After the announcement of Epic Games acquiring the Rocket League developer Psyonix, fans have started review bombing the game on Steam. This follows the speculation that Epic might remove the game from Steam in the future. The negative review bombs have led to fans of the title leaving negative reviews on the game’s Steam page making its ranking drop from ‘Very Positive’ to ‘Mixed’ making it the latest title to be the victim of Epic Games and Valve’s rivalry.
However, Steam was quick to respond to the situation and instantly deployed their new tool that it made a few weeks ago specially to counter situations just like this. It works by excluding periods of ‘off-topic review activity’ from the total review score of the game making review bombing useless. This might have saved the game’s rating on the platform but the fans of the game are still angry about the acquisition.
After Psyonix’s acquisition by Epic Games, it became obvious that the title will be eventually pulled from Steam for sale although there is no official word on it. Epic Games has said that at this point no final decision has been made by them whether the game will be pulled from the store or it will stay there for sale as well. Psyonix, on the other hand, issued a statement saying that they will continue to support the title on Steam with updates.
Hi all! We wanted to clarify something for you after today’s news: Rocket League is and remains available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League through Steam can still play it and can look forward to continued support. Thanks!
— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) May 1, 2019
This, however, does not say anything about the game’s long term sale on Steam. This is not the first time we have seen that a game has suffered because of Epic Game and Steam rivalry heating up for titles. Recently, Borderlands 3 was announced as an Epic Games Store exclusive title and fans started review bombing earlier Borderlands titles on Steam to show their anger.
The same fate was met by the Metro franchise when it was announced that Metro Exodus will be an Epic Games Exclusive. After all these review bombings, Steam introduced a review bombing countering system which has helped to eliminate the menace of negative review bombings. The decisions to release on specific platforms is taken by the game publishers and all the criticism goes to the developers which are unfair.
This is not the first time when Epic Games has nabbed an exclusive and it certainly will not be the last one. Valve has launched its negative review bombing countermeasures but still, it means that PC gamers are not happy with Epic Games trying to split PC gaming into two different segments. Valve shared their own dissatisfaction over this as well some time ago.
What do you think about fans review bombing Rocket League on Steam? Do you think Epic Games will remove Rocket League from Steam in the future? Let us know in the comments section below.
