Overwatch 2 director addresses review bombing on Steam

The director of Overwatch 2 has addressed the review bombing the game has been receiving on Steam since its release on the platform last week.

The game launched on Steam last Thursday and, at the time of writing, has just passed 150,000 user reviews, which Steam says are “overwhelmingly negative”.

Steam’s stats say that only around 9% of the user-submitted reviews are positive, with many players taking the opportunity to criticise the game’s free-to-play structure and its ditching of the much-hyped Hero missions.

In a post on the Overwatch blog, Aaron Keller acknowledged the response, and says he understands the reasoning behind it.

“We also launched on Steam last week, and, although being review-bombed isn’t a fun experience, it’s been great to see lots of new players jump into Overwatch 2 for the first time”, Keller wrote. “Our goal with Overwatch 2 has been to make the game more accessible than ever for more people than ever before.

“Many of the reviews on Steam mention the cancellation of the much larger component of PvE that was announced in 2019 as one of their primary reasons for dissatisfaction with the game. I get that. That announcement was about an ambitious project that we ultimately couldn’t deliver.

After conceding that the Hero missions were beyond the capablities of the team, Keller stated that the plan remains to continue improving the game in the hope that fans will be won over.

Further reading

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Overwatch 2 is released on Steam, is immediately review bombed

More than 25,000 'overwhelmingly negative' user reviews have been submitted

“If we can’t turn back the clock, then what can we do?” he wrote. “We can keep adding to and improving Overwatch 2. That is how we move forward.

“This means more maps, heroes, game modes, missions, stories, events, cool cosmetics, and features – an ever-expanding, evolving, and improving game. This is the future of Overwatch. One where we will continually create and innovate on what is making the game great now for the players who are playing now.”

Overwatch 2 is the first of “a selection” of games Blizzard Entertainment plans to release on Steam. Players still need to connect to a Battle.Net account in order to play the game, as is the case on all platforms, which Blizzard says enables features like cross-play.