Summary
- Swen Vincke’s speech at The Game Awards that criticized corporate greed appears to have caused a mini Baldur’s Gate 3 review bombing.
- Over 500 negative reviews have been left since Vincke’s speech, mostly by Chinese gamers, upset that Vincke thinks support via sales doesn’t matter.
- There have been reports of a dodgy Chinese translation of Vincke’s speech which caused this issue, though there are some simply upset Astro Bot won over Black Myth: Wukong.
The Game Awards was a pretty decent affair this year, packed with big announcements and yet more eye-rolling appearances from celebrities and the Muppets. There were a few highlights though, one of them being Baldur’s Gate 3 head Swen Vincke’s passionate speech before giving the Game of the Year award to Astro Bot, all about how corporate greed is one of the biggest problems facing the industry.
During this speech, Vincke claimed that the winner of next year’s award would be a studio that “didn’t have to meet arbitrary sales targets” and “didn’t treat their developers like numbers on a spreadsheet”, basically claiming that games that are made for both developers and players will always stand out in an industry that is increasingly driven by profit. It was a lovely speech, but he’s actually catching some heat for those comments.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Is Being Review Bombed By Chinese Gamers After The Game Awards
First spotted by Reddit user Kend7510, it appears as though Chinese gamers have been attempting to review bomb Baldur’s Gate 3 following Swen Vincke’s speech at The Game Awards. Take a look at the recent reviews for the title, and you’ll see that today’s total number of negative reviews at the time of writing is 539, which isn’t that many, but it’s a lot when you consider the game had been pulling in around 10-15 negative reviews per day.
If you take a look at some of these negative reviews, you’ll see that quite a lot of them are from Chinese gamers, upset about Vincke’s comments at The Game Awards. Many have apparently taken Vincke’s comments as him declaring that sales don’t matter, and that he’s being ungrateful about the support Baldur’s Gate 3 has received.
“If developers don’t need to care for sales or reviews, please don’t mind my negative review.”
There are a few potential reasons for this, one of them being reports of a dodgy Chinese translation of The Game Awards which made Vincke’s comments seem a lot harsher than they actually were. Chinese is a very difficult language to translate at the best of times, and Vincke’s comments weren’t exactly presented in a particularly straight-forward manner.
There’s also the possibility that some are just upset that Black Myth: Wukong didn’t win the award, and because Astro Bot isn’t on Steam, Baldur’s Gate 3 was the next logical target for a review bombing. Whatever the reason, it’s nice to see that the review bomb has spectacularly failed anyway, as the amount of positive reviews left after Vincke’s speech far exceeds the number of negative ones. You need to be more coordinated if you’re going to come after a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 guys.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.