The latest action may be a reason for Epic Games to refuse user reviews on their store as Borderlands gets review bombed over Borderlands 3 being a six month exclusive on the Epic Games Store.
Over the past two days, it seems that a very vocal crowd has once more gathered with metaphorical pitchforks and torches, knocking at Gearbox and Take-Two/2K’s doors to voice their discontent with the game being announced as an Epic Game Store exclusive. Just like the incident with Metro Exodus exclusivity and the review bombs its predecessors received, Borderlands is now in the same position, receiving more than several thousand negative reviews within the past 48 or so hours.
While steam has already implemented systems in place to check these reviews and eventually deem them legitimate or not, the problem still remains, and Steam still has yet to defuse the problem in any way shape or form. While our good robotic Claptrap is greasing up his gears, polishing off a fresh coat of paint, fans are already grinding down the game to pieces with a metaphorical belt sander while they’re at it.
As of the time of writing, the number of negative reviews is already quickly approaching the 2,000 mark with a possibility of going even higher for Borderlands 2. Currently, Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition sits at around 400 negative reviews since the bombings started, while Borderlands: The PreSequel sits around 500 negative reviews in the past few days.
Sadly, if you check the comments, they paint a picture of what you might expect, one user stating that they feel that “2k is a TRASH COMPANY DO NOT BUY THIS OR ANY BORDERLANDS GAME EVER. Epic Games is taking companies with it from steam one by one. Also, Enjoy $250 loot boxes in Borderlands 3 LOL! And the paid XP boosts microtransactions and many more! This game series have sold their soul to the devil.”
We corrected the above due to grammatical errors, but the point remains quite clear. Others even continue this resentment saying “Seriously you tell us we can’t but your game unless we give a handy to epic store? Will not purchase bl3. This is bad and you should feel bad.”
Another stating with two middle fingers sticking out and Epic Store in the middle:
“I will remove this review when BL3 comes out on Steam.
Reasons not to use Epic Store:
1) They have terrible security (80 million accounts were exposed last week)
2) They have terrible customer service (just google it)
3) Games are more expensive on Epic due to regional pricing
4) You can’t play games offline
5) Limited social features
6) No screenshots
7) No controller support
8) They broke EU laws (and still do)
9) Scummy tactics (you had to tick a box to opt out of emails etc)
10) They are partially owned by Tencent (a company that sells user data to the Chinese government)
11) No achievements
12) No cloud saves
13) No game forums (many people went to steam for Subnautica support)
14) Epic make you pay the transaction fee when purchasing games
15) They are anti-consumer (They pay for exclusive rights to games to try and force you to use their store)
16) They can refuse refunds even if you meet the criteria
17) No reviews
18) No Linux support”
Even outside of the review bombing, there are positive reviews in the mix, but they still share the same sentiments, telling Epic Games to basically “piss off” in their own unique little way. Even now, we’re still waiting to see if Valve’s latest solution will curb the review bombing and boost the score for Borderlands titles back to where they were before the event occurred, and if it does, if Valve will begin taking them down while marking the period that they happened as “suspicious” or whatever they do.
For whatever the reason is that a game might be seen as controversial, there are other useful ways to speak up against incidents such as this. The best way to do it isn’t by review bombing a game, speaking out harmfully in the forums, but simply speaking with the money that the games could be making.
Meanwhile, Borderlands 3 is set to release on PC via the Epic Game Store launcher, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on September 13th, and on March 20th, 2020, via Steam.
About the Writer(s):
Dustin is our native console gamer, PlayStation and Nintendo reviewer who has an appetite for anything that crosses the borders from across the big pond. His interest in JRPG’s, Anime, Handheld Gaming, and Pizza is insatiable. His elitist attitude gives him direction, want, and a need for the hardest difficulties in games, which is fun to watch, and hilarity at its finest. You can find him over on Twitter or Facebook.