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Comment by thefz | Hacker News Reader

I think the review bombing is stupid for many reasons.

Is the same game you were posting memes about yesterday, suddenly bad? No longer having fun?

Who do you think you are going to hurt between the less-than-30-person studio or the multinational behemoth?

Are you going to refund the game today then buy it again tomorrow when the change is reverted? You might be hurting the developer even more.

IMO Steam reviews should completely disappear as it's no longer an useful gaugfe of a game quality. Hell, I see people leave negative reviews to co-op games such as "I hAvE No fRiEnDs tO PlAy iT WiTh lOl." Are you stupid?

Besides, buy the game, test it and if you don't like refund it.

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> Who do you think you are going to hurt between the less-than-30-person studio or the multinational behemoth?

Evidence indicates it hurt Sony far more than the developers.

> Are you going to refund the game today then buy it again tomorrow when the change is reverted? You might be hurting the developer even more.

Unlikely as Sony, the distributor/publisher is the party from whom refunds will be taken, the developer only gets paid after Sony takes their cuts.

> IMO Steam reviews should completely disappear as it's no longer an useful gaugfe of a game quality.

They might! This is a valid point and might be the opinion of Valve, too, if Sony or the publisher ask. They've done it before.

> Hell, I see people leave negative reviews to co-op games such as "I hAvE No fRiEnDs tO PlAy iT WiTh lOl." Are you stupid?

Yes, lots of people are very stupid, but that's not relevant here.

> Besides, buy the game, test it and if you don't like refund it.

How does one test a game when the publisher makes changes months after initial release? How is what you're suggesting here different from what you criticized a few lines above?

Don't worry for Sony, they'll be fine.

So, if I want to share my displeasure with a product I shouldn't show this displeasure with reviews? WTH? How companies will get feedback from their customers without reviews?! How customers would share their experiences with one another? How prospective customers would be informed before buying a product?

> Is the same game you were posting memes about yesterday, suddenly bad?

For many people, yes, it did in fact become bad, they had it taken away.

> Who do you think you are going to hurt between the less-than-30-person studio or the multinational behemoth?

In this particular case the game studio asked for this action.

Boohoo. I’m happy any time people show some spine and principles, instead of sucking up to companies and brands. We should do it more, not less. Review bombing is a great start.

You don't need to suck up to companies, but think really. Who do you think is going to be hurt?

? Everyone who makes money from sales including Sony.

Sales tends to drop when games reviews becomes "mostly negatives".

But I believe with only this it would have taken more time, I suspect steam starting to approve refund even post 2h was what forced Sony to react.

But at the same time with no complains I doubt Steam would have cared.

So the developer already suffering from publisher's bad decision is a tolerable collateral casualty in your "war" for justice. Noted.

Not that the kind of people leaving Steam reviews struck me for rational, but this is on another level.

The developer was actively encouraging their players to ask for refunds and leave negative reviews

Their community managers started off on the wrong foot with how they reacted, but issued strong apologies and quickly changed track. The CEO himself was tweeting about his own culpability in the mess and encouraging unhappy people to make their voices heard in reviews

So... Yes

That's a risk developers take by signing with a publisher.

Arrowhead's CEO was on Twitter explicitly telling people to refund and leave negative reviews, as that customer feedback gives them more leverage to negotiate with when discussing reverting the unpopular change. But nice "what about the children".

The developer a casualty, but not in the way you're trying to portray. They were a casualty of Sony's descision to cut the game off from over half of the countries in the world. In addition, the Helldiver's team and CEO told everyone to let Sony know what we thought with our words and our pockets, so we did -- and it worked. I'd suggest looking into these things more before spouting nonsense.

To us, you come off as irrational trying to defend Sony while using the developers as your (unwilling) ammo.

As a Steam customer, I appreciate it when others review bomb games that do that kind of thing. It is a huge red flag that I want to know about when buying them.

As someone who wants to play games, it's frustrating navigating through every drama just to know if a game is actually for me. These are the same people who want to "keep politics out of games"?

Exactly my point.

Judging by the number of bad reviews, there are many more who don't.

> Who do you think is going to be hurt?

By doing nothing? The consumer.

Voicing your disagreement with a company (whatever the reason) is necessary to get things to change.

Perhaps doing so will stop future decisions that hurt consumers and by consequence the developers, publishers etc.

I don't think it's too much to say they brought this on themselves by their actions and the backlash will cause them to think twice about doing the same in future.

Even if it hurts the devs, it’s a warning sign for other devs to not sign contracts with Sony.

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