Last March, Valve unveiled some new tools that would make it easier to combat off-topic review bombing on the Steam store. Now, those tools are getting put to the test as players review bomb the entire Borderlands series because of Borderlands 3's timed Epic exclusivity.
Earlier this week, Gearbox Software and publisher 2K announced that the PC version of Borderlands 3 would launch on September 13th as an Epic Games Store exclusive, with a release on other PC storefronts planned for April 2020. That move apparently did not sit well with some obstinate Steam users, who have begun review bombing the entire Borderlands series, including Tales from the Borderlands, on Steam. Steam's new anti-review bombing measures, however, seem to be working exactly as intended.
At the top of each game's store page, users can now see that the Recent Reviews and All Reviews scores have remained unchanged from before, albeit with an asterisk next to each. Scrolling down to the customer reviews section displays a notice to potential customers that a period of off-topic review activity has been detected for this game and that the reviews from that time frame are being automatically excluded by default.
The graph of positive/negative reviews still displays the review activity from that time but marks it with an asterisk. Changing your preferences to include the off-topic reviews in the review score by default is as simple as clicking the Edit Preferences button on the chart and checking a box.
It is also worth noting that even with the off-topic reviews excluded from the review scores, the reviews themselves still appear within the customer reviews section, allowing prospective players to easily find out why a game was review bombed to begin with. Unsurprisingly, each games' recent reviews are currently bloated with anti-Epic Games Store sentiment, including text images of middle fingers and protests against PC exclusivity. Because of Steam's new tools, however, the Borderlands series will still sit within the Mostly Positive to Overwhelmingly Positive range to the general viewer.
