Bandai Namco has been going through a trying time with Tekken 8 as fan focus has been less on gameplay and more on surrounding controversial happenings. The game’s running review scores on Steam began high but have been dropping over the nine months Tekken 8 has been in the wild, and in a few instances these drops have looked like concerted efforts from dissatisfied fans.
Just last week the game fell into “Mostly Negative” territory under the recent reviews category and fell to “Mixed” in the overall reviews category, but now sits as “Mixed” and “Mostly Positive,” respectively, as Steam has apparently removed nearly 1,500 negative recent reviews.
When we reported on Tekken 8’s plummeting Steam scores last Wednesday, October 9, it had 25,408 “overall” reviews, but as of the morning of Wednesday, October 16, that number has been reduced by 1,482 to 23,926. Similarly the 1,902 “recent” reviews from last week have dropped by 1,085 to just 817.
The latter page does feature an asterisk that leads to the following addendum:
What exactly does Steam mean by “off topic review activity?” This appears to be a response to “review bombing,” a situation wherein fans flood a title with negative reviews in a wide expression of disapproval. Platforms like Steam would normally do this if they felt scores were negatively inflated and thus not a proper representation of how the general public’s true feelings.
This isn’t the first time the Tekken 8 Steam reviews appear to have been review bombed as they plummeted to Mostly Negative back in April following some audience disapproval surrounding the Tekken Shop and DLC practices.
More recently fans expressed frustration at the fact that Heihachi’s new Genmaji Temple stage is not included in any bundles and must be purchased for $4.99, even by those who bought the most expensive versions of the game with DLC included.
Fans found themselves widely at odds with Bandai Namco again earlier this month when Chinese player Essence|XCC was disqualified from an event in ninth place despite being allowed to enter and following an exciting and surprisingly strong bracket run.
Given how these instances characterize the current landscape, and knowing the internet, the table does seem set for review bombing practices. Still, manipulation of review scores (from either side) reduces their validity in the eyes of the public and leaves us with an increasingly moot metric.
Tekken 8 has seen both highs and lows on its roller coaster of a first year thus far, but clearly still has some work to do to win over enough opinions to remain in a positive public light.