The video game industry in recent years has expanded enormously. Revenues of the world’s most important publishers, huge multinationals like Activision, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, are impressive while many small companies were able to emerge thanks to the mobile market and the viral spread of free apps or, more precisely, free-to-play apps with micro transactions inside. So it’s a flourishing business, but at the same time it’s easy to come across really surprising criticalities, which are as hard to predict as guessing a number in a drawing game even with a Heart bingo promo code, as you know.

The latest mishap in the media around the world is related to one of the hottest new titles: Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The new adventures of Lara Croft on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC have been well received by both critics and the public but now the most charming archaeologist on the planet has to deal with a very unusual case of review bombing. How so? We’ll explain it to you right away!

This practice, spread particularly among Steam’s user reviews (ie. the most important digital delivery system available on PC) consists of a mass publication of negative reviews in response to something that does not meet the community expectations about a particular video game. The phenomenon is certainly not new, but in the case of Shadow of the Tomb Raider we were intrigued by the motivation behind the negative reviews: we are talking about… a discount!

While we are writing this article, the basic version of game is currently discounted by 34%, just over a third of the total price, while the deluxe version with exclusive additional content called Croft Edition is even offered at a price almost halved with a discount of 47%.

Apparently, however, the decision made by the publisher of the game, Square Enix, wasn’t appreciated by many of those who bought the game on the day of its launch or shortly after and now find themselves facing such an important discount after just a month or so since the release of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The game reviews have suddenly dropped from mainly positive comments to an “average” level with hundreds and hundreds of new negative feedback published since the discount sales began for the most recent and spectacular adventures of Lara Croft.

It seems that many users who bought the game since its release or before these promotions, consider that these discounts are basically a lack of respect for all the old fans of the series who bought the game on the day of its launch. What’s more, they even had to tolerate some technical issues related to the PC version, in particular various kinds of glitches and crashes, which were later solved with the free updates released by the Crystal Dynamics developers.

In short, if Lara Croft thought that her biggest problems were related to the feared Mayan apocalypse in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, now she must also deal with some of her loyal and definitely angry fans…