Last week, the ARPG Last Epoch launched into Full Release. Steam was flooded with negative reviews due to server issues. The German Twitch streamer Maurice Weber has now spoken out about the problem. MeinMMO author Linda Baumgartl shares her assessment.
Who is it about? Maurice Weber started as an editor at GameStar and is now a Twitch streamer with his own channel.
In addition to strategy games, he is especially known for his love of the Diablo series. He also finds a lot to appreciate in the new ARPG Last Epoch.
GameStar, GamePro, and MeinMMO are part of Webedia.
What problems were there? After nearly 5 years in Early Access, Last Epoch launched last week on February 21 into Full Release. The title from indie developer studio Eleventh Hour Games mainly faced major server problems.
Players struggled with long loading times when switching areas, often losing their connection or unable to log in at all.
Since then, the developers have been working on the difficulties, but they have not yet completely resolved the issues.
Here’s the launch trailer for the new action RPG:
“Guys. Stop it.”
On X, Maurice has now commented on the currently heavily criticized server problems in Last Epoch. He firmly takes a stand for the game, which originally started as a fan project, and appeals to everyone to put an end to the “review bombing craze”.
Guys. Stop it. Last Epoch is one of the best games in recent years, it comes from a small team and was much more successful than expected, and it even has an OFFLINE MODE. This review bombing craze has completely gotten out of control.
– Maurice Weber (via X)
However, the term “review bombing” is receiving a lot of criticism in the comments.
“It’s not review bombing if I buy a game that advertises an online mode and I can’t get in for days; that’s a negative experience for me and thus a negative review,” writes user Maihopawango.
But what is review bombing actually? Review bombing refers to the symbolic bombing of a product with negative, and rarely positive, reviews.
- Possible targets are mainly movies, but also video games.
- The purpose is usually to affect the sales of the product in question, essentially conducting a boycott.
- Reviews are often written even before the product is released.
- It is also common to create multiple accounts to artificially inflate the number of reviews.
In the case of Last Epoch, it is a product that has been officially released and has a real problem that affects usability. Those who want to play online often cannot do so.
Many of the negative Steam reviews base their ratings on these server problems and seem to come from players who are sharing their experiences with the game.
From this perspective, the negative reviews of Last Epoch on Steam are not classic review bombing.
Justified criticism – from both sides?
This is my view: Whether or not one wants to classify the case of Last Epoch as review bombing – I fundamentally understand what Maurice means with his statement.
- Just because of (hopefully) temporary problems, the game receives a multitude of negative reviews that do not reflect the quality of the actual game.
- It is questionable whether every author of a negative review will actually adjust their rating if the game is able to resolve its server issues.
Additionally, this is the first release of a small developer studio that likely did not expect such an explosive increase in player numbers.
Last Epoch has 6 times the players at release than in Early Access
What are the player numbers like? On release day, Last Epoch broke the mark of 150,000 active players (via SteamDB). On Sunday, February 25, this number rose to over 250,000. For comparison: The highest player count during the Early Access phase was just over 40,000, averaging in the low four-digit range.
Whether Eleventh Hour Games should have expected this success is certainly open for debate. Personally, I feel the team should be given a few more days to resolve the issue.
In fact, I noticed a significant improvement on Sunday compared to the release day. On the evening of the release, the game was unplayable online for me. However, yesterday afternoon and evening, I was able to play almost without any issues. So it’s already moving in the right direction.
By the way: To everyone who owned a version of Last Epoch at the time of the server issues, the developer is giving away a cosmetic item as an apology for the problems. This is a fall-themed cloak that you will receive automatically.
The other side? On the other hand, I also find it completely legitimate to write a negative review if one has technical problems with a game. I even think it’s important because it can warn other players of a potential disappointment. One should just pay attention to the right measure.
- Diverse insults towards the developers, which unfortunately do appear at times, are definitely not okay.
- Exaggerated and unnecessarily repeated complaints are simply not constructive. The developer is aware and is working on the problem. Those who are truly dissatisfied should be able to return the game on Steam without any issues if they haven’t exceeded 2 hours of playtime.
As long as one stays within a factual and fair framework, it should definitely be up to each individual how they want to rate a game.
If you don’t place a special value on an online gaming experience, you can also rely on the offline mode of Last Epoch, which was released with version 1.0. Here you can already enjoy the game without any issues. You can find out what new features have been added here: The new competition for Diablo 4 leaves Early Access after 5 years, bringing 2 new subclasses at launch
