CD Projekt and CD Projekt Red's recent decision to halt sales in Russia and Belarus has led to a Cyberpunk 2077 review bomb, and that's not all -- pretty much all of the company's games on Steam are being affected by a flood of negative reviews.
Earlier today, CD Projekt (parent company of CD Projekt Red and owner of digital gaming retailer GOG) made the decision to halt sales in Russia and Belarus in response to the Ukraine conflict. It didn't take long for that to provoke a response -- all of the company's games are being review bombed on Steam.
The Witcher 3 & Cyberpunk 2077 Review Bomb, By the Numbers
The Cyberpunk 2077 review bomb kicked off earlier today following CD Projekt's announcement of pulling its products from Russia and Belarus. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the issue extended to the rest of the company's games on Steam.
Here is what the review bombs look like on the company's games at the time of writing:
| Game Name | Positive Reviews (March 3, 2022) | Negative Reviews (March 3, 2022) |
|---|---|---|
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 182 | 542 |
| The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut | 15 | 180 |
| The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition | 17 | 215 |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 238 | 709 |
| GWENT: The Witcher Card Game | 7 | 30 |
| Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales | 2 | 18 |
| The Witcher Adventure Card Game | 0 | 8 |
As one might expect, many of the top negative reviews from the last day are in Russian, so here is a sampling of some of those negative Cyberpunk 2077 reviews, machine-translated into English via Google:
Always supported Redov, but this is the height of cynicism and a stab in the back, you connected the game with politics, spitting in the face of the entire community for the agenda that the government is leading, and not ordinary people, the most important Nazis, chauvinists here you are, doing this with people, who buy your games without refunds
What can I say, another hypocrites have been revealed. Guys, remember, you're setting a dangerous precedent by supporting this kind of crap. None of you know what the government might say the next day, just as we didn't. Perhaps, God forbid, the next time you find yourself in such a situation is YOU.
And how will you help people affected by the war in this way? No way, because you are not going to help in any way. This is the usual hypocrisy. But you will earn points from an audience that didn’t care about your games.
Games should be as far from political crap as possible. Too bad it's too late for a refund.
Polish piece of sh**, twisting to the point of impossibility. do you forbid paying in rubles? donate our grandmother to arm the APU and the Nazis in order to shed even more blood? go f*** yourself! I regret every penny that went to the expense of these crooked Poles from my wallet
And here are some of the lovely words being shared in recent negative reviews of The Witcher 3, also machine-translated via Google:
Thank you hypocritical scumbags from CDPR!
All this time, the gaming community in Russia has supported you, no matter what. And so you decided to repay them for something to which they even have nothing to do! Well done, what can I say. And they did it first. Despite the failed launch of Cyberpunk 2077, the players were with you, and you gave a sh** about them. Thanks Che.
It's sad that in our world the art to which the games belong cannot be outside of politics. And it's a pity that you were the first scum.
Oh yes. That fan support video, remove the Russian developers and the word "thank you", otherwise someone will see.
I wish you all the best, I hope your Russian-speaking employees will appreciate this decision.
Games, like sports, should be out of politics, especially when you do not understand how our people live and how it is simply impossible to change something without destroying EVERYTHING that we have. I hope you, the Polish hypocrites that you have been all the time, will someday get it, which in principle is unlikely.
First you protect them for Cyberpunk. Then they spit in your face and send you. Thank you CDPR! Well, I hope this PR will somehow help you, because the war will end and sooner or later everything will be restored. But the respect and trust of the community... [Hardly] will return to you...
All of the above reviews were rated as the "Most Helpful" reviews from between March 2-4, 2022, from Steam purchasers in any language at the time of writing.
The Cyberpunk 2077 review bomb and the review bombs of the other games mirrors an ongoing situation with Book of Demons after the game's developer enacted the unusual move of increasing the game's price in Russia by 1,200% in order to attract attention to its statement countering Russia propaganda. We've observed several other games whose developers have pledged financial support to Ukrainian relief have been similarly affected by negative reviews on Steam to varying degrees.
