When Overwatch 2 launched on Steam, it was immediately bombarded with review bombs, propelling it to become Steam’s worst-rated game of all time.
Despite Overwatch’s director addressing the review bombing and recognizing the reasons for the review bombing, namely the scrapped PvE hero missions, it wasn’t an easy time to be an Overwatch dev.
And, as Bobby Kotick steps down as CEO of Activision Blizzard, players are celebrating and devs are breaking their silence about their experiences working under Kotick’s management.
According to a dev planning OW2’s release on Steam, they didn’t get any additional help to deal with the influx of toxic messages that the launch brought.
As revealed by Overwatch’s Community Manager Andy Belford, he claimed Bobby ignored the Blizzard team’s concerns about how the game’s steam launch would go.
“When we planned OW2’s Steam launch, my team warned (months in advance) that we’re going to be review bombed,” Belford wrote. “We begged for more information, more details, and more resources to help us with the anticipated influx, all flatly denied.”
He continued, “Moderation of Steam was put on the community team (not a function of community at Blizzard), despite my refusal to expose members of my team to that level of toxic content/posts.”
When asked whose decision it was to launch on Steam with no additional help: Bobby.”