this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Today's concurrent player peak is ~47k.
Why would 47k people choose to play the game when it's the worst game on Steam? Literally worse than a game like Bad Rats: the Rats' Revenge that fundamentally doesn't function correctly. For reference, its peak today was about 20 players.
Before you reply with something like "marketing", you seriously think that if Bad Rats launched today, and with the same marketing budget as OW2, that it would achieve anywhere close to 47k players peak 10 months after its release?
Like I said: you're disconnected from reality if you think OW2 is the worst game on Steam.
Did bad rats deliberately steal a game people liked to replace it with an addiction machine?
what the actual fuck are you talking about
The reason Overwatch 2 is the worst reviewed game Steam has ever had?
A bad game does a lot less harm than a game that seems good on the surface then tries to rob you blind.
by "tries to rob you blind" you mean a game with entirely optional additional purchases?
wow you're right they really get you with that "you can pay if you want" model
it's practically criminal definitely worthy of being the worst ranked game on steam
There is no such thing as a microtransaction that is not pure unredeemable evil.
then please explain why Counter Strike Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, etc. don't deserve to have the same rating
As far as I'm concerned they do. But my opinion doesn't decide the rating of a game any more than yours that's it's supposedly a better game than bad rats.
It's a product of everyone who votes giving their opinion, and the entire steam userbase has come to the consensus that Overwatch 2 is a particularly egregious example of it.
It cannot possibly be a review bomb when the reviews are legitimate opinions based on what the game is.
the previously referenced games all sit above 80% positive and yet have the exact same problems that you cite as OW2's reason for being bad
"the zeitgeist has told them that the game is bad" is not a legitimate reason for not liking OW2, hence accusations of review bombing
if you think there are legitimate reasons OW2 deserves the rating it has, by all means please provide them, but so far all you've given me are #badthings that also apply to basically all the popular F2P games on Steam.
Because it’s a F2P game that is monetized as such and exists only to make the game I bought obsolete.
I bought a game.
The game I have now is not the game I bought.
correct: it's a different game
reviewing it because it's not Overwatch 1 is by definition review bombing
it’s the game they gave me to replace the game i purchased.
if i bought a toyota camry, and 2 years later toyota said “sorry we can’t let you continue using your camry, here’s a corolla” you better fucking believe i’d be trashing toyota in every public space possible to warn potential customers.
"i wanted a camry not a corolla" is not a valid review of a corolla
It absolutely is if I bought a Camry and got a Corolla.
Enjoy life in prescriptive hell my guy 🙄
in your analogy you bought a camry and mr toyota said "we're getting rid of this camry but don't worry i fought to get you a free corolla" and were fine with it and hailed mr toyota as a hero but then mr toyota left the company so the free corolla became poisonous and bad
What?
Those games are not nearly as aggressive in their attempts to get you to buy shit. CSGO? a tiny ass fucking button to buy Prime. TF2? Don't even remember seeing a shop button.
OW2? Makes the worst, money hungry mobile free-to-play blush with how aggressive it tries to sell you shit.
And they killed OW1, just for this.
tf2 drops crates every 30 minutes that's literally just an advert for the in-game store (which has a dedicated button pretty clearly labelled on the main menu)
pretty sure CSGO does the same
CSGO does not do the same. I play that one regularly.
you're saying CSGO doesn't drop crates?
If it does, I've literally never seen it, and I play regularly. The closest I ever got was the Halo MCC soundtrack in CSGO, and I'm pretty sure I only got that because I also have MCC on Steam.
my guy csgo crates were controversial enough a few years ago that people sued valve over them, and at no point did csgo come anywhere close to being the worst reviewed game on steam
how are you unironically out here saying that csgo doesn't drop crates?
Optional? They added the new heroes to the battle pass…. Doesn’t seem that optional, unless you want to spend hours of farming the free tier… for me, that definitely deserves a negative rating.
isn't that exactly how games like league of legends do it?
I don’t know, I’ve never played LoL, but either way, I don’t see how that does it make it look better for OW.
And if we really want to make a comparison, let’s make it with OW1. There new heroes were unlocked automatically for everyone when they were released. Usually in a sequel dev try to make things better, not worse.
because there very obviously isn't this level of negative-hype for LoL, when it does the exact same thing
Probably because it was like that from the start? In OW they changed how the unlocking of characters works, in an objectively worse way.
The original Overwatch, which had none of this shit and was a one-off payment, was killed off in favour of OW2
leaving a negative review because of that would by definition be review bombing, because at that point you're not reviewing the game, but external context that surrounds it
Not really. Reviewing the game as OW with enshittification is a perfectly reasonable review of OW2 in and of itself.
Especially if the publishers made the one-off purchase version unusable just to push people onto the enshittified one.
"i liked overwatch 1" is not a valid review of the game overwatch 2, and people leaving reviews to that effect en-masse is pretty textbook review bombing
Yes it is. It's perfectly valid.
It says that the changes in Overwatch 2 are unpopular with the reviewer.
If the changes were positive or even unnoteworthy, that review wouldn't be there
if you're reviewing specific things you don't like, that's reviewing a product
leaving a negative review because "OW1 was killed off" isn't doing that
if you want to discuss specific things you don't like, please provide some that would reasonably justify OW2 being literally the worst reviewed game on steam rn
Leaving a review because "OW1 was killed off" and the intended transition route was a drastically inferior product, is in fact reviewing a product.
Context is actually an important part of reviews. Orcarina or Time looks like a shit game today, and needs the context of being a late 90's innovator to fully appreciate it. Likewise, a BoTW clone would look fantastic, a game changer, even...if a certain 2017 game hadn't already set the benchmark.
Calling something an inferior version of its predecessor, which was cynically shut down to push people to this inferior product, is worthy review information. It tells people that a superior product existed, and all this new product is, is the enshittification of it.
you're reviewing a different product
ow1 was shut down to avoid splitting the playerbase. when kaplan went on record saying that he'd fought to get ow1 owners a copy of ow2 for free everybody loved it, but now it's bad, actually? yes that makes sense
comparing the entire landscape of gaming to a game is a very different thing to comparing it to a specific game
it would be like if somebody reviewed Baldur's Gate 3 by saying it was bad just because they liked the source powers from Divinity 2. as part of a review maybe it works, sure but as the bedrock and sole item of substance, it's useless.
your entire argument so far has been "I preferred the previous game therefore OW2 deserves to be the worst reviewed game on steam". even ignoring the fact that you've failed to articulate any differences past a vague notion of not liking that it's free-to-play, that's an almost laughably braindead take
And making comparisons between the two products is perfectly valid.
I'm sorry, are you an Activision/Blizzard employee?
I ask because only one of their employees could come up with such a bullshit statement. The core gameplay loops aren't different enough to cause that kind of split, and OW2 Is free-to-play. Anybody that wanted to voluntarily jump from OW1 to OW2 could have freely done so at literally no cost, if they so wanted.
They shut down OW1 to a) pump up the numbers for OW2 and b) to get OW1 players forcibly exposed to their F2P market.
Definitely an Activision/Blizzard employee. Nobody else would miss the disingenuity of making such a statement about a free-to-play game.
And my point is, taking into account the landscape, even in a macro level such as Activision's own behaviour with the series, including this very game, is relevant context worthy of being part of a review.
Your analogy falls flat because Divinity and BG, though they share much of the same inspirations and development staff, are very different games. OW2 is basically OW1 with some minor tweaks and microtransactions.
The problem with OW2's mtx though is that the game makes it as hard as possible to ignore its microtransaction nature as possible, and they willingly hamper the user experience to do so.
Other than the MTX, OW2 is so similar to OW1, that without it, these reviews would be saying that they're essentially the same game. So what they're saying now, that it's OW1 enshittified, is valid.
If that's what you took away from my comments, then I'm afraid you cannot read. That, or you're unable to discern from different users. All I've said was that people calling OW2 basically enshittified OW1 is not review bombing, because it's a valid review.
Because there are very few differences and none of them are improvements. Like the shrinking of team sizes and available modes.
Also, F2P can be predatory as fuck, and Activision/Blizzard have most certainly been so here. they've even broken sales laws in countries like Australia.
Okay so you clearly agree that OW2 doesn't deserve to be the lowest rated game on steam, since "there are very few differences", and you liked OW1.
I don't really care what semantic nonsense or mental gymnastics you have to apply to convince yourself that whatever caused it to be ranked so low doesn't count as review bombing.
I do agree it doesn't deserve to be seen as literally the worst game on Steam. I never said otherwise. I hate, hate, HATE the MTX system...but as you said, this doesn't make it literally the worst game ever. MTX aside the game still works and the core gameplay loop is fun while you're in a match. Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing this is not.
Would I hit the Recommend button on Steam? No. The MTX strategy is a deal breaker for me. Whenever I'm not in a match I feel like a fucking product. At that point I'd rather just fire up another shooter because I straight up don't want to deal with that shit.
OW2 isn't a bad game. It is a predatory game. It is debatable which is worse (I consider predatory to be much worse than bad). Being predatory is plenty reason enough for a bad review.
You wouldn't ever know about the worst game on Steam because no one would have bought it. Your logic is off a bit.
"The reason it's so badly reviewed is that it's too popular" is certainly a take.
Go outside and take a picture of the bug that has the best camouflage in your yard for me, would you?
You are really trying to downplay the power of marketing, but you seem to realize that gets people playing. Not only that but live service design is very effective at keeping people playing even when they are not having any fun whatsoever. Because they gotta grind the battle pass and such. Extrinsic rewards and habit-forming conditioning making up for a lack of intrinsic enjoyment.
Still, I would agree with you that it's not the worst game on Steam, but like I mentioned in the other comment, that's not what steam ratings mean. It means that the vast majority people would not recommend it, and that seems pretty reasonable.
bf2042 had a playercount in the high 1000s 2 months after its launch
ow2 released 10 months ago
are you saying bf2042 didn't have marketing?
which is more likely:
Doesn't look like you even read my full comment so I'm gonna wait till you do.
i mean i ignored the second part because it was irrelevant
"You're entirely disconnected to reality if you think Overwatch 2 deserves to be the worst-reviewed game on Steam." doesn't say "deserves to be the worst game", so if we're playing the reading game maybe you should take the first turn
Oh, so you have no response to it so you are gonna pretend it doesn't matter. I see.
I could say I'd do the same but nothing you are saying now even addresses what I already responded to you, so I'll just call it a job done.
yes good job you failed to read my comment again 👏👏