Review bombing is becoming a mainstream trend in gaming these days. Today's gamers will let developers know that they screwed up with a torrent of negative reviews. But, more often than not, the reason for this is obvious. This isn't the case for War Thunder.
War Thunder, the hit vehicular combat game from Gaijin Entertainment, is the most recent victim of a large-scale review bombing from fans. The long-running title received a ton of negative reviews from fans who are upset with recent changes to the game.
Gaijin Entertainment recently made some large-scale changes to the in-game economy earlier this month. The update significantly nerfed the Silver Lion in-game currency that players earned through playing the game regularly. The developer also lowered the Research Points reward from matches, making it harder for players to unlock vehicles without spending real-world money on the game’s premium currency called Golden Eagles.
The new changes did not sit well with long-time players of War Thunder. The game received over 65,000 negative reviews on Steam since the changes were rolled out on May 17. The War Thunder review bomb is bigger than the negative reviews that Redfall got earlier this month as it saw the game drop down to a "Mixed" rating on Steam.
In response to the review bombing, Gaijin Entertainment removed references to Steam on the game’s official website. The studio may be attempting to distance itself from the negativity from fans on Valve’s storefront. The developer announced that it is reversing the controversial changes in a mid-summer update as well.
Gaijin has since issued an apology to gamers and promises to be more transparent with the upcoming changes to the in-game economy.
Sooo economy is trending 😅. Long story short, we plan to revise the game economy in a dedicated update late summer, and wrote a post about it.
Full message: https://t.co/cOpt56BHCg pic.twitter.com/i0PbVvpntC— War Thunder (@WarThunder) May 19, 2023
Even with the announced changes, the review bombing is still continuing. Players may have taken offense to the fact that the changes are not immediate and unconditional. How much Gaijin is changing the economy this summer is still not clear at this point.
Many veteran players are still upset with the new in-game economy of War Thunder. Gamers say that they cannot afford to repair vehicles after matches due to the recent changes. New players will also have a hard time catching up with the influx of new content as they will be limited by the new in-game economy nerfs.
War Thunder will be celebrating its tenth anniversary on August 15th. The free-to-play title has over 70 million registered players on all platforms combined.
War Thunder is free-to-play on PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
