The new game “Fall Guys” (PC, PS4) is a hit on Steam, but there were huge problems at launch. The developers reacted to the bad reviews by pleading for mercy on Twitter. People should stop writing negative reviews until they could play the game. Surprisingly, the plan worked. The situation even turned for the better.
What was going on in Fall Guys? Yesterday, on August 4th, the new €20 game Fall Guys launched on Steam. The launch on Steam was much more successful than the developers had anticipated. During prime time, the player count skyrocketed to over 70,000 players simultaneously.
Fall Guys is also playable as a free PS4 title for PS Plus subscribers. The player count on PS4 is not public, but it can be assumed that there was also a huge demand on PlayStation 4. Fall Guys is sort of like “Takeshi’s Castle” as a Battle Royale. It has already made quite the waves on Twitch. During the great gaming summer slump of 2020, surely tens of thousands of people will watch such a thing.
The combination of the Steam launch and the free PS4 start caused serious server issues for Fall Guys last night. Their servers even crashed. The player count on Steam rapidly fell from over 75,000 players.
This was the impact: On Steam, it is possible to express your anger with a negative Steam review immediately when something like this happens. That shows the developers who’s boss.
Within a very short time, negative reviews appeared on Steam stating: The servers are down. One cannot join a lobby, and if one does, the game does not start. The developers should not release such a game if it is so buggy.
Relatively many reviews with less than one hour of playtime came to Steam. This happens more often and is not really a big deal. Normally, it just clears up.
But the developers managed to turn this negative situation into something positive in a short time.
“Oh no, we are being review-bombed on Steam”
This is how the developers reacted: They made a sad smiley on Twitter. They said they would now be “review bombed”. They are working hard to get everything running, but there are SO MANY players.
They ask people to stop with the negative reviews until they had the opportunity to play Fall Guys. The text ended with a little heart.
This was the reaction: The tweet from Fall Guys received a lot of sympathy and support. The tweet got over 46,000 likes and many comments:
- Steam should also not allow reviews for 48 hours like Metacritic
- it would always be like this with new “PS Plus” games
- that would be totally unfair overall
In fact, the situation with the Steam reviews completely reversed afterward. Within a short time, there was a “positive review bombing” and the Steam rating now stands at 81% positive reviews and “very positive”.
It is striking that there are so many Steam reviews. Fall Guys has already received over 11,000 reviews after just a few hours.
It was not a review bombing, but the developers made it one
This is what it’s about: It was not a “review” bombing in that sense. Although relatively many negative reviews came in a short time, like in a review bombing, the reason was different than in a review bombing.
A “review bombing” is a coordinated effort to show a developer, for reasons that really have nothing to do with the game, but to send a “message”: “What you are doing does not sit well with us, and here you get a reminder.”
For example, in Warframe, the dismissal of a Chinese translator triggered such a coordinated review bombing.
Fall Guys was simply rated moderately because Steam players could not play it at that moment. In addition, it was criticized that for €20 it lacks value and content. This is not a “coordinated action”; rather, people are expressing their criticism of the game at that moment.
Through the clever portrayal by the developers, who positioned themselves as victims and asked for sympathy at that moment, they managed to change the perception of things, which led to an enormous number of positive reviews being generated. This shows what successful communication looks like.
In every summer of the last years, a game emerged from nowhere that no one anticipated and suddenly was there and made a big impact. 2020 is a particularly strange gaming year, shaped by the Corona virus and the release of the new consoles PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Perhaps we will also get such a strange game as a summer hit:
Fall Guys is probably the strangest battle royale, but might rock because of that
The title image is from a tweet by Fall Guys.
