A hot potato: Review bombing has become a common practice these days. The act of flooding a game with negative reviews for a certain reason, even those not actually related to the gameplay, is no longer an unusual sight. But does it have any effect, especially on established franchises? According to GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive, “negative review campaigns” can have a significant impact, suggesting the company might be worried about GTA 6 suffering this fate.
Take-Two’s latest 10-K annual stockholders’ filing with the SEC includes an interesting section on review bombing. As noted by Game File’s Stephen Totilo, it highlights the effects that bombings can have on a game and the companies behind it.
The filing states that obtaining and maintaining the high ratings of Take-Two games on third-party platforms are important as they help drive players to find the titles.
The filing goes on to explain that Take-Two’s games may be subject to negative review campaigns or defamation campaigns, which might have little to do with the quality of a title. This decline in ratings could lead to a loss of players and revenues, additional advertising and marketing costs required to negate the effects, and general reputation harm.
Take-Two is no stranger to its games being review bombed. In 2017, GTA V was targeted after its publisher issued a cease-and-desist against the widely used game modification tool OpenIV – an attempt to stop single-player and multiplayer mods for GTA V and Grand Theft Auto Online. The move dropped the game’s overall Steam rating from Positive to Mixed, while the Recent Reviews fell to Overwhelmingly Negative. Take-Two quickly allowed the OpenIV tool to return, with the review bombing likely to have played a part in the decision.
It’s interesting that Take-Two has highlighted this issue ahead of GTA 6’s release in fall 2025. While it’s hard to imagine the game being anything other than a massive success, there have been reports that the often-controversial humor for which the franchise is famous might be less prevalent this time around. Rockstar is reportedly going to take a more politically correct stance in GTA 6 and not “punch down” by making fun of marginalized groups. That, combined with the inclusion of the first playable female main character, a Latina woman, might be worrying Take-Two. You might remember that the Saints Row reboot was accused of going too “woke,” which led to a review bombing.
A more recent example of successful review bombing, though not involving a Take-Two game, was against Helldivers 2. It happened after publisher Sony announced that an upcoming update for the game would require all PC players to link to their PlayStation Network accounts. A few days later, the Japanese gaming giant reversed its decision.