Publishers are trying to exclude "review bombing" because they think it's just social manipulation, while just casually ignoring that there are actual problems with the game. Review bombing used to be something else, but now be wary of it because it's usually them just trying to discredit actual concerns.
I hate that the term "review bombing" completely generalized to just "a lot of negatively reviewing something". Review bombing is supposed to be negative reviewing that's not relevant to the game, like when it was originally used to speak out against publishers, because, you know, that's the only thing that seemed to get their attention. Now we just have the tools and excuses to just kill genuine criticism.
Remember when this happened with Helldivers and a bunch of people switched their review back from negative to positive when Sony backed off the requirement? Because they'd "learned their lesson"? Lol
I sympathize with fellow PC gamers for this needles requirement (even though PSN account is my main account). I'm just surprised there's no similar backlash for other devs requiring respective account creation (EA, BioWare, Blizzard etc. etc.). Sony did not invent this practice.
There is. Newer EA games, anything with Epic Online Services (but especially with a login), etc. They get negative reviews fairly consistently.
Some older games get overlooked, but even then adding in a third party software (not even necessarily needing an account) often lowers a game to a mixed rating on Steam for recent reviews.
I think the only game I've actually gone and made the external account for was SWTOR.
I noped the fuck out of Multiversus, the Avengers demo, and others because of the account requirement. And God forbid you get a Ubisoft game anywhere that's not a console because you're forced to launch their shitty launcher even if you try to start it from steam.
The account creation sucks, but it's mostly in multiplayer games or for a multiplayer feature in a game, to enable things like cross-launcher play and such (not needed if they made it right, still an attempt at data collection). God of War is a singleplayer game that has no need for an account requirement, so it's just there for data collection, singleplayer games shouldn't even be connecting to the internet.
Also weird, the game includes the unnecessary PlayStation overlay, which makes it unable to run on Linux. The devs were nice enough to specifically disable the overlay on Steam Deck, but all other Linux players have to set a special launch option to fake being a steam deck in order to get the game to run.
. This is just gamer rage against a console maker. They’ve all got ea accounts, Ubisoft, blizzard , discord, twitch, YouTube dozens of accounts all over the place .
I think this will end with playstation making yet another launcher on PC. No paying Gabe a cut, PSN all they want, tight review control.
Really hope it doesn't come to that.
I hope it does. Then they can fuck off and die nameless, cause I'm not buying it if it's not on steam or gog, and I've recently aso begun not buying it if it requires a PSN account. Take your shitty business practices and stuff them up your console's ass.
People are buying it, unable to play because of PlayStation account requirement (the PlayStation servers are having issues and not letting people log in or create an account), and then leaving an angry review and refunding it.
Funny, I don't remember PC gamers flipping out when they had to make UPlay accounts and Rockstar Social Club accounts to play those games on Steam. Those were single player as well.
I was one of those people flipping out about the Rockstar Social Club and Ubisoft Connect crap. There's zero need to force additional DRM on paying customers. We might not have all been vocal but we were around.
Considering the requirement doesn’t impact me personally as I have an account. I do understand part of the backlash. Requiring players to sign up to an account for a single player game that then asks you for to upload your government ID is kinda a bit much. I’d be sour too if I had to do likewise.
For reviewing a game it is needed to buy it on Steam (my logical thinking would say, yes.).
If that is correct then I think a better way to express your disagreement with this game would be simply don't buy it, or just pirate it (if it is possible).
Steam has a very generous 2 hours played policy where the system will basically refund you no questions asked so long as you have played less than 2 hours of the game (refunds beyond that are totally possible but usually require manual review before approval).
This means that you can buy the game, open it once, leave a negative review, and get it refunded. Which is more impactful on Sony's bottom line than leaving a review on Metacritic or something because it directly affects the game's rating on the largest platform for PC gaming, and is therefore more likely to see action taken to fix the issue. Sony doesn't care if people make angry social media posts, but they will care if they can directly see it impacting their profit margins.