Evgenii "Gufis" Kondratev Take-Two Interactive has added review-bombing to its list of risks that could affect the success of the publisher. This change in the company’s annual report to investors was noted by journalist Stephen Totilo.
According to it, review-bombing may result in a loss of players and revenue, additional marketing expenses, and damage to reputation. Thus, the company warned investors of an additional risk.
Good news: this report means that review-bombing works. It's important to understand that gamers engage in this practice not out of sheer spite. More often than not, consumer anger is based on rational grounds, not herd trolling.
It's interesting that this is noted in the report by Take-Two, which is the publisher of the NBA 2K series, for example. One can say a lot about the rules of the genre, where each new game can't always bring revolutionary updates, but the story with the PC version of the game was outrageous.
While next-gen console owners enjoyed a significant upgrade, the PC version was forgotten for several years. Players tried to draw attention in various ways, but to no avail. The only effective idea was negative reviews on Steam - at least thanks to them, I haven't bought a new game for three years.
Image: Steam
And how telling is the story of Helldivers 2. As soon as the developers properly communicated with the players and apologized, they started correcting their reviews to positive ones themselves.
Corporations can't be friends with players, but they can either work more attentively with their audience and product, or they can include risks in investor reports. Each company makes its own choice.
Main image: alphacoders.com
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