mark on the back of the Pink Mercy skin is all the evidence that I need.
If my claim is correct so yeah, people who make overwatch porn work harder than the current overwatch team.
Beauty mark on the mercy skin?
Look closely on the pink mercy skin, one of the few skin that Mercy has a open back side, it’s has a little beauty mark in the middle of her back.
What’s the relation to the porn?
The person who designed the skin purposely put that beauty mark, is not from Mercy design and others skins with open backside doesn’t have it. If this is not some kind of fetish I don’t know what it is.
That seems like a huge stretch.
I have never paid for a single Blizzard game. I have never played a single Blizzard game. I have never been given any indication I’ve made a mistake.
You missed out on 20 plus years of good games. You missed the reason we have esports, Starcraft in Korea, great times.
You’ve made a mistake, hope this is indication enough.
Warcraft 3 is a good game, I loved Warcraft 3. I am sure warcraft 1 and 2 were probably good for their time as well. Anything else yeah. I got nothing.
Overwatch was a good game back in the day before deletion.
I don’t understand the hate the game gets, it’s a free game.
No it isn’t. I paid $40 for it.
And 7 years after the fact, how is your one time $40 purchase still paying to keep the servers running?
I don’t like the monetary scheme that Blizzard settled on for OW2, I’m never paying $25 for a skin, but the $10 battle pass every 2 months is reasonable in my opinion.
If that battle pass contained all of that season’s cosmetic content and followed a FOMOless scheme more similar to Halo MCC or Deep Rock Galactic, I think most people wouldn’t complain but clearly we have whales that are willing to dump stupid amounts of cash on singular skins.
I love how you’re pretending that the exact business model Blizzard operated on successfully for 15 years doesn’t work.
And 7 years after the fact, how is your one time $40 purchase still paying to keep the servers running?
The company as a whole is profitable, and have been for at least the last few years. I’m on mobile so I’m not able to read their annual investor reports, but do they actually mention overwatch being a loss for the company on a premium model, or are you assuming that?
I’m making assumptions but I don’t think it’s asinine to assume that they would rather run their service with a constant steady income from a subscription model rather than a one time purchase over the period of half a decade. It would have been one thing if they released paid expansions to the base game every few years but they never did that.
It also doesn’t matter if the company as a whole is profitable if Overwatch itself isn’t. They aren’t Kirkland with the food court hotdogs or rotisserie chickens, as in trying to use Overwatch to pull people into their other games even though it’s a net negative for them to continue to support.
What do you even accomplished by white Knight ingredients for a big media company with a long history of shitty business practices?
Not picking up a pitchfork and joining the mob is now white knighting? Get the fuck outta here with that shit.
I’m not here to defend Blizzard, frankly fuck them and their mismanagement of a great IP, but people are definitely blowing Overwatch’s failure out of proportion and just hopping on a bandwagon.
they ruined the game with false promises of PVE for the last 4 years and then released monetization and nothing else. they just released a shitty pve gamemode thats 15 bucks for like 3 missions i think which is a slap in the face
It didn’t use to be.
People give a negative review because they consider the game to be much worse than it was in the past.
I bought Overwatch on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC. I also bought it for my daughter on PC. We would play online together.
I would then buy myself and my daughter each a big loot box pack when there was a new event (Halloween, Christmas, etc.) so that we could get some fun cosmetics.
I paid A LOT of money for Overwatch.
Blizzard then killed off the game. It’s gone. We cannot play it, ever again.
In its place is now Overwatch 2. It looks similar, but it plays differently and has new mechanics and a whole-new monetary system that locks gameplay elements behind a paywall.
The game now being “free” for everyone to download doesn’t make anything about it better. And it certainly doesn’t make up for the fact that the old game is gone.
plenty of games have made the transition from paid to f2p and lots of those have also been acompanied by large overhauls/patches. none of them i remember have had as large a backlash as overwatch did.
As of April 2022, Blizzard had apparently sold over 50,000,000 copies of Overwatch. That means it is one of the best-selling games of all time. That is over 50,000,000 copies now gone. Of course you’re going to hear a LOT of complaints.
Were any of those other games you’re talking about as big as Overwatch? Were they as successful as Overwatch? I really doubt they had anywhere near the player-base as Overwatch.
Lots of companies switch games around. Many times it’s because they are financially hurting or otherwise need a way to increase funding.
Blizzard had a massive hit and also promised updates to make the game even better.
After years and years of promising this, Blizzard basically told all their customers psych.
Not only was the big PvE mode not coming, they very game they were already playing all these years was also going away.
What kind of attitude is this? You’re still being used by them as content for the paying users. I’d at least like to get dinner before i get forked.
Huh?
Nobody is forcing you to play overwatch 2. I am disappointed, because I loved the first year or so of OW1, but I fell off that game a long time ago.
Like, if your date is insisting you make the beast with two backs before you head out to the Olive Garden? Just leave? Rather than sitting in their living room yelling about how you need at least four cheddar bay breadsticks before you choke down their breadstick.
so youre saying if that wouldve happened you wouldnt leave a bad review due to the fact its a bad experience you would just leave?
thats a crazy argument you just made and it’s even crazier that youre implying the other guy is being crazy. lots of mental gymnastics on this one
Negative reviews are important. I never cared enough about overwatch because most of the things I didn’t like are things the rest of the playerbase did. But I have left my fair share of negative reviews on other games.
So yeah. I just left. I also just left online Escape from Tarkov (SPTarkov is awesome though). If someone asks me for my opinion, I’ll give it. But I am not going to make wild ass claims about how they need to buy me dinner before I let them fuck me.
But that is not what “review bombing” is (and I also think you replied to the wrong comment but whatever).
Review bombing is the idea of encouraging everyone to get their hate on and spam one star reviews in an attempt to hurt a game. It is right up there with sending death and assault threats to cod developers over nerfing the AKM. It is stupidity and hate and mostly just makes people ignore you
Whereas games that naturally get to “mostly negative” and the like? Those are incredibly valuable. When I see a cool steam game in my discovery queue during a sale or I hear that Nookrium played it, I check it out. And seeing the general trend of those reviews are incredibly useful in knowing if it is in a good place or not. Whereas just seeing a massive spike of reviews lets me know “Cool, all of these are worthless”
On a small scale, people play this out as the idea of sitting in your date’s living room telling them they better get an uber xl or else you are going to give them a one star on the dating app. And on a large scale? This is like calling all your buddies to report this person’s tinder account because they are only 5’8 instead of 6 flat.
If your date is a creep? Leave and possibly report them to the app. If they are just an asshole? If you use one of those apps with ratings then have fun. But nothing is forcing you to sit there and listen to them talk about how The Space Lizards control hollywood.
What kind of analogy is that??? What the hell does banging your girlfriend before going to Olive Garden have to do with shitty OW2?
A really stupid one that mostly speaks to capital G Gamer entitlement?
Nothing is truly free, including this game. A fraction of the game is free, while the first one that many of us paid for is completely gone (which to me sounds like the grounds for a class action lawsuit but idk).
