Review bomb

Rule 4 of the Rules of the Internet: We are Legion. We do not forgive, we do not forget.

A review bomb is an Internet phenomenon where a user leaves positive or negative reviews with multiple accounts. Many targets are around published work, a business, a product, or a service. Review bombs can be found in review aggregating websites and digital stores.

Examples

Games

1. Spore was review bombed on Amazon (as a way to protest EA, not Spore) around 2008 after EA incorporated a DRM system that limits buyers' ability to install the game more than three times as a method to prevent piracy. This led to backlash as it felt like the users were renting a broken game.
2. In 2012, the BioWare game Mass Effect 3 got review bombed due to a controversy over the ending. Many players were upset by the way BioWare wrapped up Shepard's story. Review bombing wasn't the only one that caused this domino effect, but there was lots of backlash and online harassment of the developers.
3. In 2015, the Acid Nerve indie game Titan Souls was review bombed by the supporters of YouTuber John "TotalBiscut" Bain after the indie game's artist Andrew Gleeson mocked a statement Bain made saying the game was not for him. In a podcast, Bain stated that the developer had it out for him, which caused the review bombing. Despite this, Bain later said that he did not endorse the behavior.
4. Ever since Take-Two Interactive issued a cease-and-desist against the game modification tool OpenIV, there was review bombing for Grand Theft Auto V which led to the Steam review rating from positive to mixed.
5. Dota 2 got bombed because the former Valve writer of the Half-Life series, Marc Laidlaw, posted a fanfic on his blog that several journalists thought was the plot for the planned Half-Life 2: Episode 3, but appeared to become vaporware within Valve. Players were upset about the episode not being released and thought that Valve was dropping work on the Half-Life series.
6. Sonic Mania got bombed by Steam users in protest of its use of Denuvo DRM despite not being disclosed by Sega. Sega responded that the 'offline play bug' had been patched, and a Denuvo warning was added to the game's Steam page.
7. Firewatch was bombed on Steam around 2017 after the developer of the game, Campo Santo, filed a DMCA takedown against a video PewDiePie made of the game with the incident where Felix uttered a racial slur during an unrelated livestream. Campo Santo justified the takedown by stating they did not want someone with Felix's ideology supporting their games. Many users wrote negative reviews of the game claiming that Campo Santo was political or supporting censorship.
8. Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) was bombed on Metacritic upon its launch in response to the game's microtransactions and loot boxes as many saw the game as a pay-to-win during its pre-release beta trials as the unlocking of new content and characters significantly favored those who paid for them with real money. In response, EA disabled the microtransactions entirely as they would be re-introduced later. Around March 2018, DICE announced an overhaul of the system stating that call content would be cosmetic.
9. Nintendo's Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Astral Chain were both reviews bombed on Metacritic shortly after their respective launches many because they were just exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. These reviews were removed by Metacritic in early September, restoring the games' user scores to their original "generally favorable" and "universal acclaim"
10. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) got bombed on Metacritic around October of 2019 by users who were angered at the game's depiction of the Russian military.
11. Death Stranding got review bombed on Metacritic upon launch due to players being disappointed in how the game came out. In early December 2019, Metacritic removed over 6000 user reviews categorized as negative, increasing the user score to a higher rating of 7.4/10.
12. Pokémon Sword and Shield were review bombed on Metacritic upon release due to the removal of some Pokémon from previous games and the quality concerns that were brought to the light after evidence suggesting that Game Freak lied about the development of two games.
13. AI: The Somnium Files got review bombed at Metacritic and the review scores Crystar and Metal Torrent were inflated around the same time. A user from ResetERa named Kravavi Abadas claimed that his review bombed AI because of how the character A-Set was created.
14. Animal Crossing: New Horizons got review bombed on Metacritic upon the release date for that game. Users were upset about the game's local co-op and multiplayer progression limitations.
15. Doom Eternal had shipped for personal computer versions without a DRM package albeit this appeared to be an oversight based on how it was packaged and reported in packaging materials. A secondary Denuvo Anti-Cheat solution was added in by a patch in May 2020. This led to a review bomb because of the requirement of Ring 0 access to the computer system and the potential for security vulnerabilities.
16. The Last of Us Part II got review bombed on Metacritic to the point that Metacritic made a timer for games to be reviewed 36 hours after release; it was review bombed due to the story and characters. Online harassment and death threats were also present at certain members of the game's cast and developers.
17. Since 2018 or so, the Madden NFL series has been review bombed on Metacritic because players criticized EA Sports for making minimal updates to the game.
18. Genshin Impact got review bombed on Google Play as a result of some players feeling dissatisfied with the extent of the game's free premium content for its first anniversary. Negative reviews dissing out Genshin Impact were also posted in review sections for unrelated mobile games.
19. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition got review bombed on Metacritic due to players being unpleased with the revamped visuals and technical issues. This caused the PC version to be pulled from sale a few days after launch and was unplayable thanks to the removal. Rockstar Games has yet to mention why it was pulled as some players demanded refunds due to the game being unplayable.
20. Blue Archive got review bombed on Google Play due to a nudity scene being cropped out in the global version of the game despite Kim Yong-ha saying that the team will not alter any in-game illustrations for the international release. Kim later said that the censorship was due to "external requests" and that every region has different service circumstances.
21. Dying Light 2 Stay Human was review bombed by Italian players because the game didn't have an Italian dub. The game was also reviewed-bombed in September 2023 due to the updated that added in Dying Light points.
22. Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE and its Encore Switch version, as well as the western Wii U, both got Review Bomb due to the censorship changes on Metacritic, especially the later Encore version.
23. Console exclusives, in general, get review bombed a lot, mainly by fans from other consoles due to the game not being on their main consoles; an example would be a PC fanboy review bombing a PS4 game.
24. Gran Turismo 7 was review bombed following patch 1.07, which reduced the credits payout of many races (such as Fisherman's Ranch Dirt Champion), resulting in the game's user score dropping to 2.0/10.
25. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was review-bombed in 2015 on Steam after Valve and Bethesda announced paid mods.
26. Diablo II Resurrected was review-bombed at launch due to the game's various bugs and server issues.
27. Diablo Immortal was review bombed for having heavy monetization. One Reddit user estimated that a player would need to spend $540,000 to fully upgrade their character.
28. Sonic Frontiers was review bombed on Metacritic due to YouTuber videogamedunkey publishing a negative review of the game. To demonstrate his opinion that the game did not deserve its Metacritic user score of 8.8, the review ends with a compilation comparing the game's score to popular games that had lower scores on the site. In response to being blamed for the review bombing that followed, Dunkey claimed on Twitter that the negative reviews were being left by Sonic fans to "make [his] fans look bad".
29. Cyberpunk 2077 was review bombed by Russian users on Steam because CD Projekt would no longer sell their games in Russia following their invasion of Ukraine.
30. On the same day, both Digimon Survive and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 got reviewed bombed for different reasons via Metacritic. The former is due to being a visual novel even though it still has some RPG elements. The latter is due to its long tutorial and the Xenoblade haters who hate the entire series alongside trolls who participated. Another reason as to why Xenoblade Chronicles 3 got reviewed bombed is due to "The lack of Pyra" (a character from Xenoblade Chronicles 2), the character designs, and/or for attention.
31. NBA 2K20 and NBA 2K21 received review bombs from players due to the "MyTeam" trailer in NBA 2K20, as well as that game suffering a broken launch, and 2K21 after players found out that it was a reskinned version of NBA 2K20, with some features in previous entries being removed
32. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet got review bombed with 0/10 scores mainly due to how it came out.
33. In 2023, some of Nintendo's games were review-bombed via Metacritic. The games consisted of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, Bayonetta Origins, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Wave 4, Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe, Fire Emblem Engage', The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Metroid Prime Remastered.
34. Helldivers 2: shortly after an announcement from the developers about the PlayStation Network requirement, the game was heavily review-bombed on Steam and was delisted in countries without access to the PlayStation Network. In light of the controversy, PlayStation decided to revert the update.
35. Indie game Paper Trail got review-bombed due to sexist reasons as the protagonist is a female who goes to a university.
36. Jackbox Naughty Pack got review-bombed

Movies

• The 2014 Indian film Gunday got review-bombed by Bangladeshis on IMDb due to a historical inaccuracy regarding the creation of Bangladesh in the film's opening narration. It was the lowest-rated film on the site.
• The 2016 version of Ghostbusters film was met with user backlash on its announcement of having an all-female starring cast (unlike previous films that had an all-male starring cast), causing it to become a review bombed. The film's IMDb page was also subject to a coordinated effort to lower its rating before its release. Some media outlets dubbed it "The Female Ghostbusters". Despite that, it somehow got a 6.9/10 rating score on IMDb.
• The 2016 historical drama The Promise (a movie about the Armenian genocide) was review-bombed on IMDb before release. Commentators assessed that these were mostly votes by people who could not possibly have seen the film and that the one-star voting was part of an orchestrated campaign by Armenian Genocide deniers to downrate, which had then initiated an Armenian response to rate the film highly.
• The second installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy titled The Last Jedi was flooded with negative audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes due to the film's nature.
• Captain Marvel was review bombed by trolls and fans on Rotten Tomatoes due to Brie Larson's activism. The "Want to See" score and audience anticipation poll had fallen to 28% ahead of the official release. Reports described the decline as an effort by some to review bomb the film's page with negative comments attacking the film and Larson for their perceived feminism. Rotten Tomatoes changed the "Want to See" feature shortly after, showing only the number of people indicating interest in the film instead of a percentage.
• The 2021 film Music was review bombed due to controversy around the casting of neurotypical actress Maddie Ziegler as an autistic girl as well as for scenes involving potentially dangerous restraints.
• Xuxa's 2023 film, Uma Fada Veio Me Visitar was review bombed on Google due to Xuxa's divisive political stance, for supporting Lula from PT. The film's Google review page was later removed.
• The 2021 MCU film Eternals got review bombed due to its LGBTQ+ characters.
• The 2018 MCU film Black Panther got review bombed before the film got released due to the main character being black.
• One of the most infamous examples comes from Sadak 2, which was universally panned by many largely for nepotism reasons, not for the quality of the movie itself. The trailer was the second-most disliked YouTube video ever made right behind YouTube Rewind 2018 before the removal of dislikes the following year.
• Godzilla vs. Kong was review bombed by Snyder Cut fans on IMDb because they are angry with Warner Bros. over not continuing the Snyderverse.
• The 2021 DCEU film The Suicide Squad got review bombed by some DC fans due to its "lighter" tone rather than how the DCEU makes more gritty films. Despite this, the film was an action-comedy with dark elements.
• 2021's Dune got reviewed bombed by Marvel fans on Letterboxd due to Denis Villeneuve having an honest opinion on Marvel films in general regardless if it was the MCU or not while claiming "we are in front of too many Marvel movies that are nothing more than a ‘cut and paste’ of others".
• Critics managed to review bomb Ghostbusters: Afterlife mainly because of them liking 2016's Ghostbusters. 
• The Batman has gotten review bombed on IMDb due to the nature of the film. There are reports of some SnyderVerse fans who also reviewed the film.
• The 2022 Pixar film Lightyear got review-bombed due to the film having a scene with two LGBTQ+ characters, but more importantly, due to how it was written and presented differently from the original Toy Story trilogy by making it "serious" in a mediocre & radical fashion like having several instances of nostalgia pandering, showing a true level of inconsistency and having once too many major plot holes & mistakes in the writing, presentation and concept were valid reasons why it got plenty of critical backlashes after it was released. Two potential reasons for this were due to Chris Evans voicing Buzz instead of Tim Allen and how the director for this movie, Angus MacLane, made a baffling relation to it being a film Andy saw in the 70s-80s when he also disregarded the continuity of Buzz Lightyear's spin-off Star Command, a show he directed the opening of. Making that statement a notable issue of the movie's concept and how its mere existence was often viewed as pointless, contradictive, and embarrassing for how little care was put into the Toy Story trilogy as of right now. However, Tim Allen said the film has nothing to do with the toy Buzz Lightyear, which can still be considered a problem story-wise.
• In 2021, any trailer of a Sony movie unrelated to Spider-Man was dislike-bombed by Spider-Man fans.
• The 2023 film Talk To Me was review bombed by users due to controversy over non-binary and transmasculine actor Zoe Terakes in the movie after it was banned in Kuwait.
• The 2020 film Cuties was review bombed by audiences due to the film sexualizing children just to send the message that "sexualization of minors is wrong" and coming across as a promotion of pedophilia due to the footage of actual sexualized minors. However, this review bomb is justified as Cuties sucked due to the film's content.
• Disney's live-action remake The Little Mermaid got review bombed due to casting African American actress Halle Bailey as Ariel. This resulted in IMDb and AlloCiné adding warnings to their rating pages for the film, with the former reading "Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied."
• The trailer for Gladiator 2 got review bombed due to the trailer being 3 minutes, the use of Kanye West and Jay-Z's "No Church in the Wild", and Denzel Washington being in the film. As a result of Washington being in the film, it also caused racist reviewers to dislike the trailer.
• A Minecraft Movie got disliked bombed by audiences due to the CGI (especially how the animals looked) and because of Jack Black playing Steve.
• Disney's live-action Snow White trailer was disliked bombed on YouTube mainly due to controversies involving the actress Rachel Zegler as Snow White.
• Fans of the Star Wars franchise review bomed the 2008 horror film Acolytes because they mistaken the film for The Acolyte Disney+ series.

TV/Web Show

• Batwoman was review-bombed for portraying the titular character as a lesbian.
• The Last of Us's third episode, "Long, Long Time", was review-bombed due to a depiction of a relationship between two characters.
• The second season of The Boys was review-bombed by fans due to its release schedule.
  • The fourth season was also review-bombed due to its writing and political messaging.
• The fourth season of True Detective: Night Country was review-bombed by fans (or "bros") of the first season. In response, showrunner Issa López called these people out for this behavior.
• Agatha All Along gets review-bombed by homophobes.

Reverse review bomb examples

Very commonly, reverse review bombing can be associated with internet memes or jokes. However, some of these can be used as a coordinated reverse review bomb to boost the ratings of a badly-received media.

Games

1. Cory in the House: Metacritic's review of the game contains mostly satirical reviews that relate to an Internet meme that mocks the show as an "anime". Because of this, the game was seen as one of the highest user-rated DS games on the site.
2. Balan Wonderworld got review bombed on Metacritic by bots, featuring a similar writing style.
3. My Friend Peppa Pig (it became an internet meme because its graphics were show-accurate but in 60fps)
4. Garfield Kart (along with its remake sub-titled Furious Racing)
5. Calculator for the Nintendo Switch (internet meme)
6. Life of Black Tiger on PS4 although they are all very sarcastic reviews.
7. Kingsense, to curve its low ratings which were around 3* at the time during its four-month lifespan, launched a reward campaign where the higher the Google Play rating, the more rewards (gems, etc) the players will get. This, however, resulted in backlash and caused users to bomb the game, seeing that it was an incentive by Superprism (the publisher of Kingsense) to reverse review-bomb the game. They backed down and canceled the campaign, but the damage was done and the game sat at 3* before shutting down in only five months. Like Saving Christmas, this is an example of a reverse review bomb where the goal was to boost the ratings up while it was critically panned, not because of an internet meme. It was later found out that Kingsense was a global release of a Japanese gacha that was already on life support 2 years prior, where even if it succeeded globally it wouldn't change the fact that the gacha already flopped abysmally begin with.
8. Bad Rats has thousands of positive reviews on the Steam Store that are almost all made as an ironic joke. Steam users also often jokingly gift it to their friends along with other hilariously bad games, which helps in making such games ascend to popularity via the status of being a funny meme.
9. Hi-Fi Rush has a positive example of this. This is due to Xbox Game Studios closing Tango Gameworks (which had lots of backlash when the announcement was made) which was later acquired by Krafton. The same can be said about Assassin's Creed Unity due to the Notre-Dame de Paris fire.

Movies

• 2014's Saving Christmas had the star actor, Kirk Cameron, staged a raid on Rotten Tomatoes by having his followers raise the ratings. However, at the time, it was reported that around 5000-6000 upvotes were added, causing the rating to jump to the 90s, before being pushed back down to stop the review bombing. One archive at the WayBack machine reported that it was at 50% with 1206 audience ratings before being brought down to 32% with 19,000 ratings. This would likely average around 6000 upvotes against 13,000 negative upvotes. Today, it sits at 22k audience ratings.
• The 2022 film Morbius was review bombed with satirical reviews thanks to a meme called "Morbius Sweep", which the practice of the meme originated from a post on the /r/moviecirclejerk subreddit. The film ended up disappointing at the box office even after a rerelease 2 months later. This can be described as an example of "artificial hype", where the amount of positive press/word of mouth on the Internet does not guarantee its success, or when people were only hyping the movie up because of the memes.

TV/Web Show

• Angels of Jarm (internet meme, similar manner to Cory in the House)

Why This Practice Deserves a 1-Star

1. First off, there is often a high amount of review bombing that can lead to having legit and honest reviewers overshadowed. This causes some media to be unfairly hated. If the media turns out bad, then the review bombing can make the media look good in an unfair way.
2. The reasons why stuff like this occurs are because of attention, a controversy, changes to the franchise, or how a certain product turned out. For example, a game got review bombed due to the game being only exclusive to a certain platform.
3. The practice shares the same and similar characteristics as vote brigading and cancel culture.
4. Many of the review bombings, in general, do not qualify as a review. Review bombing instead turns out to be spam.
5. While reverse review bombing is often the subject of internet memes, coordinated ones such as Kingsense and Saving Christmas only pour salt in the wound, as they're often made to desperately save a failing media's reputation.
6. Because of this, this can cause other actions to occur. Take The Last of Us Part II for example. Not only was this game review bombed, but some users sent in harassment to the staff behind the game.
7. Sometimes for multi-console games, a game can have a big double digits user score differences even if the game is largely the same/identical to the other versions.
8. Hypocrisy: One of the reasons gamers hate gaming journalism is when they give bad games good reviews or vice versa such as NBA 2K games, how is this any different?

Redeeming Qualities

1. Though still wrong, the review bomb may do have a point about the flaws of a certain piece of media (like Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, Warcraft III: Reforged and Gran Turismo 7).
2. Sometimes you get review sites that can have means to detect or prevent review bombing.
3. Sometimes a review bomb may be used to praise a game due to the actions that players see as beneficial. For example, Assassin's Creed Unity due to the Notre-Dame de Paris fire. This led Ubisoft to make the game free via Ubisoft Connect as the game included a recreation of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

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