When a Game's Rating Suddenly Tanks: Is It a Review Bomb?
By Lowstamp Editor · 2026-07-05
You've probably had a game you were eyeing suddenly show 'Mixed' or 'Mostly Negative', and you backed off thinking it must be bad. Sometimes the game is perfectly fine. People piled in to leave bad reviews over something that has nothing to do with the game. That's a review bomb, and once you can tell it apart from real criticism, you stop passing on good games over a misunderstanding.
What a review bomb is
A flood of negative reviews in a short span, for reasons that have little to do with the actual game. The studio made a political statement, signed an exclusivity deal with another store, changed the price, or started requiring an account link, and angry people leave low reviews to protest the company. The game hasn't changed, but the rating suddenly looks terrible.
Don't ask 'is the rating bad'. Ask 'why, and since when'. If the reason has nothing to do with whether the game is fun and it all landed at once, it's very likely a review bomb.
Two examples
Game A's overall rating is 'Overwhelmingly Positive', but only the recent rating has slumped to 'Mixed'. Open the low reviews and it's all 'they made me link my account to another service and I'm furious'. Barely anyone says the game got less fun. Textbook review bomb. Game B has both recent and overall at 'Mixed', and the low reviews say 'gets old after two hours' and 'crashes constantly'. That's people who played it. Real criticism worth heeding. Same 'Mixed' label, opposite signals.
Tell #1: split recent from overall
Steam shows two ratings, recent and overall. Overall 'Very Positive' with recent cratering to 'Mixed' means the game is normally good and something just happened. Both bad, steadily, means the game genuinely has problems. Just the gap between the two tells you whether it's a temporary uproar or a real issue.
Tell #2: read five of the negative reviews
Open five low reviews and read them. 'Controls are bad', 'super buggy', 'gets old fast' are from people who played, and worth taking seriously. 'I don't like the company', 'because of that statement', 'because it's exclusive elsewhere' have nothing to do with the game being fun. Read the content and it's obvious fast whether the beef is with the game or the company.
Tell #3: find the sharp dip in the review graph
Hover over the review summary on Steam and a graph of the rating over time pops up. A review bomb shows as a sharp spike of negatives over a few specific days that then settles. If it's normally positive but one point dips like a valley, something kicked off then, and it probably wasn't the game.
Steam filters these too
When a flood of reviews lands in a short window for reasons unrelated to the game, Steam sometimes flags that stretch as 'off-topic review activity' and leaves it out of the score. The greyed band on a review graph is exactly that. If a score looks oddly low, you can toggle whether to include that window and see what the 'real score' looks like. If Steam has already filtered it, the surface number isn't worth much worry.
It's not that the number is bad. It's why it went bad. In the game, take note. In the company, it's noise.
Rating suddenly looks bad? Split recent from overall, read a few low reviews, and check the graph for a sharp dip. That separates real criticism from a review bomb in a couple of minutes, and you won't miss a good game over an uproar. Then check the price against the tracked low on Lowstamp, and you're buying with a clear head.