PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Gets Review-Bombed Thanks to In-game Ads

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' is the latest recipient of a review bomb from gamers who are displeased with finding an in-game ad nestled within the lobby screen.

The wave of negative reviews that recently attacked the game on Steam seems to have mostly come from Chinese players, the region that the ad appeared in. Chinese players are often the recipients of low-quality connections even when connecting to the local Chinese servers, a frustrating situation that's resulted in many Chinese gamers connecting to servers abroad in North America and Europe.

Considering the poor connection that Chinese PUBG players reportedly receive, it's not hard to imagine why the ad was frustrating considering its content. The ad in question was for a VPN service that promised it would speed up connections to international servers. For Chinese players who didn't want to pay for a private network to enhance their connection and would simply rather have their local servers work better, they weren't too happy with the ad.

It made matters even worse that the ad appeared in-game as opposed to somewhere PUBG-related online. The ad showed up right within the game's lobby screen, something that hasn't been seen before in the game on different servers. PUBG players would undoubtedly hope that ads don't begin appearing in other locations given that it's already a paid game, albeit a cheap one for how big it's gotten.

The reviews for PUBG have been mostly positive so far, but the sharp increase in negative reviews that's occurred just two days within the month of October is a pretty clear indicator of a review bomb in progress. A chart that breaks down the positive and negative reviews by month shows that nearly 20,000 negative reviews have been levied against PUBG within the past two days.

Fortunately for Steam users, the chart that depicts the wave of negative reviews is a recent change that's allowed players to easily distinguish when a review bomb has occurred. Valve has said recently that they're looking to combat the negative reviews that hit a game for reasons irrelevant to the actual gameplay or experience, and the charts for each game that warns players of high volumes of negative reviews seem to be working as intended.

[via VG247]