The successful game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is being inundated with negative reviews on Steam. What’s behind it?
In fact, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the darling of players on Steam and Twitch. Only through this dynamic duo was the success of the rocket start possible.
- Through Steam, PUBG can be distributed worldwide without the need for classic structures – PUBG has no publisher with global distribution structures, but doesn’t need one either because there’s Steam.
- Through Twitch, the game is streamed and thus advertised. This saves on marketing and advertising.
People watch PUBG on Twitch, become curious about the game, read the positive Steam reviews, and then get PUBG. Then, ideally, they write a positive review themselves. Win-win really.
This cycle has lead PUBG to dizzying heights.
Review Bomb for PUBG – 10 times more negative reviews than usual
For a long time, this was working fine – but currently, PUBG is experiencing a flood of negative reviews on Steam. Thumbs down. Since the end of September, the number of daily negative reviews has roughly tenfold. Where previously about 400 negative reviews came in a day, there are now already 5000.
What happened?
Apparently, the discontent is coming from China. There, players are frustrated with a new patch that makes it difficult for them to connect to the servers as before. Chinese players now have to do this through a VPN – a virtual network.
Now the Korean developer Bluehole put the crown on the problem. They advertised a “speed-boost VPN” service from a third party within PUBG itself. This service is supposed to improve connection quality to the international servers.
If you don’t want lag, use this tool
The Chinese players are extremely angry about this for two reasons:
- For one, they believe that a title that costs money should not have in-game advertising, after all, PUBG is not a free-to-play game. Only in F2P games is such “in-game advertising” common. In games that cost something, that’s actually taboo.
- And on the other hand, they think that Bluehole should really deal with the lag issues instead of offering a paid tool – the Chinese feel “discriminated” and sold to a “third party”.
And since they don’t feel heard, they use the negative reviews on Steam to exert pressure on developer Bluehole.
Steam Reviews as a Weapon of the Players
The flood of negative reviews from China has, by the way, triggered a counter-reaction. One day after the flood of negative reviews began, the number of positive reviews on Steam also rose. Where previously about 1000 positive reviews came in a day, it’s now about twice as many.
Steam has been dealing with these so-called “review bombs” for quite some time. They are now issuing a warning and stating: “We are seeing a trend with a high volume of negative ratings, you can also hide this.”
In the past, players have repeatedly used negative Steam reviews to exert pressure on a developer. This has had quite an effect.
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