Space Engineers Review Bombed by Chinese and Russians
Space Engineers has become another target of review bombing by the Chinese and Russians users. All because the developers expressed opposition to the invasion of Ukraine.
Space Engineers has been flooded with negative reviews on Steam. Low ratings are given mainly by players from China and Russia. They are angry with the attitude of the Czech studio Keen Software House, which protests against the Russian Federation's military aggression on Ukraine.
Space Engineers becomes target of review bombing
The developers published a statement on Steam on February 25, in which they oppose the invasion of Ukraine, encourage donations to the Red Cross, and urge Russian players to demand that their own government stop the invasion.
- This declaration quickly caused review bombing.
- On February 26, the game's profile on Steam was flooded with negative reviews - there were 120 of them, while in recent weeks Space Engineers had been receiving up to a dozen negative reviews a day.
- Most of the reviews were in Chinese and Russian.
- The review bombing continued in the following days; as a result, the game's reception on Steam shortly went from "very positive" to "mixed" in the last 30 days .
Trolls can't cope - the waning effectiveness of review bombing
Players from Russia and China, however, were unable to hurt the game for long. As early as March 1, positive reviews began to dominate again. As a result, currently 74% of player reviews from the last 30 days praise Space Engineers, which helped to change the categorization of the game's reception on Steam from "mixed" to "mostly positive".
Looking at the favorable reviews, we can see that many of them were issued to support the devs in the fight against review bombing and as an expression of solidarity with Ukraine. In the latest reviews we can find such texts as:
"Go to hell, Putin!"
"Screw Russian bots."
"Support Ukraine."
"Absolutely hilarious are the Russian and Chinese trolls doing review bombing of this game, just because the developers claim that killing is bad. Without you guys, I probably wouldn't have bought the DLC. So I thank you guys."
This is not the only such situation in recent days
The gamedev community quickly reacted to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As a result, many studios became targets of review bombing. This was also the fate of This War of Mine. However, Russian and Chinese trolls clearly can't keep up and the drops in average ratings are short-lived. The targeted games quickly recover on Steam.
