Review bombing is players response to the investigation against dev of Schedule 1, the biggest hit on Steam in recent weeks
Poland's Drug Dealer Simulator has flopped due to its publisher's decision to investigate a similar simulator that recently won the hearts of Steam users.
The investigation into the publisher of the Polish series Drug Dealer Simulator didn't win any fans for the Movie Games company. Both installments of the series became the target of review bombing on Steam.
DDS2 was one of the better received Polish games of 2024. It was the most significant achievement for the studio in June, even if no one would label this title as "the game of the year."
However, now this good reception has been forgotten. Overall, DDS2 is positively rated by 64% of over 5,700 Steam users. However, the reviews from the last 30 days show "mostly negative" opinions, with only 24% "thumbs up" out of nearly 800 ratings. The first installment of the series also took a hit, although it still has "very positive" reviews (except for those from the last 30 days, which stand out in the "overwhelmingly negative" category).
The reason for this sudden aversion of players to the games is not hard to find - and it is unrelated to the actions of the Byterunners studio developers themselves. Players started review bombing following the announcement of an investigation into Schedule 1 - a simulator for dealing "substances," which rapidly gained popularity on Steam and consistently outperformed Drug Dealer Simulator 2, hitting 459,075 concurrent players yesterday (via SteamDB).
Players defend the addictive indie game
After a comparative analysis, Movie Games concluded that the game of independent TVGS has "many elements covered by copyright," which the team "borrowed" from the DDS series. The investigation is still ongoing, but apparently the company doesn't rule out seeking compensation.
If someone is familiar with players' opinions (particularly their views on game publishers), their reaction likely won't be surprising. DDS2 on Steam was flooded not only with negative reviews, but also with threads on the game's subforum. The platform users expressed in no uncertain terms their opinion on "attacking" an independent studio for supposedly creating a similar game and achieving significantly more success than the publisher. Some players add accusations against DDS2 (although it's hard to assess how justified they are, as the descriptions are dominated by exaggeration and undisguised dislike for the publisher).
It's worth noting that after the disclosure of the preliminary results of the "comparative analysis," the share price of Movie Games went up (although, in practice, this meant a return to the value before the March declines). However, today the company's shares fell almost to the level before the publisher's announcement, at least at the beginning of the day (via Stooq.pl). Maybe the shareholders were put off by the "bombing" of Drug Dealer Simulator 1 and 2 on Steam?
